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INSIDEUSW@WORK
“
What will it take to make our shared vision of real prosperity come to pass with
rising wages, thriving communities, equality and a true democracy that doesn’t try
to suppress workers’ rights, minority rights, students’ rights, seniors’ rights to vote,
and job security and retirement and health care security?... [A] global movement
of working people united in a common purpose to improve life for everyone.
”
International President Leo W. Gerard
2013 AFL-CIO Convention
I N T E R N AT I O N A L E X E C U T I V E B O A R D
Leo W. Gerard
International President
08
Stan Johnson
Int’l. Secretary-Treasurer
Thomas M. Conway
Int’l. Vice President
(Administration)
Fred Redmond
Int’l. Vice President
(Human Affairs)
12
Looking for Trouble
Embracing All Workers
The USW is developing a new union-based health
and safety program that is detailed yet flexible
enough for use in every workplace and industry
where the union has members.
The AFL-CIO is expanding alliances and repositioning itself to speak for all working people
in the United States, not just those who belong
to traditional labor unions.
Ken Neumann
Nat’l. Dir. for Canada
Jon Geenen
Int’l. Vice President
Gary Beevers
Int’l. Vice President
Carol Landry
Vice President at Large
DIRECTORS
David R. McCall, District 1
Michael Bolton, District 2
Stephen Hunt, District 3
20
24
Tire Contracts
New contracts have been ratified by some 16,000
USW members who work for the three largest major
tire companies – Goodyear, Bridgestone Americas
and BFGoodrich.
Bargaining Review
The USW’s National Oil Bargaining Program
is reviewing how it operates in a constantly
changing industry.
ON THE COVER
Tim Dunigan, president of Local 10-670, poses with Listerine mouthwash, one of the products made by USW
members at the Johnson & Johnson factory in Lititz, Pa. See page 4.
USW Photo by Steve Dietz
John Shinn, District 4
Daniel Roy, District 5
Marty Warren, District 6
Jim Robinson, District 7
Volume 08/No. 4 Fall 2013
Ernest R. “Billy” Thompson, District 8
Daniel Flippo, District 9
John DeFazio, District 10
Robert Bratulich, District 11
Robert LaVenture, District 12
J.M. “Mickey” Breaux, District 13
C ommunications S taff :
Jim McKay, Editor
Wayne Ranick, Director of Communications
Gary Hubbard, Director of Public Affairs, Washington, D.C.
Aaron Hudson and Kenny Carlisle, Designers
Deb Davidek, Chelsey Engel, Lynne Hancock, R.J. Hufnagel,
Jess Kamm, Tony Montana, Barbara White Stack
Official publication of the United Steelworkers
Direct inquiries and articles for USW@Work to:
United Steelworkers Communications Department
Five Gateway Center
Pittsburgh, PA 15222
phone 412-562-2400
fax 412-562-2445
online: www.usw.org
USW@Work (ISSN 1931-6658) is published four times a year by the United Steelworkers AFL-CIO•CLC Five Gateway Center, Pittsburgh,
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Copyright 2013 by United Steelworkers, AFL-CIO•CLC. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the
written consent of the United Steelworkers.
2
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
T
he death of dedicated French
teacher and USW supporter
Margaret Mary Vojtko on Sept.
1 touched off a national debate
over the issues of low wages, inequality
and the need for unionization on college
campuses.
Vojtko, who was a supporter of the
USW-affiliated Adjunct Faculty Association that organized last year at Duquesne
University, passed away in poverty at the
age of 83 after spending 25 years on the
faculty of the private Catholic university
in Pittsburgh.
Her story, told in an article in the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, quickly went
viral, generating more than 70,000
mentions via social media, more than a
dozen letters and follow-up articles in
the newspaper, and thousands of comments from outraged readers across the
globe. The story attracted interest from
news outlets including CNN, NPR, the
Chronicle of Higher Education, Slate
and the Huffington Post.
Most readers expressed shock that
any worker could be left with nothing after so many years. Yet despite her time at
the school, her advanced degree and her
consistently heavy workload, Vojtko still
was considered “part time” and only received a salary of about $3,000 per class,
with no benefits, no retirement plan and
no severance pay. Over the summer, the
university notified Vojtko that she would
not be retained for the fall semester.
The abrupt loss of her job after a
quarter-century was more than Vojtko
could handle, wrote her friend and USW
attorney Dan Kovalik.
“Living nearly homeless because
she could not afford the upkeep on her
home,” Kovalik wrote, “she was found
on her front lawn, unconscious from a
heart attack.” She died two weeks later.
“Margaret Mary was laid out in a
simple, cardboard casket … an honest
symbol of what she had been reduced to
by her ostensibly Catholic employer,”
Kovalik wrote.
The tragic circumstances of Vojtko’s
death were the catalyst for a series of
national news stories that shed new light
on the situation that adjunct instructors
face every day at colleges and universities across the country. Most work
for near-poverty wages, with no job
security, no benefits and no retirement
security. Adjuncts once were employed
to supplement the work of full-time
professors – now only about 30 percent
of college and university faculty are fulltime employees.
At Duquesne, the inequality is
stark: Adjunct instructors, limited to
two courses per semester, typically
earn about $14,000 per year – less than
a third of what full-time, non-tenuretrack faculty earn for the same work.
Meanwhile, the university president
takes home an annual salary of almost
$700,000.
The best way to fix the problem is
through union activism, said Robin J.
Sowards, an adjunct professor who was
instrumental in organizing his colleagues
into the union last year.
