Red Cross strike spreads to MI, grows in OH

The front line in the War on Workers.

"Non-profit" doesn't mean "non-greedy," which is why workers at the American Red Cross in Lansing were forced to strike today. About 150 workers represented by the Teamsters and the Office and Professional Employees International Union had to walk out over cuts in health care benefits and dangerous understaffing. They join 400 striking Red Cross workers in Ohio.

The Red Cross rakes in $2 billion a year from blood donations, and yet it wants to take away workers' restroom and fatigue breaks. Workers fear their exhaustion could lead to mistakes and endanger the blood supply. Red Cross has already racked up more than $40 million in fines from the Food and Drug Administration.

Meanwhile, Red Cross pays CEO Gail McGovern more than $1 million a year with unlimited restroom breaks.

McGovern received a letter from Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa, saying:

Red Cross employees have made every attempt to settle outstanding contract issues. They love the work they do, but long shifts with short staff and high pressure, combined with management’s insistence on replacing their quality health insurance with a far inferior one, has left them no other choice.

Earlier this week, 150 Red Cross workers who are members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) walked off the job in Toledo, Ohio. They joined 250 Teamsters who were forced to strike in Cleveland on February 14.

Lansing Red Cross Teamsters have been without a contract for nearly 3 years. Jennifer Hemstreet has been a mobile unit assistant for blood drives in Lansing for 19 years. She said,

I want Red Cross to bargain in good faith over our health care. Blood donors provide their own blood for free and Red Cross turns around and sells it for $250 or more a pint. They say it’s to pay my salary, but it doesn’t add up. The CEO of Red Cross makes more than $1 million a year.

Michael Parker, secretary-treasurer of Local 580 in Lansing, pledges to fight Red Cross for the right to bargain over health care:

They are cutting the health benefits of their employees around Ohio, Michigan and everywhere else ... the big shots in Washington are feasting over workers’ sacrifices. If you ask me, the Red Cross is infected with greed.

View photos of these brave workers here.

Why the 1954 zinc miners' strike was almost forgotten

This is the original trailer for the only blacklisted American film. Wouldn't you know it, it's about a labor strike. It opened on March 14, 1954, in just a handful of theaters.

The good news is it's now one of 100 films to be saved for posterity by the Library of Congress.

Our friends, Working Class Heroes, tell us,

The classic film centers on a long and difficult strike led by Mexican-American and Anglo zinc miners in New Mexico. Real miners perform in the film, in which the miners’ wives – as they did in real life – take to the picket lines after the strikers are enjoined.

According to History.net,

The strike nearly collapsed after eight months when Empire Zinc opened the mine to scab labor and obtained a court injunction prohibiting union pickets on company property. Then the wives and mothers of the union's Ladies' Auxiliary circumvented the injunction by marching in place of the men.

...It was a violent time. 'The company would hire guys who were out-and-out gunmen and send them over to the sheriff and the sheriff would deputize them,' says Jencks. At one point the sheriff locked up 45 women and 17 children, an action that appalled New Mexico's governor. In late summer, strikers descended upon three carloads of strikebreakers nearing the company entrance. The scabs attempted to push their cars past the picketers and knocked down three women. A strikebreaker shot into the crowd, wounding a picketer in the leg. News of the confrontation flashed through the mining district. Nearby mines emptied as their workers went to bolster the picket line.

The strike was settled on January 21, 1952. The company agreed to higher wages and insurance benefits but denied the union's demand for paid holidays and remuneration for all time spent underground. Although it wasn't part of the settlement, the company soon provided hot running water for the miners' homes.

That year, another film about labor unions did much better at the box office -- and at the Academy Awards. "On the Waterfront" won four Oscars and is today viewed as a film classic, while "Salt of the Earth" is largely forgotten.

But consider: The message of "On the Waterfront" is that labor is corrupt and informing is a good thing. The director, Elia Kazan, and writer, Bud Schulberg, had both named names before Sen. Joseph McCarthy's witch-hunting House Un-American Activities Committee.

In contrast, we learn from the Film Society's Tripod,

Salt of the Earth was made independently by several victims of the Hollywood blacklist that resulted from the notorious hearings of the McCarthyite House Un-American Activities Commission in the late forties. A particularly venal episode in the ignoble social history of Hollywood, the HUAC offered the world the spectacle of leading figures of the film world throwing their colleagues to the lions of fanatical cold-war paranoia. Ten of their number were convicted of contempt of Congress for attempting to exercise their First Amendment rights and were blacklisted with unseemly alacrity by the studios. The director, writer and producer of Salt of the Earth were erstwhile members of the Hollywood Ten, forced to set up their own independent company in order to continue making films under their own name. The subject of their film was defiantly anti-establishment: a restaging of the events surrounding a particularly vicious miner's strike in New Mexico.

So....a movie about union corruption wins acclaim, a movie about brave workers successfully fighting for respect and dignity is marginalized. Any of this sound familiar?

