Texas state workers initiate campaign to improve abuse services

Public service workers can make a difference in people’s lives. For example, last year workers in the Texas Child Protective Services (CPS) division of the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) investigated more than 175,000 charges of child abuse involving 297,000 children and removed 17,000 children from abusive homes. The work of these public servants no doubt saved lives and improved the lives of others.

There are, however, many more who need these services but aren’t getting them. Texas’ child population is nearly 7 million and growing. But DFPS funding has not kept up with population growth.

Unfortunately, anti-public service lobby groups have said that they will try to cut the state’s budget again in 2013. If DFPS falls victim to these proposed cuts, as is likely, the situation will likely deteriorate.

The Texas State Employees Union CWA Local 6186 has launched a campaign to build support for an agency budget that will improve the state’s capacity to protect abused children.

Members of TSEU who work at DFPS in February met with DFPS leadership to provide input about what the agency’s proposed budget for the next two fiscal years should look like and, a month later, testified before a state Senate committee about problems affecting the agency’s ability to serve a growing child population.

When TSEU members met with DFPS Commission Howard Baldwin and Deputy Commissioner Jennifer Sims, the workers urged the commissioners to seek funding that would restore client services cut last year, establish a career ladder designed to reduce employee turnover, set manageable caseload standards, and reject foster care privatization expansion.

One of the client services that TSEU members urged the commissioners to restore is the Kinship Program, which may be axed in September because the Legislature eliminated funding for it. The program allows abuse victims to live with relatives or close friends instead of going into foster care.

Myko Gedutis, TSEU lead organizer for Southeast Texas, said that TSEU would continue to monitor and provide input toward the drafting of the agency’s budget. The biggest obstacles to a fair DFPS budget are pressure from anti-public service lobbyists to cut spending beyond the $15 billion cut last year and a $5 billion a year structural deficit caused by the state’s antiquated revenue system.

More recently, TSEU members testified at a Senate Health and Human Services Committee hearing on Child Protective Services.  Stephanie Diaz, a CPS investigation supervisor in Aransas Pass, near Corpus Christi, and a TSEU member, said that the biggest problem facing CPS and its clients is the “dangerously high caseloads (that) contribute to high turnover and poor casework. These issues compound each other constantly, so it feels like we are not making progress and those of us on the frontlines are being run into the ground.”

Diaz said that the average caseload for a Child Protective Services investigator in her region is 30. The national standard is 14. The high caseload and the demand to move cases through the system often lead to cases not receiving the full attention they deserve.

“We, as social workers, and you, as Legislators and human beings, should put yourselves in the shoes of those families DFPS serves,” Diaz said.  “Would you want your caseworker to give you more than five minutes of their time before making life changing decisions for you and your family?”

The employee turnover rate at CPS is 25 percent; the state agency average is about 15 percent. More than 53 percent of staff have less than three years experience.  The high turnover rate has had its biggest impact in the Austin area, where according to the American Statesman, only 45 of the 95 authorized CPS investigator positions are filled causing a backlog of 1,000 cases.

Susan Rial, an investigation supervisor in Arlington, located between Dallas and Fort Worth, told senators that reducing the turnover rate and retaining qualified experienced caseworkers will require job improvements such as establishing a career ladder that provide an incentive for workers, whose starting annual salary is between $32,200 and $36,700, to stay on the job.

Rial also urged lawmakers to reject proposals to reduce employee health care benefits and eliminate their pensions. “When weighing the pros versus the cons (on whether to stay), all to often the cons win out for new staff,” Rial said. “Two major reasons staff do decide to stay are because of our health care and pension benefits. Undermining these benefits by converting to 401(k)s or health savings accounts will undoubtedly create an exodus from our agency. This is a legislative change to stay away from.”

German public service workers stage warning strikes

After two days of warning strikes, ver.di, the union representing federal and municipal workers in Germany, returned to the bargaining table on Thursday for the latest round of negotiations with the German government. On Tuesday, ver.di’s leader Frank Bsriske told striking workers at the Frankfurt airport, “We’re at a crossroads” as the union prepares to hold a strike authorization vote among members if negotiations fail to produce a decent wage increase for Germany’s 2 million public sector workers employed by the federal government and municipalities.

This week, ver.di called two warning strikes that lasted for a short time. On Monday, 80,000 public sector workers in Berlin and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the country’s largest state, walked off the job for a day. Strikers included bus drivers, sanitation workers, kindergarten staff, and some hospital workers.

Tuesday’s action was smaller but more dramatic as workers at the country’s seven largest airports downed tools for periods ranging from nine to five hours. The strikes caused Lufthansa, Germany’s largest airline, to cancel 450 flights.

Bsriske said that public sector workers moderated their past wage demands to help the country climb out of its economic slump caused by the financial crisis of 2008, but during the last two years, the German economy has picked up steam and that it’s now the right time for public service workers to regain some of that lost ground.

As a sign of the nation’s improving economy, Germany’s Federal Statistics Office reported yesterday that the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in March dipped to 6.7 percent, lower than had been expected and the lowest that it has been in 20 years.

Ver.di is demanding a 6.5 percent wage increase, but the government so far is offering only a 3.3 percent increase, 2.1 percent in the first year of the contract and 1.2 percent in the second year.

Bsriske said that considering the billions of euros that the German government gave to banks to bail them out after their risky financial transactions put them at risk of going out of business, the wage increase sought by public sector workers is entirely justified.

The federal government appears unwilling to budge from its initial offer. Interior Minister Hans Peter Friedrich has indicated that the government may ask a mediator to help resolve the dispute. If the talks do go to mediation, the union’s hand is weakened because strikes are illegal while mediation is in progress.

The outcome of the contract talks will have an effect far beyond the public sector. Contracts affecting 9 million private sector workers are set to expire this year, and the final settlement of the public service wage dispute will likely serve as a guideline for wage increases in these contracts.

Companies with contracts expiring this year include Deutsche Telekom, whose workers are also represented by ver.di, and Volkswagen, whose workers are represented by Germany’s largest union IG Metal, which has already announced that it will be seeking a 6.5 percent wage increase in the new contracts it negotiates this year.

As the government inched closer to calling for mediation to resolve the dispute, ver.di members remained defiant. “We’ve shown we’re ready to strike to defend our pay claim and that’s definitely not in the government’s interest,” said Jan Jurczyk, a ver.di spokesperson in Berlin to the Wall Street Journal.

Teen’s death, Wisconsin workers have one thing in common

At first glance, it might not appear that Trayvon Martin and public service workers in Wisconsin had much in common. Martin lived in Florida about 1,300 miles away from Wisconsin. Martin was a bright teenager with a promising future ahead of him. Those serving the public in Wisconsin are adults, most of whom are well into the public service careers. The one common thread connecting them is that both are the victims of state laws inspired by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

ALEC’s members are state lawmakers with a pro-corporate agenda. According to the Center for Media and Democracy, members pay an annual membership fee of $50, but 98 percent of the group’s funding comes from corporations and sources other than the annual fee. ALEC provides model legislation and research support that pro-corporate state lawmakers and social conservatives use to advance their legislative agendas.

Trayvon Martin was shot and killed one night a month ago as he was walking home from a convenience store. His killer George Zimmerman has not been arrested because state prosecutors think Zimmerman, a self-appointed neighborhood watch leader, was acting under the authority granted him by Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, which ALEC helped write.

Stand Your Ground authorizes the use of deadly force by a civilian who believes that a crime is being committed and that his or her life is in danger. Zimmerman, who the Miami Herald reports, followed Martin after he left the convenience store because Martin “looked high, walked too slowly in the rain, and appeared to be looking at people’s houses.” The fact that Martin was a young African-American male wearing a hoody also led Zimmerman conclude that Martin was a “suspicious character.”

The two exchanged words, and what happened next is still unclear. What is clear is that Zimmerman used his pistol to shoot Martin, who was armed only with a bag of Skittles he purchased earlier.

