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Global Economy Tops AFL-CIO Talks in New Orleans
The AFL-CIO, at its policy meeting in New Orleans, announced a campaign to build solidarity among working families from Maine to Malaysia and to hold multinational corporations accountable for irresponsible behavior in their global operations.
The executive council took up key concerns about the global economy, limiting trade relations with China, and the rights of immigrant workers, but also reviewed new ways of helping workers build their unions. Other initiatives, including the launch of workingfamilies.com, an Internet community for the entire labor movement, also were showcased.
As part of its bid to hold corporations responsible for their actions — especially those that abandon workers and communities in search of sweatshop wages overseas — the AFL-CIO committed its full support to the fight for a fair contract being waged by 40,000 General Electric Co. workers, members of 14 unions, including CWA, which make up the Coordinated Bargaining Committee. Their contract expires June 25; bargaining is set to get underway in late May.
At a press briefing, CWA President Morton Bahr, IUE President Ed Fire and other union leaders outlined the need to hold GE accountable for its “race to the bottom” corporate strategy.
“We want to make certain that GE, as it reinvents itself, does not leave behind the workers who built the company,” Bahr said, adding, “what happens at GE matters not only to the 40,000 union members, but to all workers.”
GE is “going where it can find the lowest wages and lowest benefits. Now, they are muscling suppliers,” Fire said, explaining how GE’s chief Jack Welch prefers to do business in countries where minimum wage and labor laws and environmental standards are loosely, if at all, enforced.
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka stressed that the AFL-CIO will participate in demonstrations that spotlight GE’s unwillingness to provide a fair share of profits to those who helped build the company and will join the CBC in working with GE unions worldwide.
Laura Ramirez, a member of CWA Local 6143 in San Antonio, Texas, joined the AFL-CIO officers at a news conference to talk about the campaign for a union at SBC Wireless. She spoke to reporters about the support from CWA members that enabled her co-workers to win their union.
Support from union members and CWA’s ability to win card-check recognition through bargaining made all the difference, Ramirez said. Wireless workers now have the benefits of CWA membership and “we’ll work to bring the benefits of our union to all workers throughout our area,” she said.
Danny Fetonte, CWA’s organizing director in District 6, outlined CWA’s program during a roundtable discussion featuring union officers and organizers.
Vice President Al Gore, who met with the council, was at the morning shift at the Avondale Shipyard, where he talked with workers who recently won their longtime struggle for a union. Gore has won the endorsement of CWA and the AFL-CIO in his bid to become the President of the United States. Also meeting with the council were Democratic House Leader Richard Gephardt (Mo.), Rep. David Bonior (D-Mich.) and Labor Secretary Alexis Herman.
The executive council took up key concerns about the global economy, limiting trade relations with China, and the rights of immigrant workers, but also reviewed new ways of helping workers build their unions. Other initiatives, including the launch of workingfamilies.com, an Internet community for the entire labor movement, also were showcased.
As part of its bid to hold corporations responsible for their actions — especially those that abandon workers and communities in search of sweatshop wages overseas — the AFL-CIO committed its full support to the fight for a fair contract being waged by 40,000 General Electric Co. workers, members of 14 unions, including CWA, which make up the Coordinated Bargaining Committee. Their contract expires June 25; bargaining is set to get underway in late May.
At a press briefing, CWA President Morton Bahr, IUE President Ed Fire and other union leaders outlined the need to hold GE accountable for its “race to the bottom” corporate strategy.
“We want to make certain that GE, as it reinvents itself, does not leave behind the workers who built the company,” Bahr said, adding, “what happens at GE matters not only to the 40,000 union members, but to all workers.”
GE is “going where it can find the lowest wages and lowest benefits. Now, they are muscling suppliers,” Fire said, explaining how GE’s chief Jack Welch prefers to do business in countries where minimum wage and labor laws and environmental standards are loosely, if at all, enforced.
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka stressed that the AFL-CIO will participate in demonstrations that spotlight GE’s unwillingness to provide a fair share of profits to those who helped build the company and will join the CBC in working with GE unions worldwide.
Laura Ramirez, a member of CWA Local 6143 in San Antonio, Texas, joined the AFL-CIO officers at a news conference to talk about the campaign for a union at SBC Wireless. She spoke to reporters about the support from CWA members that enabled her co-workers to win their union.
Support from union members and CWA’s ability to win card-check recognition through bargaining made all the difference, Ramirez said. Wireless workers now have the benefits of CWA membership and “we’ll work to bring the benefits of our union to all workers throughout our area,” she said.
Danny Fetonte, CWA’s organizing director in District 6, outlined CWA’s program during a roundtable discussion featuring union officers and organizers.
Vice President Al Gore, who met with the council, was at the morning shift at the Avondale Shipyard, where he talked with workers who recently won their longtime struggle for a union. Gore has won the endorsement of CWA and the AFL-CIO in his bid to become the President of the United States. Also meeting with the council were Democratic House Leader Richard Gephardt (Mo.), Rep. David Bonior (D-Mich.) and Labor Secretary Alexis Herman.