October, 2013

Packing and Processing, UFCW Industries, UFCW Values, Workplace Safety & Health

UFCW Occupational Safety & Health Office Rolling Out New Safety Trainings

Oct 08, 2013

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERABecause union members tend to be educated about workplace safety, union workplaces are the safest workplaces! Now, The UFCW Occupational Safety and Health Office will be educating even more union members about staying safe at work with a new program that uses video technology to deliver safety trainings.

UFCW locals that are interested are welcome to take part in the video trainings, which are easy to access and use.

Check out the different safety trainings being offered below–if you’re interested, let your local know and have them contact the UFCW Occupational Safety and Health Office (202-466-1546) for details about how to sign up!

 

Training Sessions

Lock-Out  – Minor Servicing Exception
Major repair jobs are often locked-out properly, but hurried  machine adjustments or frequent unjamming can be a source of confusion, injuries and disciplinary action. This training session follows a step-by-step process to help operators, set-up people, machine cleaners and maintenance workers determine if that ‘’quick, little adjustment’’ requires a full lock-out or not. This training can also be helpful for stewards who have to deal with disciplinary action over Lock Out.
This training is applicable to ALL workplaces. It is most useful for manufacturing, food processing, poultry and meat packing plants.

Ergonomic Risk Factors
How can we predict which jobs will injure workers and which jobs are safe? Participants in this training session will learn about some of the elements of jobs that cause ergonomic-related injuries. The training includes an opportunity to practice using a method that combines the effects of three of the most important ergonomic risk factors.  This method can be used to evaluate most production-type jobs.

Hex Chrome
Welders who work with stainless steel may be at risk for lung cancer. This training session reviews the hazards and OSHA requirements for plants where stainless steel welding is done.

Hazard Recognition
This series of workplace photographs helps union stewards, activists and safety reps develop an eye for finding workplace hazards. This training session switches the focus from blaming workers for safety hazards onto identifying unsafe working conditions as the true hazards.

Extreme Temperatures
Many UFCW members work in conditions of extreme heat or extreme cold. Participants in this training session will learn about the possible health effects of these conditions, how the conditions can be documented and what can be done to protect workers.

Risk Assessment
‘’Long lists don’t get done!’’ This training session is for any union activist, steward, or safety committee member who is struggling to know where to start on their long list of safety problems. Risk Assessment is a systematic and logical approach to analyzing safety issues to place those issues in order of priority.

Material Handling
Participants in this training session will explore the safety requirements for material handling equipment from pallet jacks to fork trucks.

 

Economic Justice, Retail, UFCW Industries, UFCW Values

M.I.T. Professor Advocates for Better Jobs for Retail Workers

Oct 07, 2013

Zeynep Ton, an adjunct associate professor at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, recently spoke at a TEDx event in Cambridge, Mass., and delivered a provocative analysis of the economic advantages retailers can achieve by investing in their workforce. Drawing on a decade of research, Ton maintains that retailers such as Costco that invest in their employees—including higher pay, better benefits and schedules, and more training—have seen positive results, including healthy sales and profit growth, higher labor productivity, lower turnover and higher customer satisfaction.

Unfortunately, many retail employers have followed Walmart’s lead by skimping on hours and preventing full-time schedules so they won’t have to provide benefits to their workers.  This low-wage business strategy has, in turn, led to depressed earnings across the retail sector, as well as operational problems in stores, including out-of-stocks; a shortage of employees on the sales floor; and long checkout lines and wait times.

To view Ton’s lecture at the TEDx event, visit http://www.tedxcambridge.com/portfolio-item/zeynep-ton/.  Ton’s research and articles can be viewed at http://www.zeynepton.com/.