The Herald today reports that police officers investigating the incident originally recommended that Zimmerman be charged with manslaughter, but that the local police chief decided not to do so because he thought Zimmerman was acting under the state’s Stand Your Ground law.

(Martin’s parents are pushing state prosecutors to continue investigating the case and to prosecute their son’s killer. They are asking supporters to sign a petition to this effect and have so far gathered more than 2 million signatures.)

In his column that appeared in last Friday’s New York Times, Paul Krugman observes that ALEC’s model legislation, like Stand Your Ground, doesn’t always directly help corporations, but it helps create “a political climate that will favor even more corporation-friendly legislation in the future.”

In the case of Stand Your Ground, its passage was as much about mobilizing social conservatives to vote for candidates who would support pro-corporate legislation like the privatization of Florida’s prison as it was to enhance the right to carry and use weapons. (The Teamsters killed the prison privatization attempt.)

In Wisconsin, ALEC’s influence in the passage of the infamous 2011 Act 10 is undeniable. Act 10 cut benefits of public service workers and denied them their right to bargain collectively, which advanced ALEC’s goal of weakening the labor movement.

Unlike Stand Your Ground, Act 10 was not a piece of model legislation, but ALEC was heavily involved in its passage. Gov. Scott Walker while a state legislator was an ALEC board member. Both the Wisconsin Senate Leader, Scott Fitzgerald, and the state Assembly Speaker, his brother Jeff Fitzgerald, are ALEC members.

The Center for Media and Democracy reports that while Act 10 wasn’t written by ALEC, it “comports with ALEC’s sweeping anti-union agenda,” which mirrors Corporate America’s anti-union agenda.

ALEC’s corporate benefactors, which number in the hundreds, include Walmart, Koch Industries, AT&T, Verizon, State Farm, and UPS. (You can find a more extensive list at the Center for Democracy and the Media’s ALEC exposed website.).

ALEC’s executive director is Ray Scherbele, who before he assumed the leadership of ALEC, worked as a lobbyist for Verizon. While he was working for Verizon, he represented Verizon on ALEC’s board of directors.

“ALEC is a one-stop shop for corporations  looking to identify friendly state legislators and work with them to get  special-interest legislation introduced,” reads a report by People for the American Way. “It’s win-win for corporations, their  lobbyists, and right-wing legislators. But the big losers are citizens whose  rights and interests are sold off to the highest bidder.”

Texans rally to save our schools

About 4,500 educators, parents, and other public education supporters rallied in Austin on March 24 to save Texas’ public schools, which suffered $5.5 billion in funding cuts last year and are facing more on the horizon.

Speakers at the rally, organized by the Save Our Schools coalition, said that if public school supporters waited until next year to fight impending public education budget cuts, it will be too late. They urged those in the audience to take information they learned at the rally back home and use it to organize support for re-funding public education.

Diane Ravitch, a professor of education history at New York University and a leading advocate for a progressive, national public education policy, sent a message of support to those at the rally. Ravitch, who was attending a similar event in Oregon, said that she grew up in Texas and knew first hand how important good public schools were to the health and well-being of the state’s economy and civil society.

Unfortunately, the de-funding of public schools threatens to undermine not just public education but the whole of society. “Without public education,” Ravitch said. “Our whole society will suffer.”

She said that the people cutting public education budgets are the same ones who want to divert more public funding to privately operated charter schools and privately owned testing companies.

John Folks, superintendent of the Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, gave the state Legislature and Gov. Rick Perry a failing grade for passing a school finance budget that cut $4 billion from the state’s primary source of school funding and another $1.5 billion in grant funding that supports special programs such as dropout prevention and pre-K classes.

Folks said that last year’s budget cuts resulted in 12,000 fewer teachers in the classroom, larger class sizes, the closure of schools, fewer student services such as counselling, and cutbacks in vocational education. He blamed the cuts on the state’s structural deficit–an antiquated tax system that doesn’t produce enough revenue to keep up with Texas’ growing student population.

In 2006, Texas lowered property taxes statewide, Folks said. Lawmakers promised to make up this lost revenue with a business margins tax, but the tax is so full of loopholes that it never generated the promised revenue. Last year, it brought in $5 billion less than anticipated, nearly the entire sum of the school funding cuts. That $5 billion annual shortfall will continue to repeat itself unless the structural deficit is addressed.

He also said that more teacher layoffs and reduced services will take place when school begins next fall unless Gov. Perry and the Legislative Budget Board free up $2 billion from the Rainy Day Fund, the state’s $9 billion plus reserve fund, to make up the anticipated shortfall.

John Kuhn, superintendent of Perrin-Whitt Consolidated Independent School District, located in a rural area about 60 miles northwest of Fort Worth, said that the over use of standardized testing has perverted education, “killing knowledge that is not on the test. It also erodes the autonomy and authority of local school boards.”

Kuhn said that it was a shame that lawmakers could find $500 million to pay a British company called Pearson to produce a new standardized test while at the same time it was cutting education spending by $1,000 per student and that state leaders have chosen to focus education spending solely on improving standardized testing results while ignoring societal factors that lead to poor performance in the classroom–parental unemployment, racial inequality, child homelessness,  poverty, etc.

Those attending the rally were urged to pick up a pamphlet, Building Support for Public Education, and share the information with friends and neighbors. The pamphlet among other things debunks some of misinformation used to justify cuts to education. For example, public education opponents say that half the state’s education budget is wasted on administrative expenses. The fact is that 49 cents of every education dollar funds goes to teachers, 43 cents funds campus expenses such as transportation, utilities, lunches, building maintenance, etc., and only 8 cents funds administration.

Those at the rally were urged to get involved in the upcoming primary elections whether they are Democrats, Republicans, or Independents. “You need to stand up and ask every candidate whether he or she supports Texas public schools or supports cutting their budgets,” said one speaker.

Unions’ day of action kicks off 99 Percent Spring

Carrying a banner reading, “Fight for good jobs, stand up to corporate greed at Verizon,” members of the Communication Workers of America, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, other union members, and other supporters marched across downtown Washington DC to rally in front of Verizon Center’s F Street entrance.

The DC demonstration was one of more than 100 actions that took place in 35 states on March 22 during a Day of Action for a fair contract at Verizon. The Day of Action also kicked off the 99 Percent Spring offensive  to oppose corporate greed and challenge corporate power. Thousands of union workers, social movement activists, members of the faith community, and progressives took part in the March 22 actions.

CWA and IBEW have been negotiating with Verizon for nine months on a new contract for the company’s 45,000 East Coast workers. The company  continues to demand steep concessions from  its union workers that include cuts to their health care benefit, elimination of their pension plan, outsourcing of their jobs, and new work rules that make workers’ jobs less secure.

Meanwhile, Verizon increased CEO Lowell McAdams’ annual compensation from $7.2 million a year to $23 million a year. Over the last four years, compensation packages for Verizon’s top executives totalled $283 million.

At a national CWA union hall meeting held by teleconference, CWA President Larry Cohen told members that Verizon’s greed is emblematic of today’s corporate culture. Jim Weitkamp, CWA District 9 vice-president, reported to the meeting that even though AT&T made $31 billion in profit the last two years, it has joined Verizon’s race to the bottom by demanding that its workers accept cuts to their health care and pension benefits. CWA is currently negotiating a new AT&T contract for West Coast workers. The current contract expires in April.

Cohen said that CWA and IBEW will continue to negotiate with Verizon for a fair contract but that workers can’t fight this greed one contract at a time; instead, we need to build a broad movement that unites union and non-union workers, social justice movements, and progressives in a fight “to reclaim democracy and economic justice.”

The Verizon national Day of Action was the first step toward building this broad movement, which Cohen called the 99 Percent Spring. Cohen said that CWA, other unions, community groups, MoveOn, and other organizations will be holding a series of non-violent, direct actions to expose corporate greed and dramatize how their greed is driving down living standards for all workers.

Greedy corporations have come “to dominate both parties,” Cohen said. “So we’re building a movement in the streets to reclaim America. We’re committed to training 100,000 people in non-violent direct action.”

