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October 29, 2008 |
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WSLC
Reports Today
Updated
DAILY... Almost Every Day!™ by 9 a.m. Pacific
Links are functional at date
of posting, but sometimes expire.
WSLC Reports Today links to stories of interest to organized
labor;
some positive, some negative. The intention is to inform.
WEDNESDAY,
OCTOBER 29
P-I's Joel Connelly: Battlers for
a living wage demonized
Demonizing unions is the order of the
day at election time. As part of its $7.2
million media blitz against Gov. Chris Gregoire, the BIAW is airing a TV
spot spewing outrage that unions have donated $2 million to the governor's
campaign. Meanwhile, John McCain believes
in having Air Force tankers built in right-to-work Alabama and in Europe
rather than by Boeing's unionized Machinists. The
burn barrels outside Boeing plants, indexing of the minimum wage and
requiring that teacher salaries keep pace with inflation -- each helps all
of us. And middle-class prosperity is the biggest boon to business. A living
wage represents sense, not socialism. Read
more.
Boeing Machinists strike:
Day 54
▪ In today's Everett Herald -- Will deal satisfy union? -- The 27,000 striking Machinists will head to the polls on Saturday to decide.
▪ In today's Seattle Times -- Machinists weigh what they gained -- IAM District 751 President Tom Wroblewski concedes that the lump-sum bonuses and wage increases will not make up all the money lost during eight weeks on strike. But it wasn't just about money, he says, it was about winning some job security for future workers. "It's always about the next generation. The previous generations did it for us."
▪ In today's News Tribune -- Boeing offer doesn't please all -- The four-year contract, while likely to be approved by members because of the union’s endorsement, doesn’t please all Boeing workers.
▪ In today's Seattle P-I -- Boeing suppliers celebrate tentative deal -- but analysts have different take -- Note: The P-I quotes one "analyst" predicting Boeing will eventually move manufacturing to a so-called right-to-work state due to labor unrest and a second "analyst" agreeing it could happen.
▪ In today's Seattle Times -- Another senseless Boeing strike (editorial) -- Boeing management and employees again heave millions into the bonfire, weakening the enterprise that feeds them both.
▪ In today's News Tribune -- Another costly strike for Boeing, IAM (editorial) -- If Washington is going to hang on to its jet plants, labor peace has to last longer than each contract's expiration date.
▪ In today's Everett Herald -- Region will be relieved to have strike behind it (editorial) -- Our state mustn't take for granted the pride we feel being home to the company and workers who build the world's best commercial jetliners.
Local
news:
▪ In
today's Seattle P-I -- Boeing
faces talks with unhappy union -- Regardless of what happens with
Saturday's IAM vote, Boeing now must try to make peace with its white-collar
union, SPEEA, which represents about 21,000 workers, mostly in the Puget
Sound area. These engineers and technical workers say the oft-delayed 787
represents everything that's wrong with outsourcing -- one of the key issues
that will be on the table, just as it was for the Machinists union.
▪ In the Wenatchee
World -- Community
can share health care concerns today -- People from North Central WA can
offer thoughts on what matters most for health-care reform at a caucus from
6 to 8 p.m. tonight at the Wenatchee High School commons, 1101 Millerdale
Ave. Learn more.
▪ In
today's News Tribune -- Pierce
Transit union chief shares concerns after layoffs -- ATU 758 President
Isaac Tate says many members were concerned that the layoffs
would be used by transit administrators as a bargaining tool in contract
negotiations.
▪ In
today's Oregonian -- Beef
Northwest workers to vote Nov. 7-9 on union -- In hopes of ending a
bitter labor dispute, a ranchers' cooperative schedules an election for
workers at three feedlots to decide whether to unionize with United Farm
Workers. UFW calls the election a "sham."
▪ In
today's Seattle P-I -- Chopp
unveils ambitious Viaduct plan -- Not yet given a price tag, the House
Speaker's proposal is to replace the viaduct with a mile-long, four-level
structure open to retail space on the first level, offices on the second,
highway lanes on the third and a park on top.
▪ In
today's Olympian -- Ethics
complaint against Chopp tossed out -- The Legislative Ethics Board
tosses a complaint over his hiring of a political consultant to help shape
Democrats' messages.
▪ In the
Aberdeen Daily World -- PUD
rebuffs Bassett on mill -- Former Cosmopolis
Mill top bidder Richard Bassett was rebuffed in his efforts to secure the
same deal the Grays Harbor PUD had.
▪ In
today's Seattle P-I -- More
jobs or better pay? Working together (editorial)
--
Jobs are growing scarce and budgets cannot go up forever.
Some, like King County employees, will see a smaller paycheck to protect
services. Other workers might voluntarily choose to give up pay so that more
of their colleagues will remain employed. Twisting Benjamin Franklin's great
line: We can either keep working together or most assuredly we will be
unemployed separately.
National
news:
▪ At EWeek.com -- Abusing
the H-1B visa system to fix washing machines -- The feds say 20% of H-1B
applications filed by U.S. employers seeking foreign technology workers
contain errors or fraud. An audit found faked degrees, forged qualifications
and fictitious references, including one that sought a so-called business
development analyst to fix washing machines in a Laundromat.
▪ In today's LA Times
-- Whirlpool
to slash 5,000 jobs
State
election news:
▪ In
today's Olympian -- Government
accountability: Gregoire, Rossi debate its merits -- Gov. Gregoire has
won national awards for her Government Management Accountability and
Performance Program. GMAP is now one of the country's hottest trends in
government. It earned Gregoire a spot on the cover of Governing Magazine,
which declared her its public official of the year in 2007. In March, the
Pew Center ranked Washington among the three best-managed states. And last
week, the Council of State Government recognized GMAP with its first-ever
Governance Transformation Award. But her Republican opponent Dino Rossi says
the 15-person, $2.5 million-a-year program costs too much.