“It is faculty, not administrators, who
have devoted their lives to the
educational purpose of the institution,
and they should have a powerful voice in
how the institution runs,” he said. “The
only feasible way of preventing these
tragedies in the future is for faculty to
organize strong, democratic industrial
unions alongside other workers.”
A year ago, adjunct instructors at
Duquesne overwhelmingly decided to
unionize, with 85 percent voting “yes.”
After agreeing initially to recognize the
union, Duquesne later claimed that it
should have an exemption from U.S.
labor laws because of its religious status
and appealed an initial NLRB ruling in
the USW’s favor.
The case is still pending, but critics say Duquesne, precisely because of
its Catholic status, has an even greater
obligation to support its workers’ wishes
to unionize.
“As the United States Conference
of Catholic Bishops put it, ‘No one may
deny the right to organize without attacking human dignity itself,’ ” Sowards
said. “We all need to stand together and
insist that Duquesne’s administration do
the right thing.”
Cartoon by Rob Rogers. Reprinted with permission.
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
3
Scott Wartluft
USW Photo by Steve Dietz
4
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
W
hile the United States has seen
factories and jobs disappear at
an alarming rate over the past
decade, at least one USW local
has worked hard to buck that trend, saving
jobs for its members and money for its employer in the process.
When Johnson & Johnson bought Pfizer’s
consumer health care division in 2005, it
acquired, among other pieces of that $16.6
billion transaction, a factory in tiny Lititz,
Pa., that for decades had produced Listerine
mouthwash for Pfizer and its predecessor,
Warner-Lambert.
While J&J laid off some workers in an
initial cost-savings move after the purchase,
the union has fought since then to bring more
work into the south-central Pennsylvania
facility.
“Over the years, we’ve become more
flexible” on staffing and work rules to improve efficiency, accommodate new products
and save jobs, said Tim Dunigan, now in his
fourth term as Local 10-670 president and his
21st year at the plant.
That flexible approach by the local union
has resulted in products once made by outside
contractors being added to the lineup at the
Lititz factory, including Lubriderm and Aveeno skin care products and Johnson’s Baby Oil.
J&J made the moves because the products
could be made better, cheaper and more efficiently by the USW work force in Lititz than
in other locations.
“That’s the way Johnson & Johnson does
business,” Dunigan said, explaining that J&J
managers compete to make products at their
facilities. “If you think you can do it better,
you can bid to try and get it into your plant.”
Expanding product line
While that business model has meant
USW members have had to make compromises to accommodate the new work, it has
created and saved union members’ jobs in the
process.
Curtis Krall, chief steward for Local 670,
who has worked at the plant since 1989,
estimated that moving the production of
Lubriderm away from outside contractors and
into the factory saved or created at least 20
union jobs and added a number of new shifts.
“That, to me, is just fantastic,” Krall said.
The company decided to add more
products to the Lititz lineup in the middle of
the local’s previous contract. Some workers,
particularly more senior members, were not
pleased with the idea at first, because it meant
more weekend and off-hour shifts.
Local 670 leaders eventually worked out
an agreement to accommodate the additional
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
5
work with terms acceptable to both
sides. “We sat down and talked to them,
because we knew the importance of trying to keep work here,” Dunigan said.
“They didn’t try to force anything down
our throats. A lot of the terms of the
agreement came from us.”
Later, this April, Local 670 settled a
new six-year contract with J&J that included wage increases and other gains.
The contract passed with 95 percent of
the vote.
A decade of changes
The reintroduction of Lubriderm in
Lititz surprised even J&J senior management. When the company took over
from Pfizer in 2006, it moved production of the cream to Canada to save
money.
“They said, ‘no way, your costs are
way too high.’ Four years later, we beat
their bid and we got it back,” Dunigan
said. “The more you add, it lowers the
cost of everything else, and you stand a
better chance of winning bids the next
time.”
That added flexibility is far from the
only change Local 670 members have
faced over the years. Besides having
three owners between 2000 and 2006,
the local has been part of three international unions through mergers: OCAW,
PACE, and, in 2005, the USW.
One thing that has remained the
same since 1956 is the location, just
outside of Lancaster, Pa. The town
of Lititz, population 9,000, is a small
hamlet with scenes that belong on a post
card: cobblestone walkways and beautifully restored buildings dating to the
early 1700s. The website BudgetTravel.
com recently named Lititz the “Coolest
Small Town in America.”
In contrast to those old-fashioned
surroundings, the 1.2 million-squarefoot J&J facility on the edge of town
uses cutting-edge technology to churn
out a huge volume of health care products, including every bottle of Listerine
sold in the United States.
Listerine, the nation’s first over-thecounter mouthwash, has been the “bread
and butter” of the Lititz facility for decades, Krall said. The factory produces
the product so efficiently that “for years,
Listerine carried this place. No one can
touch us for Listerine, no matter where
you go,” he said.
Workers carefully guard the recipe
for their signature product and meticulously label, store and track barrels of
raw materials.
The efficiency has allowed the Lititz
plant to outbid private contractors in
Mexico and Canada and retain mouthwash production.
Until the 1990s, the iconic American product came only in its standard
golden brown, in large glass bottles
with cardboard labels. Today, the factory churns out 600,000 bottles per day,
in four sizes and 19 flavors, and ships
them to eight countries, with labels in
English, Spanish, French and Hebrew.
Quality control a priority
Besides Listerine and Lubriderm, the
Lititz factory makes J&J products Bengay, Benadryl cream, Desitin, Neosporin, Aveeno and Johnson’s Baby Oil.