Cohen said that one-day Spring Training sessions will be held during the week of April 9-15, during which those attending will learn what caused today’s economic disparities, learn how to tell their own stories about these disparities, and learn non-violent, direct action techniques.

He said that CWA has a goal of getting 2,000 members to sign up for Spring Training and urged members attending the union hall meeting to sign up for it. By the end of the meeting, more than 500 had done so.

In the meantime, CWA and IBEW continue to find other ways to pressure Verizon to agree to a fair contract.  CWA and IBEW urged the Federal Communications Commission to take a hard look at a marketing agreement between Verizon and four cable companies.

Verizon wants to buy additional wireless spectrum from the cable companies and in return will allow the cable companies to sell services over its wireless network, a deal that CWA and consumer advocates say will hurt competition in the wireless and cable markets. Union members recently urged Senators to oppose the joint marketing deal.

In New York, CWA is opposing a proposal by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to de-regulate Voice over Internet Protocol, the use of the internet to provide telephone service. According to the CWA, de-regulation would help Verizon create a monopoly with no oversight or consumer protection.

In Maryland, CWA members attended a hearing of the state Senate Finance Committee to oppose a piece of legislation proposed by Verizon that would allow it to sell landline assets without approval from the Public Utilities Commission.

Unions join movement against foreclosures

In San Francisco, members of ILWU Local 91 joined community activists to occupy the home of a union member whose family was evicted after Well Fargo foreclosed on their home. In Detroit, members of the UAW and other unions joined a protest in front of the JP Morgan Chase Detroit headquarters. Protestors delivered a Notice of Default to the bank for its failure to live up to a consent decree it signed last year in which it agreed to stop unjust foreclosures.

By supporting the movement against foreclosures, unions are taking a fundamental value that improved the lives of their members–solidarity– beyond the workplace and extending it into the community, partly out of a commitment to social justice and partly out of the realization that unions can no longer improve members’ lives by confining themselves to narrow on-the-job issues.

Take what’s going on in Detroit. The demonstration at JP Morgan Chase was called to support Alma Counts, an 82 year-old partially paralyzed widow. It was organized by a coalition including People Before Banks, Moratorium Now, Occupy Detroit, Occupy Our Homes, and UAW Local 600.

Ms. Counts and Washington Mutual agreed to a loan modification, which set her monthly payment at $728, which she paid regularly. In 2009, JP Morgan Chase began servicing the loan. According to Vanessa Fluker, Ms. Counts’ attorney, Chase arbitrarily raised her payment to $1,400, which Ms. Counts, who lives on a fixed income, was unable to pay; consequently, the bank foreclosed on her.

“Ms. Counts represents tens of thousands who are in the same predicament,” Fluker said. “You can do everything right. You can fight to keep your home, but it doesn’t matter. . . . This is happening to tens of thousands  of people in the city and in the state.”

These foreclosures are killing our communities, said Bernie Ricke, UAW Local 600 president at the Chase demonstration. “They bring down property values, which erodes the tax base and curtails public services.” It’s vicious cycle that eventually leads to blight and strains the budgets of local governments.

That is what is happening in Detroit today. As the tax base has eroded and revenue slowed to a trickle, city debt has grown, and Detroit’s Mayor Bing and Michigan’s Governor Rick Snyder are on the verge of agreeing to the appointment of Financial Accountability Board with the authority to impose severe austerity measures and unilaterally void union contracts to reduce worker wages and benefits.

In San Francisco, the ILWU has a long history of fighting for social justice outside of the workplace. On March 16, members of Local 91 joined with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) to re-claim the home of Local 91 member Dexter Cato, who had been evicted by Wells Fargo.

Cato was the victim of what ACCE calls the bank’s “dual tracking program.” Cato, the widowed father of four, worked out a loan modification plan with Wells Fargo and began making payments. Despite the modification and the fact that Cato was making payments, the section of the bank that carries out foreclosures had Cato evicted and put the home up for sale.

According to ACCE, the dual track system has resulted in thousands of foreclosures in the Bay Area. “We are demanding that Dexter Cato and families throughout San Francisco get affordable modifications and that all banks apply a widespread moratorium on all foreclosures,” read a statement issued by ACCE on the occupation of the Cato’s home.

Cato’s house is located in Hunters Point, a largely African-American community in San Francisco. Some of Cato’s neighbors are facing eviction. “They’re foreclosing on my home too,” said a neighbor to the San Francisco Bay View. “It’s happening up and down this street. Wells Fargo and the other banks are terrorizing this community.”

“This neighborhood was built with the sweat and blood of Black people, who came here to work in the Hunters Point Shipyard,” said Mesha Monge-Irizarry to Bay View. “Now their descendants are fighting to save their family homes – to keep from being forced out of their own community by these criminal banks. Power to the hood!”

Meanwhile, members of Local 91 signed up to take shifts at Cato’s home to make sure that the foreclosure sale doesn’t take place. On the first day of the occupation, Local 91 members stood on the front porch and led the crowd chanting, “Nationalize the banks!”

Dictatorship of the technocrats in Greece and Detroit

More than 20 years ago, Lucio Magri of the now defunct Communist Party of Italy observed that because of capitalism’s internal logic, which is to expand privilege for the few at the expense of the many, Capital from time to time runs afoul of formal democracy. When this happens Capital’s impulse is to suppress democracy.

Post-industrial Capital’s first choice for doing so, according to Magri,  is neither an authoritarian dictatorship nor fascism; instead, it prefers to endow appointed experts with the authority to supersede elected officials–a dictatorship of the technocrats if you will.  Two examples are now underway on both sides of the Atlantic.

In Greece, the European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund last November demanded and received the resignation of Prime Minister George Papandreou after he suggested that Greeks should vote whether to accept  austerity measures proposed by the three institutions, which have become known as the Troika. The Troika demanded the austerity measures in return for loans to help Greece service its huge debt obligation. Papandreou was replaced by an unelected, MIT-educated banker with a PhD in economics.

Back in the US, Michigan’s governor and Detroit’s mayor are negotiating an agreement designed to deal with the city’s heavy debt load. The agreement, called a consent decree, would result in the appointment of a Financial Advisory Board with the authority to reduce and privatize city services, terminate contracts with public service workers’ unions, and ignore elected officials on the City Council.

The Troika was reluctant to allow a vote on its austerity plan. It would impoverish more Greeks and was opposed by a nine to one margin. The Troika believed that a popular rejection of its plan would lead to a disorderly default on the country’s debt, which would jeopardize the worldwide banking system; consequently, it had Papandreou replaced with Lucas Papademos, who served as Vice-President of the European Central Bank between 2002 and 2010.

Papademos then oversaw the imposition of the country’s second round of austerity measures in two years. Meanwhile, the Troika organized an orderly default that cost private bondholders dearly, but prevented, at least so far, a general fallout.

Meanwhile, the austerity plan for a second time cut pensions, slashed services, reduced pay for government employees, and reduced the minimum wage. Annual economic growth has been reduced to -7 percent and business curtailed so badly that a strong economic recovery that could alleviate the current misery is unlikely.

Like Greece, Detroit, the US city hit hardest by the nation’s de-industrialization policies, is in financial trouble. Only two auto plants remain in the Motor City, and a population that once exceeded a million is now about 700,000. As a result, the city’s tax base and revenue have shrunk leaving the city mired in debt.

Last summer, Mayor Dave Bing insisted that city employee unions agree to concessions to help the city service its debt. The unions were reluctant, but eventually agreed. Michigan’s governor Rick Snyder said that the concessions weren’t enough and prepared to implement Michigan’s Emergency Management Act, which allows the governor to appoint financial managers with broad powers to manage local governments in financial distress.

Last week Michigan’s state treasurer Andy Dillon drafted a consent decree outlining how the Emergency Management Act would be implemented. The draft calls for the appointment of a nine-member Financial Advisory Board and a chief financial officer, a chief operating officer, and a chief human resources officer. The board and the newly appointed officers would manage the city’s day-to-day affairs. The mayor would retain some policy-making functions, but the City Council would be reduced to a rubber stamp.

