2011

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WSJ: Ohio Vote on Unions Will Reverberate, Backers Say

Nov 10, 2011 (0) Comments

Wall Street Journal
NOVEMBER 9, 2011

By MELANIE TROTTMAN

Labor leaders and Democratic strategists said Ohio’s repeal of a recent law restricting collective-bargaining rights for 350,000 public-sector workers will reverberate in other states where Republican governors have attempted or are mulling similar actions.

Officials said the repeal also could bolster Democrats in the national 2012 elections, noting that the repeal was supported by majorities of union and nonunion voters in Ohio, according to a labor-commissioned poll of 1,015 people. Ohio voters rejected the new collective-bargaining law, which hadn’t yet taken effect, by a margin of 61% to 39%.

The repeal “is bigger than just one law or one state. It sends a message to all those who would try to balance the budget on the backs of our workers: you do so at your own peril,” said Joe Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Mr. Hansen said the votes cast Tuesday against the collective-bargaining measure signed earlier this year by Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich “will have aftershocks in Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, and Washington D.C.” as unions and others continue to fight measures and candidates they say harm the middle class.

The Republican National Committee disagreed, and noted that labor unions and their allies outspent conservative organizations by wide margins to push for the repeal.

“I don’t know that they have a very good leg to stand on to say that these results were somehow a national referendum,” said an RNC official. This person pointed out that the biggest labor unions spent nearly $30 million to repeal the measure, and had less success in Wisconsin when they tried to block a similar law earlier this year.

Opponents in Wisconsin plan to start a campaign to recall that state’s governor, Republican Scott Walker, who led the push for the collective-bargaining law.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said his labor federation “will monitor the actions” of governors in many states in coming months, including Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida. He said Democratic candidates should glean from Tuesday’s results that they should “be more aggressive” about standing up for workers rights.

The Atlas Project, a group co-founded by Steve Rosenthal, a Democratic political strategist who was a former political director for the AFL-CIO, issued an analysis that said the collective-bargaining win for labor in Ohio suggests Republicans overreached and unions and progressives can have more optimism going into 2012.

The coalition of voters that helped lead to Democratic victories in 2006 and 2008 “can still be coalesced and mobilized around a core Democratic issue,” the analysis said. It called the collective-bargaining outcome a “strong rebuke to Republicans” even though many of the same voters symbolically rejected President Barack Obama’s health overhaul law by voting in favor of a separate, Republican-led initiative on Tuesday’s Ohio ballot. That measure called for nullifying the 2014 requirement for individuals to carry health insurance or pay a fee, and passed with 65.5% of voters favoring it.

The RNC official said results from the health-law rebuke overshadowed the union vote. “Obamacare in our mind is a much bigger issue going into 2012,” the official said, and added that Mr. Obama’s name, not Gov. Kasich’s, will be atop the national ballot.

The AFL-CIO said the survey that was done on its behalf-by Democratic pollsters Peter D. Hart Research Associates-showed that while an overwhelming number of union members and public-employee households opposed the antiunion law, a majority of nonunion members also opposed it. Among union members surveyed, 86% opposed the law, while 52% of nonunion members opposed it, the survey concluded. Among households with a public employee, 73% opposed the law, compared with 57% among householders without one.

Still, the survey found that Democrats and Republicans were mostly divided on the issue. Democrats rejected the labor law at a rate of 94%, while just 30% of Republicans went against it. Independent voters rejected the law by 57% to 43%, the survey concluded.

“It remains to be seen whether Democrats can continue to tap into populist sentiment as we head into the 2012 presidential election,” the Atlas Project officials said in their report. “Given that nearly 30% of the vote in Ohio will come from union households in 2012, the enormous energy coming off of this win provides reason for optimism,” the report said.

Write to Melanie Trottman at melanie.trottman@wsj.com

Collective Bargaining, Kroger

UFCW Local 400 Members Ratify Kroger Contract

Nov 08, 2011 (0) Comments

Three-Year Agreement Covers Workers in W.Va., Ohio, Ky.
Increases Compensation, Maintains Health & Retirement Security
CHARLESTON, W.Va., November 8 – Members of United Food & Commercial Workers Local 400 working at Kroger in West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky ratified a new, three-year collective bargaining agreement that maintains their health and retirement security and increases their total compensation by an average of $3.10/hour over the life of the contract.

“Our members took an important step forward by ratifying this agreement,” said Local 400 President Tom McNutt. “At a time of economic difficulty, skyrocketing health care costs and pension funding challenges, they were able to maintain and improve their standard of living, health care coverage, retirement benefits and job security. This is a solid agreement that once again proves how vital union representation is to keeping middle class jobs alive in the retail sector of the economy.”

Negotiations were challenging with many difficult issues to resolve. But both sides bargained in good faith and the result is a win-win contract that helps Kroger workers while ensuring that the supermarket chain remains profitable and is well-positioned to expand its share of the market.

“It’s our members’ unparalleled productivity and quality service that makes Kroger profitable and I am pleased that our agreement recognizes this essential fact,” McNutt said. “I am equally pleased with the strong Solidarity our members showed throughout the negotiations-it was absolutely essential our success at the bargaining table.”

Instead of concessions, Local 400 members won a commitment from Kroger to make monthly contributions to their health and retirement funds in amounts the funds’ trustees determine are necessary to maintain existing benefits.

“Most experts project that retail is one sector of the economy expected to experience some of the greatest job growth in the years to come,” McNutt said. “That makes it all the more critical that retail jobs provide middle class compensation. Our agreement with Kroger shows how we can achieve this critical goal.”

UFCW Local 400 represents 40,000 members working in the retail food, health care, retail department store, food processing, service and other industries in West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C.

Collective Bargaining, Elections, Organizing, Packing and Processing, Politics, Press Releases, UFCW Industries

NATIONAL BEEF WORKERS CHOOSE UNITED FOOD AND COMMERCIAL WORKERS FOR A UNION VOICE ON THE JOB

Nov 07, 2011

(Dodge City, Kan.) – A majority of the 2,500 workers at National Beef’s Dodge City, Kansas beef slaughter and processing facility voted to join UFCW District Local 2, in an election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board, on Thursday and Friday, November 3 and 4, 2011.

The workers’ campaign began when several National Beef workers contacted the UFCW seeking a union voice on the job. At that time, National Beef and the UFCW agreed on a fair and balanced process that allowed employees to vote on whether or not they wanted union representation. UFCW represents the workers at a neighboring Cargill beef slaughter and processing plant in Dodge City.

“Helping to organize my co-workers into a union was a life changing journey,” said Rebecca McGary, a worker in the fabrication department at National Beef.

“We know that workers at Cargill, just down the street from National Beef, have had a contract with Local 2 for many years – and that means they have always had a say in their wages, benefits and working conditions,” said Ramon Prieto who works on the kill floor at National Beef and who took a leading role in organizing his co-workers. “That’s why I voted to join the UFCW, so that we all will have a chance to negotiate benefits and salaries, job security, and a better life for our families.”

The National Beef workers are the latest in a series of meatpacking workers to join the UFCW at locations across the country. On October 19, approximately 1,000 workers at a JBS beef kill facility in Plainwell, Michigan joined UFCW Local 951. On October 25, 125 workers at a Farmland Foods facility in Carroll, Iowa joined UFCW Local 440. And in late September, 300 workers at Nebraska Prime in Hastings, Nebraska joined UFCW Local 293.