Despite such a heavy workload,
visitors to the plant won’t find a typical industrial setting. The work areas
are immaculate, the floors and hallways
spotless.
It’s evidence of the work force’s
dedication to health, safety and quality
control. That commitment has helped
the Lititz plant avoid some of the issues
USW Photos by Steve Dietz
Kevin Yohn
Sue Shepler
6
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
Rick Sweigart
J&J has seen at its non-union factories.
With operations in 57 countries, J&J
is one of the world’s largest consumer
health companies. Non-union plants in
nearby Lancaster, Fort Washington, Pa.,
and elsewhere have faced scrutiny in recent years from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for failing to meet
federal quality and safety standards.
Those issues, which led to recalls of
J&J products including Tylenol, Motrin
and Benadryl, have been largely absent
from the Lititz facility. The union’s ability to challenge the company on health
and safety issues is one reason why,
Dunigan said.
“At non-union plants, they may
fear for their jobs,” he said. “At union
plants, they don’t have to worry about
speaking up.”
Kevin Hoover, who has worked in
Listerine production for 27 years, said
that shift toward a more automated
system has allowed workers to focus
more on quality control. But he said the
impact of the union can’t be underestimated.
“If you don’t have a union, the
company can do whatever they want,”
Hoover said.
J&J has nearly two dozen
factories across the United States, with
one other site represented by the USW
– a medical supply factory in Warsaw,
Ind., where the workers are members of
Local 809.
While the two locals do not bargain
jointly, they share information and
collaborate on issues. A separate USW
local also represents a unit of about a
dozen janitorial workers at the Lititz
plant.
As he shared stories from years of
bargaining, Dunigan leafed through
a collection of contracts covering the
workers at Lititz, the oldest dating to
the 1950s.
Dunigan said that the relationship
between J&J and Local 670 “ebbs and
flows,” but, more often than not, a spirit
of cooperation has prevailed over the
years.
What once was a one-shift operation
has expanded, with staggered shifts that
allow production to continue through
breaks and lunches. A greater focus
on efficiency and quality control has
helped both company and union, Krall
said.
Jeff Keifer, a 32-year employee who
served as local president in the
mid-1990s, said the biggest change in
his tenure was the shift to a more automated workplace, which has meant less
physical labor with fewer work-related
injuries.
“The union has had a positive effect
on almost every aspect of the work
environment,” Keifer said.
As he and fellow Local 670 member
Susan Miller loaded empty tubes onto
a line, where they would eventually be
filled with Bengay, Donny Meckley said
the increasingly high-tech work environment has meant less physical stress
but more for workers to learn.
Over the years, the local union
in Lititz has been responsive to the
membership, Meckley said. “If we have
problems they listen to us,” he said.
Through all the changes, the local
has managed to turn one of its biggest
challenges, competition for work from
outside sources, into one of its biggest
strengths, through the dedication, efficiency and flexibility of the membership.
“We feel good about where we are,”
Krall said. “We are looking better and
better in J&J’s eyes.”
Barb Gantz
Jim Wisniewski
Boniface Otama
Crystal Hailey
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
7
International President
Leo W. Gerard
USW photos by Steve Dietz
8
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
L
ook for trouble. Find and fix
the potential hazards in your
workplace before an accident
happens and someone gets
injured or killed.
Finding potential safety problems
through comprehensive workplace
audits will be a key part of a new health
and safety program under development
for rollout next year by the USW Health
Safety and Environment (HSE) Department.
“What we need is a comprehensive
union-based safety and health program,
flexible enough for every workplace
of every size and every industry, but
detailed enough to give clear guidance,”
said HSE Director Mike Wright.
“It has to be effective. It has to be
practical. It has to be something we can
fight for and win. Most of all, it has to
respect the knowledge and the skill, the
dedication of our members and the role
of the union, and it has to work.”
Wright announced the project and
asked for help in its development at
the 2013 Health Safety & Environment
Conference co-sponsored by the USW
and the Communications Workers of
America (CWA) in late September in
Pittsburgh.
Conference attracts 1,500
More than 1,500 attended the
week-long conference, including a few
hundred employer representatives who
were invited to participate in all but the
first “union only” day.
International President Leo W.
Gerard welcomed those in management who came to the conference with
intentions of working with the union in
making workplaces safer for all.
“We should encourage management
to do that because a safe workplace is
a better workplace,” he said. “A safe
workplace is a place where you know
the chance of coming home at night to
be with your friends, family, kids and
grandkids, are greater.”
Gerard also praised USW and CWA
activists for doing important work that
often goes unnoticed such as cleaning up the air in a factory or making a
job safer by ensuring a machine guard
works effectively.
“Lots of times, the work that you do
is almost anonymous, almost thankless,” he said. “But you need to understand that is part of the most important
work that you do; it’s part of the most
important work that the union does
because we are in fact saving lives.”
Safety programs
Many vendors sell safety programs
to employers. Some of them have good
elements and some are harmful, but
none recognize the legitimate role of the
union in accident prevention and safety.
The first and most obvious goal of
the developing USW program, tentatively titled Looking for Trouble, is to
create safer and healthier workplaces,
which has the side impact of making the
union stronger.
“If you do safety right, you’re going
to be building the union, you’re going
Mike Wright
Conference attendees listen to
speakers and participate in
workshops.
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
9
to be talking with people, asking what
are your issues, what are your problems, what makes this job unsafe, what
worries you, and how can we work
together to fix it?” Wright said. “That
builds the union.”
Another focus of the program
would be to find and fix hazards such as
unguarded machinery or toxic chemical
storage and investigate potentially dangerous possibilities such as explosive
dust or vapors.