Negotiations between the mayor and governor over the consent decree have faltered over details, but if an agreement is reached, the first order of business for the appointed advisory panel and the city’s new officers will be to reduce city services and unilaterally break the city’s contracts with its workers’ unions.

Al Garrett, president of AFSCME Council 25, which represents 60,000 city workers in the State of Michigan, said the purpose of the consent decree is to make sure that the city does not default on its loans. “There’s no concern about services, or with the city living up to its contracts,” Garrett said. “It’s about making sure that bond holders are paid.”

The bankers’ coup in Greece will expire in April when new elections are held, but Garrett says that the consent degree contains no time limit for  how long the Financial Advisory Board would run the city. “The only people protected by the consent decree are the Wall Street folks,” Garrett said.

After striking, Phoenix bus drivers vow to continue their “fight for workers’ rights”

Bus drivers and Veolia Transportation late last week settled a week-long strike in Phoenix and neighboring Tempe, Arizona, but acrimony remains between the company and its workers, and the drivers’ union, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1433, has vowed to block company efforts to renew bus service contracts with the two cities, one of which goes up for bid this summer.

The strike is the latest round in an ongoing fight between Veolia, a multinational corporation based in France, and its unionized workforce. The drivers have been negotiating for a new contract for nearly two years, and the company in October 2010 locked out for 11 days 60 vehicle cleaning and maintenance workers who belong to the Teamsters. The Teamsters charged that the company planned to use the lockout to bust its unions, which in addition to the Teamsters and ATU includes the International Union of Operating Engineers, which represents mechanics.

“This is the worst … company I have ever dealt with,” said Michael Cornelius, Local 1433’s financial secretary/treasurer to the Tucson Citizen.  “We’ve negotiated with two other (bus-service) companies this year and had no problems getting a new contract. That should say something about Veolia.”

Veolia operates 50 of the 101 bus routes in the combined Valley Metro region that includes Phoenix and Tempe. The company has contracts with the two cities to provide transportation services. The Tempe contract expires in 2013, the Phoenix contract in 2015.

The 20-month negotiations that led up to the week-long strike were rancorous. During the negotiations, both sides filed unfair labor practices against each other. The National Labor Relations Board dismissed Veolia’s charges, but found evidence that Veolia was negotiating in bad faith to prevent resolution of contract issues. As a result, Veolia is scheduled to appear before an administrative law judge on April 3 to answer charges of unfair labor practices.

During its negotiations with its drivers, Veolia in the fall of 2010 locked out its cleaning and maintenance workers. According to the Teamsters, members of Local 104 showed up for work early one Monday morning in October 2010 at the Valley Metro Transit Authority bus barn only to be escorted off company property by Veolia security personnel.

The Teamsters had been negotiating a new contract with the company and members agreed to a contract extension to keep bus service operational instead of striking. The company chose to lock them out instead. The lockout lasted 11 days. After the lockout ended, the company agreed to continue bargaining. The two sides reached a settlement that included reimbursing the workers for wages lost during the 11-day lockout.

According to the Teamsters, the company threatened workers with outsourcing their jobs if they didn’t accept a new contract based on Veolia’s terms. The Teamsters also said that the company wanted to force a strike in hopes that the drivers would carry out their pledge not to cross the Teamsters’ picket line, which would give the company an excuse to hire replacement workers and bust both unions.

The company appears to have used the drivers’ strike as leverage to extract concessions from the City of Phoenix regarding its contract with Veolia. The contract calls for the company to pay liquidated damages if it fails to meet timeliness standards. During a three-month period July and September 2011, Veolia incurred liquidated damages totalling $380,000.

The Phoenix New Times reports that shortly before the strike ended, the Phoenix City Council voted to restructure the contract and return a total of $2.5 million in liquidated damages already collected and to bolster the drivers’ pension fund by $13.5 million.

According to the drivers, their new contract with Veolia leaves much to be desired. “We’ve been fighting to keep what we have,” Cornelius said to the Tucson Citizen. “Wages were never our issue. It’s a fair contract, but it’s not great.”

Dwayne Hardy, a driver with 12 years experience, told the Citizen that the new contract requires drivers to pay $1,180 a month for dependent health care coverage, an amount he can’t afford even though he is among the highest paid drivers.

When the strike was settled, the union on its website told members, to report to work but added that, “We will continue waging this fight for workers’ rights against foreign corporations.”

NY workers lose pension fight

The New York Legislature early Thursday morning voted to reduce the pension benefit for newly hired state and some local government workers. The pension cuts are part of an austerity package proposed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, to reduce government budget shortfalls.

The new pension plan known as Tier 6  creates a sixth tier of benefit levels for newly hired public service workers.   Tier 6 workers will receive a lower pension, work longer until being eligible for a full retirement benefit, and most will pay a higher contribution rate, some will pay double what current workers pay. Unions estimate that the new legislation reduces pension benefits by 40 percent over the lifetime of a worker’s public service.

Ken Brynien president of the New York State Public Employees Federation (NYPEF) said that his members were “appalled” by the passage of Tier 6 “that will do nothing to help the state or local governments deal with their current budget demands.”

“The state has too few benefits to offer prospective  employees now, with forced furloughs, rampant short-staffing and employee morale  at rock-bottom lows,” Brynien said. “This new pension tier means any new hires the state  attracts must work harder and longer for a retirement that’s significantly less secure than those of their more senior coworkers.”

“This deal is about politicians standing with the 1 percent – the wealthiest New Yorkers – to give them a better break while telling nurses, bus drivers, teachers, secretaries, and laborers to put up and shut up,” said Danny Donohue, president of the Civil Service Employees Association AFSCME Local 100.

Just before the legislature voted for Tier 6, the Committee to Save New York, a group of real estate investors, bankers, hedge fund operators, and other wealthy New Yorkers, launched a $2.5 million ad campaign in support of Tier 6. The ad campaign was full of  hyperbole and misinformation.

If you saw the ads, you might think that the state pension plan, which provides benefits to state workers and local government workers in Upstate New York, was about to run out of money and need a huge government bailout like the banks received in 2008 and 2009.

But the fact is that the pension system, which serves 600,000 New Yorkers, is fully funded, which means that it has cash and assets on hand to pay full benefits for the next 31 years even if it receives no new contributions or investment income.

If you saw the ads, you might think that the cost of funding the pensions is so high that local governments are about to go bankrupt.

But the fact is that while the cost of funding has increased substantially, the high costs are not permanent; they are instead the result of a slow economy and the stock market crash that lowered investment returns, which provide more than 80 percent of the pension plan’s funding.  As Brian Curran of NYPEF told the New York World,”The actuaries for the state pension system, the New York City pension system, the teachers retirement system all say the same thing – these costs will peak out and decline as the economy stabilizes.”

And if you saw the ads, you might think that retirees are receiving sky-high pension payments. But the fact is that the average pension for a retired New York public service worker is about $19,000 a year.

Since the effect of the pension cuts won’t take place for several years, they won’t have any impact on current budget shortfalls.

Unions and community groups have offered an alternative to cutting pensions that will raise revenue immediately–end corporate tax loopholes such as requiring real estate investment partnerships to pay the taxes they owe, reforming the corporate Alternate Minimum Tax, and taxing non-resident hedge fund management fees.

“New York state income taxes have become like Swiss cheese as more and more tax breaks have been added to the tax code in the name of economic development,” said Frank Mauro of the Fiscal Policy Institute. Mauro estimates that closing corporate tax loopholes will generate at least $1 billion annually.

For now though, Gov. Cuomo and the legislature have shifted the burden of closing state and local budget gaps to newly hired public service workers.

“Closing tax loopholes would have provided immediate relief to cities and communities in New York,” Donohue said. “Instead the governor and the legislature chose to stick it once again to working families.”

Woman driver takes a rest stop, gets fired by trucking company

After leaving the Port of Los Angeles with a full load, Xiomara Perez-Barragan parked her short-haul truck at a McDonald’s to use the restroom and grab a quick bite to eat. She came back to her truck about ten minutes later and delivered her load on time. Three days later her employer, Toll Group, fired her for her rest stop. Stopping for rest breaks is a common practice among truckers, but the company told her that such stops are against company policy.

“How can they fire someone for using the restroom?” asked Perez-Barragan to La Opinion, a Latino community newspaper.

Perez-Barragan and her fellow workers think that Toll Group, a multi-billion dollar international transportation company based in Australia, fired her not so much for taking a rest break but for her union organizing activity.

She has been an outspoken critic of the company’s treatment of its drivers, which she and others describe as inhumane. For example, the company prohibits drivers from using the clean, sanitary restrooms at its offices. Instead, it requires them to use ill-maintained portable toilets in the port’s parking area. Drivers also complain of low pay and inadequate and expensive health care coverage.

To address these problems, Perez-Barragan and other Toll drivers are working with the Teamsters to organize a union. But Toll, whose trucks ferry goods from the port to warehouses of prominent US brands such as Guess?, Ralph Lauren, Polo, and others, has resisted their efforts.

“I don’t think we’re asked for anything extraordinary,” she said. “Safe, sanitary facilities to wash our hands and use the bathroom has even been too much for management to provide us. If we had our collective bargaining rights we could also negotiate fairer schedules, so we could catch our children’s soccer game or attend a parent-teacher conference. We are professionals who work so hard. We make them rich. We just want a shot at a middle-class paycheck.”

Perez-Barragan’s firing isn’t the first incident that Toll drivers and the Teamsters say are aimed at intimidating union supporters. In October, 26 Toll drivers were fired after union activists came to work wearing Teamster t-shirts and presented a petition signed by 75 drivers asking that they be allowed to use the company’s office restrooms. The Teamsters subsequently filed an unfair labor practice complaint charge against Toll. Ten of the 26 have subsequently been rehired.

Things heated up in January after the workers filed a petition for a union representation election with National Labor Relations Board. The petition was signed by 80 percent of the drivers. Since then Toll has been holding a series of mandatory meetings during which company representatives explain to drivers why they don’t need a union.

The Teamsters say that some of the information presented to drivers are “outright lies” and that the meetings are an attempt to intimidate workers and cut into the overwhelming support for the union among drivers. At one of the February meetings, Andrew Ehell, Toll’s General Manager for Group Corporate Affairs, flew in from Australia and along with Toll’s head of US operations spoke to workers.

“We couldn’t believe it,” said Tomas Pena, a Toll driver with eight years on the job. “We’ve unfortunately become accustomed to Toll’s West Coast management harassing us, but now a top executive flew all the way in from Australia to push us around too.”

The Teamsters say that Perez-Barragan’s “cruel termination” was just another example of Toll’s anti-union campaign. Six days after her firing, male co-workers delivered a letter to Toll’s Southern California management demanding that she be rehired. The workers also filed an unfair labor practices charge against the company over her firing.

The Los Angeles Toll drivers have received international support especially from their counterparts in Australia, where Toll bargains with its workers’ union, Australia’s Transport Workers Union. TWU recently issued a statement condemning Toll and praising Perez-Barragan’s courage and leadership.

“The behavior by Toll is truly shocking,” said Michael Aird of the TWU. “We know Xiomara was sacked for wanting a union, and any worker that must endure management who fires a woman for needing to make a pit stop clearly needs one.”

Austin rally tells governor, “don’t mess with Texas women’s health”

The focus of the war on women shifted to Texas today as Gov. Rick Perry prepares to carry out his plan to terminate the Women’s Health Program, which provides health services including, Pap smears, breast exams, and contraception to 130,000 low-income, working class women. On the eve of the program’s proposed demise, more than 800 people rallied in Austin urging the governor to back off from his plan.

Protestors carried signs saying, “Don’t Mess with Texas Women” and “No te metas con las mujeres de Tejas” (the Spanish translation).  The rally was organized by Planned Parenthood and Don’t Mess with Texas Women. It was one in a series of rallies that have taken place across the state.

Speakers told the audience about the life-saving services that the Women Health Program provides. Delia Henry, a young woman enrolled in the program, told the audience how a wellness check she received detected high blood sugar, and as a result, she is now being treated for diabetes. She also said that a close friend had cancer cells detected and subsequently had the cancer cells removed.

Jalisa McCoy, who lives in South Texas, one of the poorest regions in the nation, said that many women in the region can’t afford health insurance and rely on services provided by the Women’s Health Program. Unfortunately, the program’s termination has or will cause the closure of four Planned Parenthood clinics in the region leaving 15,000 women without access to health care.

State Representative Dawnna Dukes said that the state’s Legislative Budget Board estimates that the Women’s Health Program saves the state $41 million a year making it one of the state’s most cost-effective health programs and should be expanded.

But the program is being shut down for political reasons. Last year, anti-abortion lawmakers and the governor cut off funding to Planned Parenthood, which operates women’s health care clinics that among other things provide Women’s Health Program services. The clinics mainly serve rural Texas and minority communities. These clinics are separate from  and independent of Planned Parent’s abortion services, which receive no state funding.

The decision to defund Planned Parenthood affects the whole Women’s Health Program, which is a part of Medicaid and receives 90 percent of its funding from the federal government. The federal government requires that women participating in the program have the freedom to choose their health care provider as long as the provider is qualified and willing to participate in the program.

About 40 percent of the women participating in the program have chosen Planned Parenthood clinics as their provider. By defunding Planned Parenthood, Gov. Perry and the Legislature have denied them their freedom. As a result, the state is no longer eligible to receive the federal funding for the program, which means that it can no longer operate.

Speakers at the Austin rally attacked Gov. Perry and anti-abortion lawmakers for playing politics with women’s health. McCoy called the state’s decision to defund the program a “political vendetta” based on “ideology (that) has no place in my health or that of 130,000 women.”

Perla Cavazos, a Planned Parenthood board member, said that by terminating the Women’s Health Program, Gov. Perry has chosen politics over women. “Women don’t come to Planned Parenthood to make a political statement,” she said. “They come because they need health care.”

Other speakers talked about the impact that the demise of the Women’s Health Program will have of the state of women’s health in Texas, where one in five people don’t have health insurance.

“The infrastructure of preventative health care is about to be demolished,” said Carol Belver of Community Action of Central Texas.” “Texans need more access to health care, not less.”

Gov. Perry has said he will try to keep services provided by the Women’s Health Program available solely through state funding. But in a state that recently cut its budget by about $15 billion, it’s difficult to see where this funding will come from.

Furthermore, by eliminating Planned Parenthood from participating, the state has significantly reduced its capacity for providing Women’s Health Program services.

Program supporters in a last-ditch effort will present a petition signed by 95,000 Texans today to the governor telling him to stop messing with the health of Texas women.

Florida lawmakers considering legislation to make it more difficult to punish wage theft

A coalition of labor rights groups stepped up its efforts to block proposed legislation that will make it more difficult to punish wage theft in Florida. After picketing a Home Deport near Fort Lauderdale, members of the Florida Wage Theft Task Force said that they will be presenting a petition with more than 6,000 signatures to Macy’s headquarters in Miami urging the giant retailer to withdraw its support for the HB 609.

“Simply said, this legislation will only make it easier for unscrupulous employers to steal wages, said Jeanette Smith of South Florida Interfaith Worker Justice. “This is not okay; this is not who we are as a nation nor as a state. It’s un-American. Our country was founded under the value that if you work hard, you will be rewarded with your earned salaries. With this bill, we are allowing bad employers to cheat hard-working  Floridians and to harm honest businesses in the process.”

HB 609, which passed the Florida House of Representatives in February, would nullify a Miami-Dade County ordinance against wage theft, prevent other local governments from taking similar action, and create a statewide wage theft process that lacks a strong penalty component and requires workers to notify their employers in writing before filing a wage theft complaint.

After the hard work of the wage theft coalition, Miami-Dade County passed its ground-breaking wage theft ordinance in 2010. The ordinance includes a provision for triple damages if an employer is found guilty of wage theft. Since the ordinance passed, 313 workers have used the ordinance to recover stolen wages totaling $400,000.

Wage theft comes in many forms: failure to pay the minimum wage and/or overtime, misclassifying workers as contractors, falsifying pay and/or time records, and outright non-payment of wages.

According to the Research Institute on Social and Economic Policy, the Miami-Dade County ordinance is needed because the state does little to prosecute wage theft and the federal government’s wage theft agency is under staffed and doesn’t have the resources to deal with the huge volume of wage theft in Florida.

A report issued by the institute in January estimates that $60 million to $90 million a year is stolen from workers in Florida. The report says that in Florida wage theft ” is a widespread problem across a broad spectrum of industries” The highest incidence of wage theft occur in the tourism, retail, and construction industries.

The report also finds that “in spite of ample evidence of widespread wage theft among low-income workers, as of December 2011, the Florida attorney general had not brought one single civil action to enforce the state’s minimum wage law enacted in 2004.”

HB 609 and its Senate companion SB 862 was introduced in the Florida House by Rep Tom Goodson at the request of the Florida Retail Federation. The federation says that bill “provides a statewide solution to address the issue of protecting employee wages.”

But the statewide solution, which would create a civil process for recovering stolen wages, will discourage employees from taking action to recover stolen wages because it requires workers before taking any action to notify their employer in writing about the amount stolen and the date and time when the alleged theft occurred. Employers would then have 15 days to act on the charges.

The Wage Theft Task Force includes South Florida Interfaith Worker Justice, the Florida Immigration Coalition, We Count, the Research Institute of Economic Policy, and the Florida AFL-CIO.

South African unions strike against precarious labor and toll roads

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) cheered the success of  Wednesday’s general strike against precarious labor and privatized toll roads. The strike shut down key businesses and disrupted transportation throughout the country. In all, COSATU reported rallies and marches in 32 different cities and towns in the country.

“The protest was a brilliant success and far exceeded our estimates,” said COSATU spokesperson Patrick Craven. “It showed the overwhelming support for the demands that we are making.”

COSATU is demanding that the government suspend its plan to make certain highways in the province of Gauteng privately operated toll roads and that it end the practice of labor brokering. Much of the South African workforce now work for labor brokers, who provide temporary workers to companies. These precarious jobs are low paying, lack security, and offer few if any benefits. South Africa’s growing precarious workforce makes it difficult to reduce poverty and has condemned many to a life on the margins of society.

The biggest demonstration took place in Johannesburg. Estimates of the demonstration vary from as low as 30,000 to as high as 100,000.  Demonstrators marched to the province’s capital and presented a memorandum listing their demands to a representative of Gauteng province’s Premier Nomvula Mokoanyane.

COSATU General Secretary Zwelinzimi Vavi told the Johannesburg rally that he expected a response from the government within seven days and raised the possibility of another general strike if the government’s response is not satisfactory.

Vavi also criticized government officials of the African National Congress for forgetting their roots. “Today we are here to remind some fellows where we are coming from,” Vavi said. “They don’t know anymore the power of the working class.”

Vavi said that COSATU called the general strike to focus attention on inequality and poverty in South Africa and said that the government’s proposal to turn about 200 kilometers of public roads into privately operated toll roads on April 30  is one example of how current government policies are hurting the poor and the working class.

The new toll roads will, he said, will cause workers and the poor to be further “excluded” from society because only those who can afford to use them will do so.  Those excluded from the roads “are already excluded from receiving quality education and health care,” he said.  Vavi characterized the toll roads as a new form of apartheid that separates people on the basis of class rather than race. “We defeated apartheid … the government has now introduced a new apartheid, an economic apartheid,” Vavi said.

Vavi promised to close down the toll roads through mass demonstrations if the government went ahead with its plan to begin tolling on April 30.

Vavi was equally adamant about COSATU’s demand to end labor brokering in the country. “This is a class battle. This is a class war,” he said. “Labor brokers do not create jobs–they destroy the agenda for decent work. The people working for labor brokers do not enjoy the same wages and benefits as other workers in the industry.”

Vavi pointed out that more and more businesses are using the precarious workforce provided by labor brokers, singling out two of the country’s largest retailers.  Two-thirds of the workers hired by Shoprite Checkers, a supermarket chain that caters to upper income shoppers, are provided by labor brokers as are 70 percent of the workers, who work for Woolworth’s, one of South Africa’s  largest retail chains.

The government is proposing to regulate labor brokers, but COSATU leaders said that the practice must be abolished. In Durban, where another general strike rally took place, COSATU President S’dumo Diamini told demonstrators, “We will never understand the regulation of labor brokers. We want a total ban.”

In Cape Town, Patricia Dyata of Sikhula Sonke, a women-led farmworkers union, said that farmworkers provided by labor brokers make about 355 rands a week (about US$47). “They can’t feed their children or send them to school,” Dyata said. To make matters worse, the labor brokers charge the workers a fee and deduct it from their pay.

Labor brokering also makes it harder for workers to exercise their collective power to improve wages and conditions. “Today we are marching because labor broking undermines the right to collectively organize, the right to be a member of a trade union, and the right to strike,” said Doron Issacs, coordinator Equal Education, an education advocacy group, to general strike supporters in Durban.

Back in Johannesburg, Vavi told demonstrators, “The system of labor brokering is equal to human trafficking. You cannot sell labor that is not yours.”

East, West Coast carwash workers organize, fight for respect

The CLEAN Carwash Campaign announced that two more Los Angeles carwashes have signed union contracts making them the second and third businesses in the area to become union carwashes. Meanwhile in New York City, members of  Wash New York, a carwash organizing coalition, on Tuesday released a report documenting the unjust working conditions at the city’s carwashes and announced a union organizing campaign among fellow carwash workers.

In Los Angeles , carwash workers who are members of United Steelworkers Local 675, signed contracts with Vermont Car Wash and Navas Car Wash. The new contracts include a 2 percent pay raise with a channel opened for negotiating further pay raises, an arbitration process for settling grievances, protections against unfair termination, and a procedure to ensure fair work scheduling.

The  CLEAN Carwash Campaign is a joint effort of the Community, Labor, and Environmental Action Network and the United Steelworkers.

Speaking at a media conference announcing the new contracts, Manuel Martinez, a Vermont Car Wash worker called the new contracts a “triumph” and urged other carwash workers to join the union. Speaking in Spanish, Martinez said, “We were treated badly,” but we stood up and won, you can do the same.

In New York, a similar campaign has just gotten off the ground. On Tuesday at a rally and news conference, Wash New York  released a report on the results of survey that it conducted among carwash workers. The report found that 66 percent of those surveyed were at times paid less than the minimum wage, 70 percent were on the job for at least 60 hours a week, and 75 percent received no overtime after working more than 40 hours a week.

“Besides receiving chronically low pay, the largely immigrant work force staffing New York City’s car washes toil away on a job that subjects employees to extreme working conditions and little control over their own lives,” reads the report entitled Carwash Workers Face Low Pay, Offensive Conditions, and Poor Treatment.

The New York Times reports that Wash New York’s findings are similar to those of a 2008 investigation conducted by the State of New York. The investigation of 84 New York City car washes found a total of $6.5 million in under payments to 1,380 workers resulting from violations of minimum wage and overtime laws. “The state labor commissioner at the time, M. Patricia Smith, called the industry ‘a disgrace’ and vowed to ‘change the culture’ of it,” reports the Times.

“Washing cars, the boss makes us work long hours, from 7 in the morning until 7 o’clock at night, for $5.50 an hour plus tips,” said David de la Cruz Pérez, a worker at Sutphin Boulevard Car Wash during the rally. “They yell at us, they disrespect us, and they treat us as if we were not even human beings. Now we know what our rights are and we want to be respected. We have to be united and put a stop to these abuses and recuperate our dignity.”

Wash New York is a coalition of Make the Road New York, an immigrant rights group, New York Communities for Change, a social and economic justice community organization, and the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU).

“The RWDSU is proud to support this campaign.” said Stuart Applebaum, president of RWDSU. “And we are proud to lead the fight to bring a union voice to these workers. We have long fought to improve the lives of immigrant workers and raise standards in low-wage industries like poultry, food-processing, and retail where many immigrants are employed.”

Wash New York has been training carwash workers to be on-the-job union organizers, who can tell other workers about their rights and explain how a union can improve their working conditions and end the wage theft that most endure.

“We’re ready to fight for our rights and have a dignified place to work and not be abused like we are today,” said Adan Nicolas, a carwash worker and newly trained organizer to the New York Times.

Students, teachers fight California higher education cut backs.

A series of actions aimed at stopping proposed budget cuts to higher education in California, culminated Monday in Sacramento, the state’s capital, with a huge rally in front of the statehouse, a massive grassroots lobbying effort, and a sit-in and people’s assembly in the Capitol itself. The protestors supported a Millionaire’s Tax that if enacted would generate an estimated $300 million to $500 million for higher education funding. They also wanted a more democratic approach to administering public universities that over the last 30 years have been run more and more like corporations.

The demonstration was supported by Students for Quality Education, Occupy Education, the California Faculty Association, and the California Federation of Teachers.

“Thousands of students, workers, faculty, and advocates stood together (Monday) to demand that the 1 percent pay its share to fund education,” said Charlie Eaton, an organizer with ReFund California, a community organization fighting to reverse state budget cuts that have taken a severe toll on education and health and social services. “After experiencing the highest tuition hikes in the country, students came to Sacramento to tell Gov. (Jerry) Brown, ‘enough is enough’.”

Over the last five years tuition at California’s public universities has doubled while student aid has declined. The San Jose Mercury reports that tuition at the state’s public universities is so high that it would be cheaper for a middle-class California family to send their children to an Ivy League college than to a state university.

Tuition has increased because state budget cuts to higher education have been relentless. Since the 2007-2008 school year, state funding for California’s public universities has declined by 20 percent. In the new budget, Gov. Brown is proposing $1.4 billion in budget cuts. The state currently spends nearly twice as much on prisons as it does on higher education.

The budget cuts are shifting more of the costs of higher education onto students and their families, and at the same time are diminishing the quality of the education. There are fewer classes, overcrowding in classes is more common, and students are finding it harder to enroll in courses they need to graduate, which in some cases delays their graduation.

While students are feeling the pain of budget cuts and higher tuition, administrators at the very highest levels haven’t suffered much. Last summer, a day after the California State Univerity Board of Regents announced a 12 percent tutition increase, it hired a new president at San Diego State and agreed to pay him $400,000 a year, $100,000 more than his predecessor, plus free housing.

The cuts are the result of declining state revenues, which is one reason that demonstrators back a proposed Millionaires Tax, which supporters are trying to get on a referendum ballot for next November. According to the California Federation of Teachers, the Millionaire Tax if adopted would increase taxes on income more than $1 million by 3 percent and for income more than $2 million by another 2 percent. Estimates are that the Millionaire Tax would raise $6 billion, money that could be used for education and health and social services.

Support for the Millionaires Tax was at the top of a list of demands formulated by demonstrators after they marched into the Capitol and set up a people’s assembly inside. They also supported full funding for higher education, an end to tutition hikes, and democratization of California’s public universities and their boards of regents.

“I absolutely believe that the Cal State system is becoming too corpratized,” said Student for Quality Education member Carie Rael to her school’s newspaper, the University of California at Fullerton Daily Titan. “It has been happening since the 1980s with the rise of administrative power and the lessening of full-time faculty. . . . Administrators are looking at (education) more like a corporate model.”

To demonstrate their anger at this  shift to a corporate model, higher tuition, and the declining quality of public higher education, some of those at the people’s assembly decided to occupy the Capitol and began a sit-in. About 70 were forcibly removed and arrested by police early in the evening as other demonstrators left to catch buses back to their campuses.

As the occupiers waited to be arrested, they chanted, “They say cut back, we say fight back.”

Warehouse workers score huge victory; systemic abuses still persist

Warehouse Workers United recently announced that workers at a Walmart distribution center in Southern California won a “huge victory” against the warehouse operator and its staffing agencies.

“After weeks of legal wrangling and uncertainty. . . , Schneider Logistics agreed to comply with the court’s order and keep workers on a full-time basis converting them to hourly pay,” said Gloria Palma of Warehouse Workers United. Palma also said that the workers would be eligible for benefits and that this victory “will have national implications for workers’ rights.”

Last fall, workers at a Walmart distribution center in Mira Loma, California, located near Los Angeles in a region called the Inland Empire, sued Schneider, which operates the distribution center, and its staffing subcontractors charging them with wage theft. The suit alleged that the Walmart contractors paid workers on a piece-rate system instead of an hourly wage and that because of the piece-rate system, worker pay sometimes was below the minimum wage. Workers also did not receive overtime pay.

In January, Schneider told warehouse workers who filed the wage-theft suit and others that by the end of February, they would no longer have jobs.

The workers and Warehouse Workers United went to court alleging that the firings were retaliation for the wage theft suits. A judge agreed and ordered Schneider to retain the fired workers. Subsequently, Schneider said that it would convert the workers’ pay rate to an hourly wage.

In a related development, Lilly Fowler of Fair Warning, writes that the abuses at Walmart’s Mira Loma warehouse are widespread and systemic throughout the Inland Empire. She reports that a crew leader at the Mira Loma warehouse said that he was told to falsify pay records to make it appear that piece-rate wages were equal to or above the minimum wage.

Warehouse workers in Chicago would likely agree that the abuses described by Fowler aren’t limited to the Inland Empire. Workers at a Walmart distribution near Chicago operated by Schneider Logistics also filed wage theft charges against Schneider and two of its staffing subcontractors Eclipse Advantage and Midwest Temp Corporation.

Like their counterparts in California, the Chicago workers were paid on a piece rate system rather than an hourly wage. Their suit alleges that their pay sometimes was below the minimum wage and that they did not receive overtime pay. Like the California workers, the Chicago workers were fired after filing their suit.

“The unjust firings occurred on December 29,” said a statement by Warehouse Workers for Justice, which is helping warehouse workers in the Chicago area to organize. “On that day, after they worked a full shift at the massive Walmart warehouse in Elwood, Illinois, 65 workers were informed they would lose their jobs immediately. After the workers had sued to recover stolen wages, Walmart’s warehouse operator Schneider Logistics cancelled the contract with Eclipse Staffing, the temp agency that directly employed the workers.”

Since then, they’ve been fighting to get back their jobs. Two weeks ago they were joined by community activists from several Chicago neighborhood groups at a rally to demand that Walmart adhere to its labor policies regarding its contractors and force the contractors to return the fired workers to their jobs.

“Walmart says in its policies (that) their contractors and suppliers must ‘compensate workers with wages, overtime premiums and benefits that meet or exceed legal standards,'” said Leticia Rodriguez, a former worker at the Walmart Elwood warehouse. “Yet when we sued Eclipse for wage theft, we were fired. We want Walmart to keep their word and make this right.”

“Now that Walmart has moved into our neighborhood, we must demand they follow their own ethical standards policies,” said Elce Redmon of the South Austin Coalition and Chicago Neighborhoods First. “If Walmart wants to be part of Chicago, then Walmart must ensure workers are paid what they are owed and that no retaliation takes place.”

So far, Walmart has not taken any action to reinstate the workers.

Who benefits from standardized testing?

Carl Webb provided the following information about a brown bag seminar on standardized testing at UT Austin on Thursday, May 8. The seminar’s presentation will take place twice, first at noon and then at 5:00. Here’s the information.

The Texas Center for Educational Policy (TCEP) will host a brown bag seminar entitled Exploring Texas’ High-Stakes Testing System: A Focus on STAAR. Dr. Angela Valenzuela and Patricia Lopez will examine the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) system and changes to high school graduation requirements and the state’s construction of the factors that label students as “college ready.” The presentation will highlight the politics of Texas-style accountability — who benefits and the projected consequences for students, their families, and community schools.

Dr. Valenzuela, a professor in Educational Administration and Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Texas, directs TCEP. Ms. Lopez, a doctoral candidate in Educational Policy and Planning with a portfolio in Mexican American Studies, is a research associate for TCEP.

Location: Room 238, Sanchez Building, University of Texas at Austin

http://www.utexas.edu/maps/main/buildings/szb.html http://texasedequity.blogspot.com/2012/03/exporing-texas-high-stakes-testing.html

Austin rally against standardized testing part of a growing movement for true education reform

In Austin, a spirited group of people on Friday joined a growing movement across the country to protest the dominant role that standardized testing is playing the country’s K-12 public education system. The protest, which began with a rally in front of the Texas state capital and after a short march ended at the Texas Education Agency building, was organized by Occupy Austin and supported by the local teachers’ union Education Austin and a number of education-oriented community groups. It included teachers, students, parents, and Occupy activists, some of whom are students, teachers, and/or parents.

Like other states, public education in Texas has narrowed the focus of its public education curriculum. Instead of providing a broad education that expands students’ horizons, encourages their curiosity and creativity, and eventually provides them with the intellectual tools that enable critical thinking, Texas public schools have become factories for teaching test-taking skills and enriching corporations that take advantage of new markets created by so-called education reformers.

“The problem with teaching to the tests,” said a young female teacher at Friday’s rally. “Is that (doing so) doesn’t encourage critical thinking. All teaching to the test does is show students how to fill in bubbles on a test sheet. It’s a human right to have free and appropriate education in which (children) have the ability to explore, to teach themselves, and to actually learn.”

She also criticized the way that the test taking culture that dominates public education has enriched a few private corporations at the expense of real education. “The State of Texas has a $500 million contract with Pearson, a London-based education company, to provide the state’s standardized tests,” she said. “If students fail the test, then they take a remedial course provided by Pearson, and if they fail the test again and can’t graduate from high school, then they can take the GED test, which is also provided by Pearson.”

Friday’s demonstration was not an isolated incident. More and more parents, educators, and students are becoming frustrated with standardized testing and business-backed education reforms that feature the greater use of standardized testing, more charter schools, and attacks on teachers.

In January, the Sacramento teachers union organized a gathering of more than 3,500 people from across the state to hear speakers who are looking for a new, more effective way of improving California’s public schools; one that limits the use of standardized tests, rejects the privatization of public education, and sees educators as partners in the movement for better public education rather than scapegoats.

Among the speakers at the event was the state’s education commissioner Tom Torlakson, who said that over testing distorts public education. According to Diane Ravitch, a professor of education history at New York University and a leading advocate for true education reform, Torlakson and California Governor Jerry Brown are trying to reverse the role that standardized testing is playing in California’s public schools.

Another speaker was Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University. Darling-Hammond told the Sacramento gathering that real education reform depends on taking a broad approach that takes into consideration the social background where students come from. She pointed to Finland as a country that has taken education reform seriously.

“All children (in Finland) have housing and health care and pre-school. All go to schools that are well-resourced, with beautiful libraries. No children in Finland take external standardized tests,” Darling-Hammond said. “In Finland, they don’t allow their children to live in poverty.”

Ravitch, author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Undermine Education, also spoke at the gathering. Speaking of the advocates of standardized testing, Ravitch said that “they want to turn teachers into testing technicians.”

In a recent opinion column that appeared in the San Antonio Express, Ravitch said that none of the policies advocated by so-called school reformers, whether they be the increased use of standardized testing or more privately operated charter schools have any consistent body of evidence showing that they really improve education.

“The achievement gap begins before the first day of school,” Ravitch writes. “If we mean to provide  equality of educational opportunity, we must level the playing field before the  start of formal schooling. Otherwise, we’ll just be playing an eternal game of  catch-up — and that’s a game we cannot win.”

Workers resist AMR’s attempt to use bankruptcy as excuse for gutting union contracts

American Airlines workers facing the loss of their jobs and benefits on Wednesday set up informational picket lines at terminals at 13 US airports including Los Angeles, Dallas-Fort Worth, Tulsa, and Miami. American’s parent company AMR in January filed for bankruptcy protection in order to break its contracts with unions representing American workers.

In February, American submitted a proposal to the bankruptcy court that would allow it to lay off 13,000 workers, eliminate workers’ pension plans, and drastically reduce health care benefits. The company also wants to outsource much of its airplane maintenance work.

“I believe American has the best safety record in the industry because we are the last carrier to do our maintenance in-house,” said Steve Marr, vice-president of Transport Workers Union Local 502 to the Los Angeles Daily News at Wednesday’s demonstration at the Los Angeles International Airport.

TWU represents American mechanics and ground crew. About 9,000 TWU members could lose their jobs if the court approves the company’s plan for emerging from bankruptcy.

To protect workers’ interests, TWU and other unions have been actively involved in the bankruptcy proceedings and have been negotiating with American to revise what TWU calls the company’s draconian proposals to lay off workers and reduce their benefits.

In a related development, the head of a federal agency that guarantees private pensions said that American needs to reconsider its proposal to eliminate employee pensions.

Unions propose early out program

Two weeks ago TWU made a counter offer to American’s draconian proposal. Included in the counter offer was a proposal for an “early out” program that would allow workers who meet certain qualifications to separate voluntarily, receive a lump sum payment, and retain their health care benefit.

The proposal was similar to one adopted by United Airlines when it went through bankruptcy proceedings. The United early out lump sum payment was $75,000.

The Association of Professional Flight Attendants also presented an early out proposal that would have allowed flight attendants with 15 years of service to voluntarily separate with a lump sum payment equal to one year’s wages and continuation of health care coverage.

Last Friday, the company rejected both proposals. In response, TWU said that it wouldn’t give up the fight for an early out provision. “An early out program is essential for this reorganization and as such your TWU bargaining team will be pushing the matter throughout the negotiations,” read a recent TWU message to members.

The early out proposal is just one of a number of counter proposals made by TWU that American is still considering.

No need to terminate pensions

News about American’s proposal to eliminate worker pensions was a little more hopeful. Josh Gotbaum, director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, a federal agency that guarantees private pensions, said that American should consider alternatives to eliminating its four traditional pension plans.

“I think that (AMR CEO) Tom Horton has alternatives,” Gotbaum told the Chicago Tribune. “We think that from a menu of things, American can do . . . you probably don’t need to terminate your pension.”

Gotbaum said that in the past when the airline industry as a whole was losing money, he supported allowing bankrupt airlines to shed pensions, but this time, it’s different. Not only are some airlines making money, American has more than $4 billion in cash on hand.

Recent reports suggest that American’s financial problems may not be as dire as stated in its bankruptcy filing. The Associated Press reports that much of the $1.1 billion that American said it lost in the quarter before its bankruptcy filing was the result of depreciation on its aging air fleet and other assets.

Furthermore, the Fort Worth Star Telegram reports that AMR increased its cash on hand in January by $331 million and that while American reported an operating loss in January, the loss was primarily due to expenses associated with its bankruptcy filing such as fees for attorneys and financial consultants.

Even though American’s financial situation doesn’t appear to support its request to eliminate pensions, the company seems committed to doing so. The Association of Professional Flight Attendants recently reported that AMR has hired expensive lobbyists to convince Congress to support its effort to shed pensions. APFA is asking members to contact Congress members and urge them to oppose AMR’s end run around Director Gotbaum.

Non-union workers seek representation

In a related bankruptcy development, CWA announced that it helped non-union passenger agents at American form an ad-hoc committee to represent them in the bankruptcy proceedings.

“CWA helped airport, cargo, and reservation agents create the ad hoc committee so they would have legal standing as the airline goes through bankruptcy reorganization,” read a statement by CWA.

American’s passenger service agents have been trying to form a union, and in December, CWA filed a union election request with National Mediation Board.