Today's Teamster News 02.14.12

Senate sets stage for do-or-die vote on South Florida prison privatization  Orlando Sentinel   ...Florida lawmakers are set to vote on a massive prison privatization plan for South Florida in what will likely be an emotionally fraught debate and a severe test of Senate President Mike Haridopolos' leadership...
State spends millions for 202 new jobs  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel   ...A state-subsidized investment program yielded huge returns for three out-of-state financial firms and their partners while netting just 202 new jobs for Wisconsin, at a cost of more than $247,000 per job...
French Elections Potentially More Momentous Then Greek Vote  credit writedowns   ...Polls suggest that in the first round of balloting in late April, Sarkozy is trailing his Socialist challenger Hollande 31%-24.5%. Marina Le Pen’s candidacy appears sufficiently strong to deny either candidate a majority in the first round...
A key driver of a US recovery  Macrobusiness   ...Over the course of 2011, productivity growth slowed noticeably as the ‘easy’ gains from streamlining operations came to an end (and perhaps reflecting supply disruptions). Moreover, average weekly hours worked are almost back at pre-recession levels. As a result, firms have needed to take on extra employees to expand...
Armageddon at the Strip Mall  National Review   ...There’s going to be a lot of dark storefronts out there, with serious long-term consequences for nearby neighbors and for local real-estate markets: Foreclosures will put more property onto the market, driving down rents and subsequently making existing loans less tenable as the cashflow of commercial properties is diminished...
Red Cross workers possibly going on strike; blood drive canceled  NewsNet5   ...Local Red Cross workers may be hitting the picket line today, affecting about 250 union members in Northeast Ohio. The contract for union members, Teamsters Local 507, expired at 3 a.m. We have not heard of any agreement...

Strike forces US Foods into Keystone Kops routine

 

Standing tall together in Buffalo.

Whoa! US Foods management was so confused by the Teamsters' rolling strike that it partially shut down operations at two New Jersey warehouses in Bridgeport and Swedesboro this morning. Those two warehouses were not picketed, though close to a thousand Teamsters have been honoring picket lines at US Foods facilities around the country.

Here's a post from the USfoods Workers Facebook page that explains what happened:

The company was apparently so frightened that a single custodian from rural Illinois would descend on Philadelphia this A.M., that according to one Teamster member there was a whole "lot of turmoil and disruption to the business at both Bridgeport and swedesboro this morning. They cut 18,000 cases from delivery at Bridgeport and 24 routes from swedesboro." But here's the rub: the Streator, IL strikers were nowhere near New Jersey. We'd apologize to all the hard working folks at US Foods Swedesboro and Bridgeport for the disruption, but the company brought it on itself.

Memo to fast-buck artists Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Clayton, Dubilier &Rice, plunderers of US Foods for the past four years: Breaking the law has consequences. (The company retaliated against employees for engaging in union activity.)

And here's a P.S.: There's more of us than there are of you. Standing together makes us strong.

As @ShannanZ tweets:

Back to Old School. This is a Teamster family and you wont find any scabs here. This is what Solidarity looks like. @USFoodsWorkers

The New York Times reported on the strike, no doubt to the dismay of KKR and CD&R:

A small strike that began on Sunday at a US Foods plant in Streator, Ill., has spread to other cities in recent days, causing disruptions at the food distribution giant, which is owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice.

A pair of sanitation workers in Streator affiliated with the Teamsters union went on strike after the company refused to bargain in good faith, the union said. On Monday morning, drivers and warehouse employees at the plant, which employs about 100 workers, elected not to cross a picket line at US Foods, but they later went back to work in the afternoon.

“We believe the illegal conduct of US Foods in Streator is part of a broader war the company is waging against its workers,” the Teamsters said in a statement posted on a Web site that was created expressly for the dispute.

Yesterday's Teamsters news release explains further:

After striking US Foods workers extended picket lines from Streator, Ill. to St. Louis, Mo. and Buffalo, N.Y. on Tuesday, Nov. 1, the picket lines were extended again last night and early this morning to Fishers, Ind., Plymouth, Minn., and Fife, Wash.

More than 830 Teamster-represented warehouse workers and drivers have now honored the picket lines at the US Foods locations in Illinois, Missouri, New York, Indiana and Minnesota. In Fife, Wash., the union gave notice that it intends to honor the picket lines starting Friday morning.

A picket line was also set up overnight in a blizzard at the Englewood, Colo., facility. Teamsters will honor that picket line on Friday as well.

Photos of the picket lines can be viewed here.

For more information, go to the website: http://www.usfoodsworkers.org/. Or you can post messages of support to the Teamsters Facebook page (trolls, you will be banned). Follow the action on Twitter at @USFoodsWorkers.