One way that can be done is by
hazard mapping, a process in which
workers identify and locate dangerous
situations in their own workplaces so
they can be targeted for elimination.
The audit process would ideally
find problems that go unnoticed in the
walk-around inspections typically done
on a regular schedule by union safety
committee members. Wright said a
union study done a decade ago into fatal
accidents found walking inspections
uncovered the causes of those accidents
in only about half of the situations.
A good program is also needed for
investigating accidents, near misses and
upsets in the process to learn what went
wrong and what could go wrong in the
future, he said.
Behavior-based programs
Because all accidents and near
misses should be investigated, the USW
opposes corporate programs and policies that reward workers for keeping
such events secret or punish workers for
reporting them.
Much was said at the conference
about behavior-based safety programs
that focus on telling individual workers
how to behave in a hazardous workplace rather than fixing the hazard.
Even David Michaels, assistant
secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration
(OSHA), criticized behavioral programs
when he addressed the conference.
Michaels said OSHA has during his
tenure persuaded more than 100 employers to scrap behavior-based safety
programs. He said those programs don’t
work.
“They only give workers and employers an excuse to hide injury and
accident numbers,” he said, noting there
are many other ways to incentivize
safety.
“Give rewards for the best safety
suggestion, or for participating in training, not for lower reported incidents.
That kind of system is too common, and
it only makes workplaces less safe.”
Long way to go
Michaels started his remarks with
a list of OSHA success stories, including the recent recommended standards
on silica and beryllium. He told the
story of USW member Alan White, and
related his involvement in advancing
the silica standard. (See separate story
on page 22.)
“We’re making progress, but we
have a long way to go,” Michaels said,
noting that the only way to continue to
advance health and safety is for unions,
employers and regulators to work
together.
Unlike the corporate behavioral
programs, the union addresses problems
that make it hard to work safely such as
excessive involuntary overtime, poor
training, inadequate instrumentation,
and excessive or conflicting job demands, not individual workers.
“We have a problem with behavioral safety. It’s a cheap way to avoid
what really needs to be done, finding
and fixing hazards, and it doesn’t really work,” Wright said. “Do we teach
people to tiptoe through a mine field or
do we clear the mines?”
There are ways to fight back. Local
1023 in Salem, Va., objected to a tire
company’s use of Homer Simpson
cartoon posters to promote a behavioral-based program that the union
has been fighting for years. When the
union posted its own cartoons aimed
at management, the offensive posters
came down.
“Our members have plenty of
Health Safety and Environment
Director Mike Wright
USW photos by Steve Dietz
10
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
talents,” Local 1023 Recording Secretary Eric Angel said in a panel discussion. “If we allow them and empower
them to help us, they can come up with
some really creative ideas.”
Honoring those who died
The most poignant moment of the
conference came on the second day
when the names of 54 people who died
in USW workplaces since the last meeting were slowly displayed on a screen
near the main stage.
A refurbished locomotive bell
donated to the International by Local
1196 in Brackenridge, Pa., and Allegheny Ludlum Corp., was rung by Local
President Fran Arabia in memory of
those who died.
The local took on the bell project
in memory of a member, John Novick,
who was killed by two railroad cars in a
2005 accident at an Allegheny Ludlum
plant in Brackenridge. It was taken
from a retired locomotive involved
in the accident and reconditioned by
member Garry Moran of the locomotive repair shop.
The morning sessions were filled
with notable speakers. Much of the
real work of the conference, however,
occurred in the afternoons in smaller
group settings where local union members learned from instructors and each
other how to make their workplaces
safer.
Workshops focused on such topics
as finding and fixing hazards, advanced
health and safety inspections, combustible dust explosions, heat stress,
chemical hazards, machine guards, ergonomics, emergency response teams,
bargaining campaigns, and much more.
There were 268 workshop sessions
covering 92 separate health and safety
topics. Several were repeated to accommodate schedules and interests.
Caucus meetings
In and around a tight schedule of
speeches and classes, many members
found time to caucus in the evenings
with other workers who share employers or industries. Caucus meetings
were held for workers in the oil, atomic
energy, paper, tire, chemical, aluminum
and steel sectors, among others.
International Vice President at
Large Carol Landry highlighted the
caucuses in her remarks and noted that
many of them achieved unique successes in the health and safety arena.
The USW Goodyear Council,
she said, has established a labormanagement committee and a process
that requires the company to pay for
full-time health and safety representatives assigned to find and fix workplace
hazards.
“The process provides a means for
the union to meet regularly and with
the company on almost all aspects of
USW workplace safety and health,” she
said.
Landry also noted:
• In its last national round of bargaining, the union’s oil sector negotiated for industry employers to pay for
process management safety representatives chosen by the union. Many of
those reps were at the conference to receive OSHA training on process safety
management standards.
• The Atomic Workers Energy
Council, inherited through mergers
from OCAW and PACE, counts among
its successes a Department of Energy
(DOE) rule that allows workers to
refuse to do unsafe work as well as a
medical screening program for former
DOE site workers.
• The USW’s Allegheny Ludlum
council has over the past four contracts
vastly improved master contract language on health and safety, going from
multiple contracts with very different
provisions to uniform health and safety
contract language today.
“There are so many more of these
stories,” Landry said. “Our union has
played a leading role in the evolution of
health and safety in the workplace and
we will continue to do so in the years
to come.”
Conference attendees
participate in workshops.
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
11
D
one are the days of greedy multinational corporations and right-wing
plutocrats defining and limiting the
labor movement to suit their selfish
purposes.