In the News, Politics, Retail, UFCW Industries

How Walmart Helped Lay the Groundwork for the Government Shutdown

Oct 07, 2013

Reposted from The Walmart 1%

source: www.business2community.com

As the government shutdown drags on, many pundits have drawn attention to how gerrymandering has helped give the American people a handful of right-wing Republicans willing to shut down the government as part of their ideological crusade against Obamacare. What has not been widely understood is how Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, is also a top funder of an effort to turn state legislatures red and control the redistricting process.   Perhaps Republican operative and former Bush advisor Karl Rove put it best when he wrote, “He who controls redistricting can control Congress” in a 2010 Wall Street Journal editorial. And with the millions Walmart gives to the Republican State Leadership Committee, the Republicans Party’s top influencer of redistricting, Walmart and the Waltons have played a disturbingly significant role.

SHUTDOWNS

The House has seen an increase in “safe” Republican seats since the last shutdown in 1995. Politico describes the difference: “79 of the 236 House Republicans serving during the last shutdown resided in districts that Clinton won in 1992. Today, just 17 of the 232 House Republicans are in districts that Obama won in 2012.”

The result: primaries pose a bigger risk to most Republicans than the general election, and Republicans are engaging in a race to the extreme right. This theory is borne out by Think Progress’ tally of House Republicans who are willing to resolve the crisis and back a continuing resolution like the one passed by the house. As of last Tuesday, there were only 14 such House Republicans, and in their districts Obama averaged 48.8% of the vote in 2012.

WALMART’S ROLE

This is where Walmart comes in. The 2010 Republican takeover of state legislatures was led by the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), a so-called dark money group that can take in unlimited corporate contributions and obscures that money’s origins as it is redistributed to influence state races. A Pro Publica report explains that when it was formed in 2002, the RSLC “was primarily a vehicle for donors like health care and tobacco companies to influence state legislatures, key battlegrounds for regulations that affect corporate America.” But in 2010, the group got a new chairman and a new focus: to influence redistricting.

To control redistricting before the 2012 elections, Republicans would first have to win as many state legislatures as they could in 2010. That year Rove wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “Nationally, the GOP’s effort will be spearheaded by the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC). Funded by 80,000 donors, it spent more than $20 million in the last election cycle on legislative races and for attorney general, lieutenant governor and secretary of state campaigns.”

The RSLC may have thousands of donors, but Walmart is consistently among the top 20. Since the 2004 election cycle, Walmart has given the Republican State Leadership Committee over $1.5 million, according to data compiled by Open Secrets. In the ongoing election cycle, Walmart is currently the group’s top donor.

WALMART’S RECORD DONATING TO RIGHT-WING CAUSES

All of this is in keeping with Walmart and the Walton family’s (which controls Walmart) long history of backing Republicans and right wing-causes, especially at the state level. Since the 2004 cycle, Walmart has spent over $12.7 million in state-level races (not counting its contributions to the RSLC), according to Follow the Money. Nearly 80% of that money went to Republican candidates and party committees. The Waltons, meanwhile, give almost exclusively to Republicans, and in 2010 they helped finance the Republican takeover in a big way. Despite not being from there, six Waltons were among the top fifteen political donors in Wisconsin legislative races during that election cycle. In fact, Alice Walton was the top individual donor to Wisconsin legislators during the 2010 cycle.

IT WORKED

The 2010 GOP strategy worked. Walmart joined forces with the US Chamber of Commerce (which Walmart also funds), tobacco companies, pharmaceutical companies, and others to fund the RSLC and help Republicans win 675 legislative seats and gain control of 12 more legislatures, including places like North Carolina, where it had been over a century since the GOP last controlled the state. Ultimately, Pro Publica explains, “the GOP oversaw redrawing of lines for four times as many congressional districts as Democrats.” So even after Democratic candidates for Congress won 1.1 million more votes than Republicans, the GOP was able to maintain its control of the House.

For $1.5 million over the past decade, Walmart was able to help the Republican State Leadership Committee secure control over the Congressional redistricting process. This in turn gave the Republicans 54% of House seats despite winning only 45% of the popular vote and ample opportunity to grind the government to a halt, even without the support of most Americans.