Today's Teamster News 11.03.11

A strike at US Foods takes aim at private equity  New York Times   ...The relationship between labor unions and private equity, which has always been chilly, has just gotten colder...
Port closure culminates Oakland protest  The Press-Democrat   ...Semi-truck drivers trying to leave the Port of Oakland stopped as throngs of demonstrators poured in....“It's OK,” said Mann Singh, 42, a truck driver from Pittsburgh who was stuck in the middle of the road with demonstrators climbing on his vehicle. “They are for us, you know. We work 16 hours to make $200...”
Sotheby's arrest 2  youtube   ...Four occupy wall street activists were arrested tonight at Sotheby's auction house in NYC, for distutbing one of sotheby's biggest nights of the year, in support of the locked-out workers...
Teamsters Protest Union-Hostile Law Firm Jackson Lewis  IBT   ...Teamster members protested the anti-union law firm Jackson Lewis, which was hired by Sotheby’s Auction House [NYSE: BID] to help outsource good, middle-class jobs...
Porsche Sells Malbec to Keep Argentine Access  Bloomberg   ...President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who won re- election Oct. 23, is forcing sellers of foreign-made cars to become exporters of everything from bio-diesel to bottled water in return for access to an auto market that’s growing 30 percent a year. Argentina introduced the program in March to boost export, increase investment in local industry and shore up dwindling central bank reserves...
Anonymous retreats from Mexico drug cartel confrontation  The Guardian   ...Plans by the hacker collective Anonymous to expose collaborators with Mexico's bloody Zetas drug cartel – a project it dubbed "#OpCartel" – have fallen into disarray, with some retreating from the idea of confronting the killers while others say that the kidnap of an Anonymous hacker, the incident meant to have spawned the scheme, never happened...

Today's Teamster News 03.18.11

GOP lawmakers to take up budget without Indiana Dems  IndyStar.com   ...Republicans ...  today increased the fines on the missing legislators and said the Senate will now start dealing with bills that are in limbo in the House...
WI Dems: Walker's Frank Luntz Visit Broke the Law  Mother Jones   ...The party plans to file a complaint today... alleging that the advice Walker got from Luntz, the right's political messaging guru, amounted to something of value ... and thus violated state ethics and political contributions laws...
Gov. Snyder signs controversial emergency financial managers measures  Associated Press   ...Many Democrats and labor unions criticized the legislation as a state power grab that could set up virtual dictatorships and strip power from local elected officials...
Michigan’s Constitution Allows Governor Snyder To Be Recalled In July  ThinkProgress   ...Michigan voters can bypass the legislature altogether and call for a constitutional amendment by petition and referendum...
Otter signs two controversial school-reform bills into law, SB 1108 and SB 1110  The Spokesman Review   ... Gov. Butch Otter quietly signed ... SB 1108, removing most collective bargaining rights from Idaho teachers, and SB 1110, imposing a teacher merit pay program beginning in 2013...
FreedomWorks Launches Campaign Against Abuses of Union Power  FreedomWorks  ...corporate-backed group to run smear campaign against unions...
Strike called off at Walkertown company  Winston-Salem Journal   ...Allied Systems Holdings, the parent company of Allied Systems Ltd., agreed to withdraw its plans to cut the wages of more than 2,500 Teamster carhaul drivers in the United States and Canada...
Update For Teamster YRCW Members Following Company’s Annual Report
IBT   ...this missed deadline has been greatly overstated and is not particularly significant to the overall restructuring process...

Today's Teamster News 03.17.11

Allied Systems workers expected to strike today  Winston-Salem Journal   ...The Teamsters National Automobile Transporters Industry Negotiating Committee served a 72-hour strike notice on Allied Systems and Transport Support Inc. March 10 after Allied said it had retroactively cut teamster members' pay by 20 percent...
Thousands of union members storm Lansing to rally  UpNorthLive.com   ...They say it's a direct assault against the middle class...
Large, dynamic solidarity protest in DC outside Wisconsin GOP fundraiser  Daily Kos   ...this protest was a dynamic, almost unpredictable event that far exceeded expectations...
In Ohio, Labor Rallies for Referendum Against Anti-Union Bill  Atlantic Monthly   ...Ohio, where the political climate is far chillier and more conservative, may prove itself to be the central theater for the showdown between Republicans and labor later this fall...
Labor's Herculean Moment  Indy Star   ...A national assault on unionism has turned Democrats in Indiana and elsewhere into marchers and brought throngs of angry supporters to capitols, where kindergarten teachers and laborers have found common cause...
The bogus case of the $160,000-per-year bus driver  Washington Post   ...He was able to (work a huge number of house) this because of previous rules, negotiated by Teamsters local 695, that allowed drivers with most seniority — and the highest salaries — to rack up large amounts of overtime...
Dane County DA says budget panel violated open meetings law  Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel   ...Ismael Ozanne filed a civil complaint Wednesday alleging legislative leaders violated the state's open meetings law last week when a special committee adopted a bill curbing collective bargaining for most public workers...
Giant Food plant might be set to close  Washington Post   ...Teamsters Local 730 Union president Ritchie Brooks said that Tuesday, officials from Jessup Logistics informed him that the plant would shutter...
Hoffa Commits Full Resources of Union to Win Continental-United Campaign  IBT   ...The Teamsters are organizing about 7,000 ramp workers at United, who are currently represented by the Machinist's Union...