“We will not allow others to define us,” AFLCIO President Richard Trumka told the labor
federation’s 27th convention this September in
Los Angeles.
At the convention, through resolutions and
action, the labor movement chose to define itself
inclusively to create a broad community of workers seeking shared prosperity, a coalition of allies
uniting and rising together.
International President Leo W. Gerard cochaired the AFL-CIO Committee on Shared Prosperity in the Global Economy that developed the
economic and policy-related resolutions approved
at the convention.
“We are stronger together,” Gerard said.
Let’s prosper together
The convention adopted a “Shared Prosperity”
resolution, promoting inclusiveness to achieve
gains for all workers: “The labor movement is
all of us who work, creating America every day,
united as one. Our movement is building a world
where all those who work share in the wealth we
create, where our rights are honored in the places
where we work, and where our nation and our
world prosper because we prosper together.”
Already, organized labor has begun joint efforts with diverse groups including international
unions; U.S.-based worker centers seeking better
pay, benefits and working conditions for unorganized workers; environmental groups seeking
cleaner and healthier workplaces and communities; religious organizations standing up for voting rights; and immigrant rights groups seeking
better treatment for all workers.
The 5,000 convention attendees from 57 affiliate unions meeting in the Staples Center resolved
to expand these alliances as broadly as possible.
The convention, for example, voted to strive to
protect and expand Medicare and Social Security.
Senior citizens groups are obvious partners in that
effort.
The AFL-CIO will seek coalitions with such
groups differently than it did in the past, Trumka
said. Instead of approaching potential allies with
a solution and asking them to sign on, labor will
ask how they can work with allies on solutions
they arrive at together.
AFL-CIO President
Richard Trumka
AFL-CIO Photos by Bill Burke/Page One Photography
Guillermo Perez
Tiffaney Lewis,
District 12 NextGen
coordinator and
Local 3267
member
Problems acknowledged
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler
acknowledged organized labor’s problems. Fifty
years ago, unions represented 35 percent of
American workers. That number has fallen to
11 percent. Union-busting firms have defeated
12
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
International Vice President
Fred Redmond
organizing drives, and labor organizations have
been forced to accept health benefit cuts and wage
freezes. The Employee Free Choice Act, which
would have eased organizing, failed to pass, and
now anti-labor legislation has swept into traditional
union strongholds including Wisconsin and Michigan.
“We must change to survive,” Shuler said.
The goal of a broadened, bulked-up labor
movement is to lift up all workers, to eliminate the
massive income inequality that has grown over the
past 30 years to rival the days of the 1920s robber
barons.
The goal is to allow workers to share more
fully in the fruits of their labor so that the economy
thrives as it did in the 1950s and 1960s, when income inequality was low.
Trumka explained it this way: “We work harder,
we work longer hours, we create more — more
goods, more services, more of everything — and
yet most of us earn less. Less than we earned five
years ago. Less than we earned 15 years ago. Barely
more than we earned 35 years ago.”
Rich get richer
International Vice President
at Large Carol Landry
The wealth that workers create is bypassing
those who sweat to achieve it, Trumka explained.
“All of the wage increases over all those years – not
some, not the majority, not the vast majority – ALL
– went to the top 10 percent. Incomes for the rest of
us – 90 percent of America – went down.”
This, he said, is “upside down.” To “turn America right side up,” he said, “we need a real working
class movement. And if that’s going to happen, we
– our institutions – have to do some things differently.”
Trumka noted that the nation’s 13 million union
members, strong as they are, cannot and should not
fight only for themselves. All 150 million working
Americans, he said, must rise together or “we will
keep falling together.”
Other labor leaders and experts throughout the
four-day convention backed Trumka’s appeal.
During a special session called “Building a
Diverse Movement for Shared Prosperity” that preceded the formal convention, the issue of inclusiveness was front and center.
Dr. Steven Pitts, an economist and labor policy
specialist at the University of California, said workers must be engaged in the labor movement both as
union members and as community members. “Our
members go to church. They are deacons and Little
League coaches. … We must broaden our movement to transform the future.”
Community support
Connecting all workers, young and old, black,
white and Latino, gay and straight, of every religion
and background, is crucial for success, International
Vice President Fred Redmond said.
Steelworkers traditionally have integrated themselves in their neighborhoods, supporting community projects and, in turn, receiving support when
needed. A century ago, thousands of Homestead,
Pa., residents of all ethnic groups took up arms to
defend striking steelworkers when the Carnegie
Steel Co. sent armed Pinkerton guards to escort
strikebreakers.
Now, Redmond noted, USW staff members at
the international headquarters in Pittsburgh mentor
minority students in city schools. The USW provides ex-offenders and low-wage workers with preapprentice training. And the USW helped organize
“We Are One,” an amalgamation of 32 Pittsburgh
groups working jointly on projects.
“Our goal is to spread this word,” he said.
Among those outside the labor movement who
endorsed inclusiveness was Rev. James Lawson, a
civil rights icon and associate of Dr. Martin Luther
King. He told the conference that labor must challenge the soullessness that has led to seven out of
10 working people laboring for poverty wages with
little or no benefits. “I don’t care how global capitalism wants to dress it up. It is slavery by another
name,” he said.
Exclusion failed
In an unprecedented move, the AFL-CIO invited
non-union workers and representatives of organizations such as MomsRising and the National
Organization for Women to speak about proposed
resolutions.
Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees,
introduced a Wal-Mart worker fired after participating in a strike.
“The labor movement has tried exclusion in
the past; it has not worked. It needs to reach out,”
Saunders said.