▪ From
AP -- Analysis:
Rossi testimony on BuilderGate stokes campaign -- A
week from Election Day, a lawsuit questioning Rossi’s involvement in his
biggest supporter’s potentially illegal campaign fundraising has morphed
from sideshow to potential show-stopper. Rossi sought
to have his subpoena quashed, or delay his deposition until after the
election. The judge said no.
▪ Today
from AP -- 23%
of ballots statewide already submitted --
A county-by-county assessment found that as of Tuesday, more
than 820,000 ballots had been returned by the state's 3.6 million voters, or
about 23%. The secretary of state's office estimates about 50% of the
projected vote will be in by Friday, with the rest coming in next week.
Wassup 2008:
WEDNESDAY,
OCTOBER 29, 2008
P-I's Joel Connelly: Battlers for a living wage demonized
Bashing organized labor is the order of the day at
election time
The following column by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Joel Connelly appears in today's edition:
As part of its $7.2 million media blitz against Gov. Chris Gregoire, the Building Industry Association of Washington is airing a TV spot spewing outrage -- outrage -- that labor unions have donated $2 million to the governor's campaign.
The spot quotes a "labor boss" as saying unions have gotten their money's worth out of Gregoire's administration. It ends by condemning the governor for giving state employees more annual days off.
If you read the fine print, the "boss" is head of the Washington Education Association. Our state's public school teachers are the newest cigar chompers of right-wing fear mongering.
The state's voters -- not the governor -- are the real architects of teacher salaries. In 2000, Washington voters approved Initiative 732, which mandated that teachers in public schools, and other school employees, receive cost-of-living salary increases.
And organized labor, so demonized in BIAW and Republican TV spots, campaigned for the initiative under which Washington's minimum wage rises with the cost of living.
We still have viable unions in this state, despite sparse attendance at this year's Labor Day picnic in Woodland Park.
Boeing Machinists have sustained a 53-day strike, winning an offer of a 15 percent pay boost over four years and parameters on outsourcing.
It's good that we have American workers, in our corner of America, paid a living wage to assemble a product the world wants to buy. The country has lost 3 million manufacturing jobs in this decade.
The political right can't stand this, even though Forbes magazine has twice ranked Washington in its top-five list of best states to do business.
Supposedly nonpartisan "policy institutes" and "foundations" spend their working lives railing and bringing lawsuits against those who work for social justice and a fair wage. They are handsomely compensated for their handiwork.
Demonizing is the order of the day at election time.
Our last Republican governor, John Spellman, ran a crazed 1984 re-election campaign filled with warnings that "big labor bosses" were scheming to take over the state capital.
The campaign labored with credibility problems, namely a) Spellman had just been endorsed by the Teamsters union, and b) Democratic nominee Booth Gardner was heir to a Weyerhaeuser fortune and stepson of business tycoon Norton Clapp.
The chief spokesman for the state Republican Party tried in 1996 to tie AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, a devout Catholic, to the platform of the Communist Party USA.
The BIAW's "Buildergate" scandal, and the pending court deposition of "GOP Party" gubernatorial nominee Dino Rossi, produced a broadside Tuesday from Republican State Chairman Luke Esser.
He railed against a "multimillion-dollar network of liberal groups, lobbyists and activist lawyers" -- this at a time when the BIAW, the Republican Governors Association and even a local restaurant operator are spending more than $10 million to defeat Gregoire.
Esser linked labor to a "left-wing advocacy group" called Fuse Washington. "Fuse's board of directors is made up of various left-wing activists including those with ties to labor unions," he wrote.
The GOP's presidential candidate has done his own demonizing, directed at The Boeing Co.
Sen. John McCain again and again has talked about Boeing's air tanker lease agreement with the Air Force -- not just the corruption-tinged 2003 deal, but recent bidding on the $40 billion contract.
Top McCain advisers lobbied for the Northrop-Airbus partnership picked by the Air Force over Boeing. McCain flew into Seattle on an Airbus plane.
McCain has served as a cheerleader for Northrop and Airbus parent EADS, even as the Government Accountability Office ruled in favor of Boeing's challenge and the Air Force postponed rebidding until next year.
He continued to bait Boeing in presidential debates. "I saved the taxpayers $6.8 billion by fighting a deal for a couple of years, as you might recall, that was a sweetheart deal between an aircraft manufacturer (and the Air Force), and people ended up in jail," McCain declared in his final face-off with Sen. Barack Obama.
Apparently, he believes in having tankers built in right-to-work Alabama and in Europe rather than by Boeing's unionized Machinists.
The issue is salient beyond the Boeing payroll. With unions in decline nationally, America's middle class has lost ground.
"As of 2006 (the last year for which trend data is available), real median annual household income had not yet returned to its 1999 peak, making this decade one of the longest downturns ever for this widely accepted measure of the middle-class standard of living," the Pew Research Center said in its recent report, "Inside the Middle Class: Bad Times Hit the Good Life."
We've resisted in this corner of the "Left Coast."
The burn barrels outside Boeing plants, indexing of the minimum wage and requiring that teacher salaries keep pace with inflation -- each helps all of us. And middle-class prosperity is the biggest boon to business.
A living wage represents sense, not socialism.
P-I columnist Joel Connelly can be reached at 206-448-8160 or joelconnelly@seattlepi.com.
Copyright ©
2008 -- Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO