Activists Plan Bus Trip to Labor Notes Conference

Madison union members are expected to join hundreds of labor activists who will come together in Dearborn, Michigan, April 23-25, at the 2010 Labor Notes Conference to strategize, learn new tactics, and come back to their unions and communities stronger and bolder.

With a theme Organizing a Rank-and-File Recovery, this year’s conference aims to help workers and their unions negotiate a tough economy and unprecedented rollbacks on wages and benefits. Workers today are in the fight of their lives for pensions, affordable healthcare, and the right to organize for a voice at work.

The Labor Notes conference is a unique opportunity to meet activists from other cities, unions, and industries – and workers from abroad. The 3-day conference will offer more than 50 workshops, from nitty-gritty skills-building workshops to sessions tackling strategic debates for the labor movement.

Conference Details
Registration fee for the conference is $85 for those who register before February 19 and $115 thereafter. Nightly room rates at the Dearborn Hyatt Regency hotel are $115 for a single/double. For more information or online registration visit Labor Notes online at: www.LaborNotes.org

Take the Bus from Madison
Traveling by bus is a safe and convenient alternative to costly mileage reimbursements or airfare. A bus will depart from the Madison Labor Temple early Friday morning, April 23, and return late on Sunday, April 25. The expected round trip cost is $75 per person. For more information click here.

Obama’s 1st Year Not Change He Promised

By Jim Cavanaugh, SCFL President | A year ago a new President, having been elected with a mandate-sized majority, took office with his party holding solid majorities in both houses of Congress. A year later it is fair to ask how this new government is doing.

Barack Obama and his party took over the government with a huge mess to clean up and an ambitious agenda. The country was fighting wars on two fronts and back home the economy had collapsed. The voters gave them control of the government in order to fix those things, but also to finally fix a broken health care system and to address a myriad of problems which had been exacerbated by the government-for-the-rich previous administration. Read more ...

Trumka Warns Congress: Address Workers’ Issues

On January 11, newly-elected AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka gave a surprisingly frank assessment of the state of working America during the first year of the Obama administration. Trumka’s talk before the National Press Club and televised on C-SPAN, which takes up the better part of this issue of Union Labor News, provides important indicators of where the labor movement stands today – and the urgent need for Congress to act in all of our interests. Read Trumka's speech here.

SCFL Exec. Board Represents All Sectors of Labor

Recent elections for the South Central Federation of Labor’s Executive Board offered Union Labor News an opportunity to introduce the Labor Council’s leaders and their diverse union backgrounds.

SCFL’s Board provides guidance and oversight for the coordinating arm of the local labor movement that brings union members together around political and legislative action, labor education and community service, and when needed –solidarity support for unions during contract struggles and organizing drives.

Many on the SCFL Board are long-term, experienced leaders. Together they represented a variety of unions in the public sector (teachers, city, county and state workers); and in the private sector, they represent workers in service occupations and industries like manufacturing and the construction trades. In recent years representation on the Board also includes a wider geographic area. Read more ...

Union Braces for Sale of Jefferson County Home

Workers at Jefferson’s Countryside Home are bracing for sale of the 120-bed skilled care facility to a for-profit corporation – a painful and probably ill-considered move to fill the County’s budget deficit.

AFSCME Council 40 is demanding that Jefferson County administrators open up the process for sale of the home to more scrutiny and transparency. Potential buyers need to answer important questions about maintaining quality care for Countryside’s residents – and the wages and benefits of workers, says the union. Read more ...

Here’s a Tax Cut for The Working Class!

Do You Qualify for Income Tax Credits? Earned Income Credit is a special tax benefit for working people who earn low or moderate incomes. The purpose of the credit is to reduce the tax burden on these workers and, in effect, supplement wages.

This year the EIC is worth more than ever – over $5,657 for some families. Many families also may qualify for the Child Tax Credit, worth up to $1,000 for each child. Tax credits for educational and job training expenses are also available. Read more ...

From past issues of Union Labor News ...

Doyle Signs Nation’s First Labor History Law

Over fifty union leaders and activists applauded at the State Capitol, December 10, as Governor Jim Doyle signed a bill into law requiring the teaching of labor history in our schools.  The new law requires that the Superintendent of Public Instruction include the history of organized labor and collective bargaining in the state’s standards for public schools in Wisconsin. 

“Up until now, the key role that America’s labor unions played in building our country was the greatest story never told in history textbooks,” said Phil Neuenfeldt, secretary-treasurer of the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO. “This law corrects that glaring omission. Wisconsin youth will learn how the generations before them organized unions to improve working conditions and fight for the common good.” Read more ...

Federal Money Helps Expand Trades' START Program

More of Madison’s residents in low-income neighborhoods could be boosted into union jobs in the skilled trades with an infusion of federal grant money for the START program.

After demonstrating success in the Allied Drive and Wexford Ridge neighborhoods, the Skilled Trades Apprenticeship Readiness Training (START) program won a $50,000 grant to expand its reach into neighborhoods on Madison’s east and north sides. Read more ...

START Shows Path to
Jobs in Union Trades

The START program’s new lead instructor, Robin Small-McCarthy, can barely contain her excitement for the START (Skilled Trades Apprenticeship Readiness Training) program.

The self-described “community educator” says she can’t wait to get her hands dirty on a Habitat for Humanity project, to get a better sense of what it’s like to work in the trades.

Having taught at the elementary and college levels, and more recently in a GED program, Small-McCarthy will be teaching math and language arts and providing one-on-one tutoring for START’s six-week apprenticeship readiness program. Read more ...

AFL-CIO Advances 5-Step Jobs Strategy

According to the economists, December marked the second anniversary of the current recession/depression. And for workers, the end of this economic upheaval is no where in sight. The official unemployment figure is ten percent or so. However, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), when considering discouraged workers who have given up the job search and workers with part time jobs who would like full time work, the un/underemployment figure is actually 17.5 percent. In October 16 million Americans, able and willing to work, were without employment, a third of them for over a half year. Another 9 million were working part time because they couldn’t find full time jobs. And a couple million more had given up looking for work. Read more ...

Obama’s Afghan War, a Growing Quagmire

On December 1, President Obama gave a speech eerily similar to President Lyndon Johnson’s spring of 1965 speech that started the troop build up in Vietnam. It laid out his goals and rationale for expanding the war in Afghanistan. However, the topics Obama left out are as important as what was included. The omissions appear deliberate. Otherwise the speech would not have made a case at all for the expanded war. Read more ...

Labor Anti-War Activists Plan to Fight Escalation

At its national assembly in Chicago on December 4-6, delegates to U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW) called for an immediate end to the war in Afghanistan, and continuing work to end the Iraq War. USLAW is continuing its education work in 2010 and supporting public demonstrations, including a March 20th protest planned for Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Read more ...

GenXers Hit Hard, Ready to Hit Back

By Liz Shuler, AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. | As newly elected secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, I traveled the country this fall, talking with workers and hearing their concerns. The economic crisis is causing a lot of pain. So many people have no jobs, no health care – and many are losing their homes. And as I looked into the faces of young workers, the reality hit home that these young people are part of the first generation in recent history likely to be worse off than their parents. Read more ...

To DoL: Stand Up to Bosses Who Steal Pay

At a noon rally on a chilly, gray day, November 19, supporters of the Workers' Rights Center and the Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice of South Central Wisconsin gathered to draw attention to the silent but growing problem of wage theft in this country. A worker spoke of having hours shaved from his paycheck as a cook at a popular new restaurant. Another explained how she had been promised one wage as a janitor but, when she received her first paycheck, she found she was receiving 75 cents less per hour. When she complained, she was fired and not given her final paycheck. A third worker was never paid overtime, although she regularly worked over forty hours a week. Read more ...

Student Labor Activists
Call on UW to Drop Nike

Action on the UW campus is sparking a national campaign to hold Nike accountable for cheating Honduran apparel workers out of more than $2 million in unpaid wages and severance pay. The UW’s Labor Licensing Policy Committee (LLPC) voted on November 13 to recommend that Chancellor Biddy Martin begin the process of terminating the university’s licensing contract with Nike. 

Students also won an historic victory for the anti-sweatshop movement, November 18. In an unprecedented move, Russell Athletic, a former UW licensee, agreed to reopen its Jerzees de Honduras factory, which the company had previously shut down in response to workers' efforts to unionize. Read more ...

AFL-CIO Unites Labor as Diverse Political Force

By Jim Cavanaugh, SCFL President | Part entertainment and part John Sweeney lovefest, the AFL-CIO Convention, held in Pittsburgh in mid-September, also conducted some serious business.As with most conventions these days, it was heavily scripted, speakers were welcomed with Academy Award type music, issues were introduced by videos, and most floor speakers were recruited, though not scripted. Read more ...

Public Option Necessary For Health Care Reform

Sometime this year it appears likely that, at long last, Congress will pass a health care reform bill. After all, President Obama has made health care reform his top priority, no less than five Congressional committees are working on the issue, and they all pledge to have a measure ready for a vote by the fall. The big unanswered question, of course, is what will that reform look like. Read more ...

Free Choice Act Would
Improve Job Quality

Baldwin, Panel Agree: Unions are a Solution

Rep. Tammy Baldwin joined South Central Federation of Labor President Jim Cavanaugh and others for a roundtable discussion, February 18, about the economic crisis and the promise that union’s hold for a better life, if only workers could freely choose to join a union. “Higher rates of unionization would be a giant step toward moving us out of this economic recession,” said Cavanaugh, “and passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would be a giant step toward higher rates of unionization. Read more ...

Report: Pensions Succeed at Half the Cost of 401(k)s

In these uncertain times, a new report evaluating the cost-effectiveness of retirement plans is sure to interest workers who rely on them to maintain a decent standard of living in their golden years. The study recently published by the nonprofit National Institute on Retirement Security, “A Better Bang for the Buck: The Economic Efficiencies of Defined Benefit Pension Plans,” breaks with the conventional wisdom by demonstrating the superiority of traditional defined benefit pensions, as compared with 401(k)-type defined contribution plans. Read more ...

Who Are the Real Workplace Thugs?

By Kurt Kobelt | When in 2002 Saddam Hussein proclaimed himself the unanimous victor in a secret ballot election, then White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer protested, "You can't have free elections when the electorate goes to the polls in the knowledge that they have only one candidate, that candidate routinely murders and tortures opponents of the regime and the penalty for slandering that sole candidate is to have one's tongue cut out." Most Americans would agree with his point that you have to look at the environment in which "secret ballots" are cast to know whether it is a genuinely democratic election. Read more ...

Just What is SCFL and What Does it Do?

By Jim Cavanaugh, SCFL President | Since early December the national AFL-CIO, in what’s called the “New Alliance” process, has been working with Wisconsin labor leaders to study the Wisconsin labor movement and to make recommendations for structural changes that will improve its effectiveness. As I have participated in this process, it has become clear to me that many union leaders do not have a very thorough grasp of what labor councils do, or have the potential to do. Hence, I thought I’d summarize what the South Central Federation of Labor (SCFL) is and some of what it does. Read more ...

Wanted: Mural Painters to Make History

If you have a steady hand and a couple hours a week to spare, consider volunteering for the Madison Labor History Mural project this summer. Depicting more than a century of Madison labor history, the two-story mural is beginning to fill three walls inside the south entrance to the Madison Labor Temple, 1602 S. Park St. 

Progress on the mural stalled when Muralist Marcus Nickel began experiencing some debilitating health problems, shortly after he began putting paint on the walls. Unable to completely recover, Nickel has been providing guidance to a number of volunteers from various unions who are working to complete the project.

A crew paints regularly, scheduled based on volunteers’ availability. Volunteers can also work independently whenever they have free time.  Each volunteer receives a complimentary 45 min. video (DVD), Madison Labor: Building a City, Building a Movement.

Artistic ability is welcome but NOT required. Come enjoy relaxing work and meet new friends – while being a part of this remarkable community art and labor history project. Mural painting might also be appropriate for high school students interested in extra credit or community service. Must be 14 years old to participate.

Interested? Send an e-mail with available times (Subject: Mural Painting Volunteer) to TheMuralProject(at)SCFL.org.

New DVD on Madison's Labor History Available

As work progresses on the Madison Labor History Mural project, the South Central Federation of Labor has released a new DVD, Madison Labor: Building a City, Building a Movement. The DVD includes The Early Years (30 min.), originally produced in 1985, and Madison: A Union City, 1985-2005 (15 min.) which brings Madison’s labor history up to date. Read more about the Madison Labor History Mural project and the DVD, which is available for $25, here.

Sign up here as an
e-Activist with the South Central Federation of Labor and receive occasional e-mails about Madison area labor activities. Encourage others to do so too!

WI Labor History Essay Contest

The Wisconsin Labor History Society is sponsoring its annual Labor History Essay Contest for high school students and invites students in grades 9-12 to write on the topic: "Unions have been important to my family and my community because..." Up to $1,500 in prizes will be awarded and will include a $500 first prize, $300 second prize, $200 third prize, and up to five $100 prizes for honorable mention. Essays of approximately 750 words must be postmarked no later than February 15, 2010. More information here.

United Way Volunteers Sought

Labor volunteers are being sought to fill seats on three of United Way's Community Solutions Teams that address the problems in the community of homelessness, access to health care, and senior independence. Read more ...

As a result of the New Alliance, a statewide labor reorganization, the Dodge and Jefferson County Central Labor Councils merged with SCFL and became Chapters. Click here for more information on the Dodge and Jefferson Chapters.

Union Sectors in Brief

The South Central Federation of Labor is preparing brief introductions to the various union sectors in the area. These articles are meant to foster a greater understanding of the unions and the issues facing workers in each sector. Click on any of the following sectors to read the briefing:

Additional sector briefings will be added as they become available.