Organized labor and worker centers across the
country have supported Wal-Mart workers’ efforts
to improve pay and benefits, whether they achieve
a union or not. Similarly, just before the convention, the AFL-CIO pledged to expand its Working America program to all 50 states, enabling all
workers to easily join and build community power
for good jobs and shared prosperity.
The AFL-CIO pledged to encourage and support
a broad spectrum of collective action. In addition
to traditional collective bargaining, this can include
referendums to increase the minimum wage, regulations such as the recent Labor Department rule requiring overtime pay for home care workers; legislation such as that backed by MomsRising to secure
sick days; or alliances with international unions, as
the United Autoworkers have done to move toward
organizing a Tennessee Volkswagen plant.
“If we are going to move forward, we must
move forward together,” Trumka said.
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
13
W
ith four children to support, Tyrone Brazil is desperately trying to escape
a low-wage restaurant job
with no benefits and no future, and the
USW is helping him find a way to do it.
“Once you are stuck in dead-end jobs
and you have a family to support, it’s
just really hard,” said Brazil, 32, who
dropped out of high school as a teenager
to support his first child. “I work so
many hours, overtime every week, just
to make it from paycheck to paycheck.”
Brazil, who now has a GED, graduated in late September from a preapprenticeship job training program
administered by the Pittsburgh chapter
of the A. Phillip Randolph Institute
(APRI) in partnership with the USW,
which offers classroom space, staff and
other assistance.
The USW supports the program,
Breaking the Chains of Poverty, and
its goal of promoting living-wage jobs
and union membership to a predominantly African-American neighborhood
because it is good for the community
overall, said International President Leo
W. Gerard.
“It’s important, if we want to have a
vibrant community, for people to help
people who have been disadvantaged get
the kinds of skill training they need to
start their lives over or to get their first
job,” Gerard said.
That view coincides with the new
goal of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s
largest labor federation, to broaden itself
into a movement that includes all working people, not only those in traditional
unions like the USW.
Embracing all workers
With membership numbers dwindling, the AFL-CIO decided at its
convention in Los Angeles in September that it must embrace all workers
and new forms of membership if it is
to become a more powerful force for
workers.
Membership in the AFL-CIO has
thus far largely been limited to unions
that represent workers on the job and
negotiate contracts with employers. The
new approach would broaden labor’s
ranks through new forms of organization
and recruitment in industries, occupations and regions of the country not
currently represented.
The pre-apprentice training program
that Brazil graduated from is just one
example of the work the USW already
does on the local, district and interna-
tional level that will help the AFL-CIO
meet the goal it set for itself at the
convention.
The USW has a history of working
with other groups, including international unions and environmental and
religious organizations. Gerard, who
urged passage of the resolution at the
AFL-CIO convention, said the USW
would work to strengthen its long standing community involvement and ties.
The USW also is a leader and founder of the BlueGreen Alliance (BGA),
a coalition of 14 of the nation’s largest
unions and environmental organizations
that work together for a clean, fair and
more competitive American economy.
The union also works with community organizations and worker centers
that help to secure better pay and working conditions for unorganized workers,
many of them immigrants in low-wage
jobs such as car washes.
For himself, Brazil hoped to improve
his math and reading comprehension skills enough
Tyrone Brazil
14
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
to pass the entrance test for an apprentice program that will teach him to become a union carpenter or boilermaker
and leave the kitchen behind.
“I don’t think I’m where I need to be.
That’s why I’m here,” Brazil said during
a class held at the USW headquarters
building. “I show up on time every day
hoping to learn something and gain
more confidence.”
The program has strict attendance
and other requirements, and boasts a
graduation rate of about 80 percent and
a placement rate into a job or apprentice
training program of 63 percent, said
director DeWitt Walton.
“We teach people marketable skills,”
said International Vice President Fred
Redmond, chairman of the APRI’s
national board of directors. “We engage
students, help them to understand that in
this country, if you exert yourself, if you
put your mind to it, you can be a very
productive member of society.”
Jamar Shegog is a success story. The
former felon was hired this summer as
a human resources clerk with a large
construction company. He is pleased to
have made the successful transition to a
full-time job.
“The APRI program gave me a
chance,” Shegog said in a thank-you
note. “If I can do it, a black man with
no college degree and a felony record
working in the corporate world, it can be
done.”
T
he USW is partnering with
worker centers and community
organizations to help bring
the security of unionization to
low-wage car wash workers in California and Chicago. The union is also
working with a community organization
to help striking workers at the Palermo
frozen pizza factory in Milwaukee.
In Los Angeles, the USW and the
AFL-CIO got together with religious,
community and academic groups to
establish a workers’ center that delivers
social services such as language and citizenship training along with organizing
assistance to some of the city’s 10,000
car wash workers, many of whom work
for tips or wages that are well below the
minimum wage.
District 12 Director Robert LaVenture said car wash workers are often
treated like they are in a third-world
country and helping them is the right
thing to do. “It’s really a social justice
issue,” he said.
It took a few years, but the USW
and the coalition, named CLEAN for
Community Labor Environmental Action Network, succeeded in negotiating
the industry’s first union contracts. The
first to sign was the Bonus Hand Wash
and Auto Spa on Lincoln Boulevard in
E
ach USW local has a civil
rights committee to protect the
legal and contractual rights of
the union’s members at work.
But the union’s concern for civil rights
does not stop at USW workplaces.
USW volunteers worked hard in
2012 to combat conservative attempts
to roll back voting rights with new laws
and policies, including voter identification restrictions and the purging of voters from registration rolls – all policies
that would disproportionately affect
non-white, student and elderly voters.
“Over the past several years, the
USW has been working with the American Civil Liberties Union and other
groups against voter identification laws
and other tactics intended to suppress
voting,” International Vice President
Fred Redmond said. “Our movement
Los Angeles.
“What I hope is that future generations who come to work here aren’t
treated as badly as we were — that
they’re no longer humiliated, but
respected,” said Oliverio Gomez, who
worked at Bonus for nine years.
In Chicago, the USW partnered with
an existing organization, Arise Chicago
Worker Center, to form an organizing
committee and develop a campaign to
bring the union to car wash workers
there. Arise Chicago sought out the
USW after learning about the success of
the CLEAN campaign in Los Angeles.
Organizing campaigns are underway
in Chicago while car wash workers
have received workers’ rights trainings,
including an OSHA approved health
and safety workshop.
is growing and mobilized, and we will
not allow our country to return to the
days of Jim Crow, literacy tests and poll
taxes.”
The campaign released videos
highlighting the stories of validly registered voters who were denied voting
rights. They included former U.S. Rep.
Lincoln Davis of Tennessee, who was
stopped from voting in a state primary
despite his having voted in the same
precinct since 1995; Gilbert Paar, a
Wisconsin veteran who was prevented
from using military identification to
vote; and Clifford Glass, also of Tennessee, who was barred from voting
after losing his license in an accident.
That work is continuing this year
as state legislatures consider and pass
voter suppression laws under the pretext
of preventing voter fraud.
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
15
A
group of USW
activists spent
the waning days
of summer on a
5,500-mile cross-country
road trip aimed at strengthening grassroots ties between
local unions and other community groups throughout
North America.
The “Summer of Solidarity Tour” began Aug. 17 in
Philadelphia and ended on
Labor Day, Sept. 2, in Los
Angeles. In between, the
group took part in events
in and around Pittsburgh;
Detroit; Windsor, Ontario;
Chicago; Metropolis, Ill.;
Milwaukee; Minneapolis;
Fargo, N.D.; Missoula,
Mont.; Portland, Ore., and
San Francisco.
“We met thousands of
people from dozens of different organizations trying to
organize for union contracts,
workplace improvements
and economic justice in their
communities,” said Michael
O’Brien, a member of Local
6500 in Sudbury, Ontario,
and one of the tour organizers.
The group included USW
members as well as activists
from other unions, community groups and cultural
performers. Paid for by the
participants and with donations, the trip also included
concerts and panel discussions as well as visits to local
union halls and churches.
Joining picket lines
In Philadelphia, the tour
joined with the Philadelphia
Coalition Advocating Public
Schools to seek more support
for education. In Pittsburgh,
they marched in solidarity with locked-out Local
5032 members at the Neville
Chemical plant.
In Portland, they joined
SEIU members at Portland
State University who were
fighting for a fair contract.
In Los Angeles, the group
walked the picket line with
members of the CLEAN
Carwash Campaign.
The traveling activists
joined fast-food workers in
Northern California for a
massive rally calling for a
higher minimum wage.
They stood in solidarity
with strikers from Rotek/
ThyssenKrupp at their
company’s office in Chicago,
and walked the picket line at
Columbia Grain in Portland.
They joined community
activists in Detroit, putting
Bank of America on public
“trial” for its role in the city’s
economic collapse. In Minnesota, the group joined in
efforts to support a foreclosed-upon homeowner.
Building connections
At each stop, the group
managed to build connections with labor and other
like-minded groups engaged
in similar struggles, the kind
District 12 Director
Robert LaVenture
16
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
that often fall below the radar
of the national media.
“All of these struggles are
connected,” said tour organizer Stephen Lech, president
of Local 7-669 in Metropolis,
Ill. “We are organizing to
bring these struggles together
into an irresistible force of
change.”
The grassroots labor
movement is far from dead,
Lech said.
“Working class organizing is growing and evolving
in bold and exciting ways,”
he added. “But through the
thick of the battle, it’s sometimes difficult to recognize
the swelling movement for
economic justice.”
A
fter a fact-finding mission to
Colombia, Canadian National
Director Ken Neumann called
for action to defend human rights
in the South American country beset by
decades of conflict.
“We saw violence, sorrow, pain, grieving,
poverty and found a widespread perception
that the Colombian government seems to
worry more about its public image than the
suffering of its own people,” Neumann wrote
to Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John
Baird.
Neumann said Canada could help by participating in the peace process and expanding engagement with community and union
leaders.
The delegation included representatives of the USW, the global union Workers
Uniting, and Unite the Union in the United
Kingdom and Ireland.
Columbia’s ongoing conflict has involved
the state and left-wing guerilla groups
including FARC (the Revolutionary Armed
Snapshots from the Summer
of Solidarity Tour
G
District 2 Director
Michael Bolton
lobal union leaders met with
Mexican President Enrique Peña
Nieto in August to show solidarity with Los Mineros, its exiled
leader Napoleón Gómez, and other democratic unions.
The delegation, including Canadian National Director Ken Neumann and International Affairs Director Ben Davis, met with
Peña Nieto and his labor secretary, Alfonso
Navarrete Prida, to call for labor law reform
and the resolution of conflicts with democratic unions.
“We had a clear message for the Mexican
president,” Neumann said. “No more persecution of Los Mineros and other democratic
unions. No more allowing employers to
Forces of Colombia) and
ELN (the National Liberation
Army). Human rights groups
have singled out right-wing
paramilitary groups as
perpetrators of human rights abuses. Allied
with the Colombian Armed Forces, they
fight against guerrillas as well as perceived
sympathizers including union members and
religious activists.
The mission, from July 21 to 26, included
a visit to the northwest region of Catatumbo,
where the delegation met with striking farmers blocking a major road to call for economic investment. The government later agreed
to negotiations.
In the sugar-cane producing region of
Cauca, they met with activists protesting
a military camp near their village. In the
capital city, Bogota, the delegation met with
the executive committee of Colombia’s
largest trade union federation, CUT, whose
leaders complained of threats, detentions and
killings.
They met with activists at the Universidad Nacional and were invited to the home
of Luz Marina Bernal, one of several mothers whose children were allegedly kidnapped
by the army, killed and dressed up as guerrilla fighters.
impose company unions on
the workers. Respect the rights
of Mexican workers now.”
Gómez is living in exile
in Canada, where he fled after
Mexican authorities wrongly
accused him of fraud. He oversees the union
from Vancouver.
“We call on the Mexican government to
follow through on these and the other issues,
including dropping the baseless charges
against Napoleón Gómez so he can return
home,” said International President Leo W.
Gerard.
The delegation expressed concern about
continued legal action against Gómez despite
court decisions exonerating him and Interpol’s decision to cancel a request for his
arrest.
The group also asked Peña Nieto to
end the practice of “protection contracts,”
designed to prevent workers from forming
independent, democratic unions by forcing them into unions that they do not know
about and in which they are unable to participate democratically.
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
17
David Shellenberger
USW photos by Steve Dietz
T
Erin Spengler
USPA President
Van Tenpenny
Elizabeth Shuler
Andrew Voelzke
18
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
he United Steelworkers Press
Association (USPA) training
conference drew a record 160
local union writers, editors,
webmasters and communicators this
year from across the United States and
Canada.
In its 47th year of working with local
union volunteers to improve the USWs
communications, the USPA is embracing modern social media in addition to
the more old-fashioned ink on paper.
“The way we communicate has
evolved over the years, but the goals of
USPA and our union have not,” International President Leo W. Gerard said.
“We have always known that there is no
more effective or trusted form of communication than member-to-member
communication. Yet in order for us to
be successful, we must evolve in the
tools we use so that we reach as many
members as possible.”
The working days of the conference,
held from Sept. 29 through Oct. 2 in
Pittsburgh, were packed with speakers
and workshops with topics including
writing and editing skills; website, video
and photo basics, and using communications to build bargaining power.
Brandon Weber from the new multimedia news site UpWorthy.com shared
tips on how to promote an online story
while Sujata Tejwani from Wellstone
Action addressed effective messaging.
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz
Shuler discussed changing the public’s
unfair perceptions of organized labor.
Unions, she maintains, should show
the public their diversity, innovative
approaches to labor-management relations, their role in the workplaces of the
future and the quality improvements in
products and services that a union voice
on the job can bring.
To tell those stories and reach members constantly inundated with information, USW communicators should use
traditional media and the growing number of Internet platforms now available,
said USPA President Van Tenpenny.
“The USPA has been on the cutting
edge of communications for our rank
and file ever since we first formed in
1966,” said Tenpenny, the financial secretary of Local 1155 in Warren County,
Tenn.
“We’ve got to incorporate every possible tool to better communicate with
our members – Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, just to name
a few,” Tenpenny said. “Our members
are using them all to some degree, and
we’ve got to go where our members are
to communicate with them.”
International Secretary-Treasurer
Stan Johnson and International Vice
President Fred Redmond also spoke at
the conference with Gerard, who distributed awards recognizing excellence
from local union newsletters, websites,
photos and social media.
The Howard J. McCartney Award,
established to encourage and inspire local union editors, was presented to Tim
Sweeney of Local 12075 in District 2.
The Raymond W. Pasnick Awards
for editorial excellence went to the “Local Link,” (1,000 members and under)
published by Local 7687 in District 10,
and the “Warren Steelworker,” (over
1,000 members) published by Local
1375 in District 1.
U
SW members from around
the country joined tens of
thousands of Americans in
Washington, D.C., to mark
the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March
on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
This year’s commemoration, held in
August, included a week of celebration,
much of it dedicated to the same theme
that drew more than 200,000 demonstrators 50 years ago: Economic justice.
President Barack Obama, standing on the marble steps of the Lincoln
Memorial where Martin Luther King
delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream”
speech a half-century earlier, issued an
impassioned call for equal opportunity
for all Americans.
“The test was not and never has been
whether the doors of opportunity are
cracked a bit wider for a few,” the president said. “It was whether our economic
system provides a fair shot for the many
— for the black custodian and the white
steelworker, the immigrant dishwasher
and the Native American veteran. To
win that battle, to answer that call, this
remains our great unfinished business.”
Forgotten over time, and overshadowed by the greatness of King’s signature speech, was the fact that the original march was as much about achieving
economic justice for all as it was about
securing civil rights protections. March
organizers A. Phillip Randolph and Bayard Rustin both had early ties to labor
unions, and the 2013 events remained
true to their vision.
Labor a driving force
“Since the beginning, the cause
of civil rights has gone hand-in-hand
with the cause of organized labor,” said
International President Leo W. Gerard. “Labor leaders such as A. Phillip
Randolph and Bayard Rustin were the
driving forces behind the 1963 march.
They recognized then, as we do today,
that the American Dream cannot be
achieved without true economic justice,
and that economic justice cannot be
achieved until all workers have the
freedom to organize. Dr. King died in
pursuit of that cause.”
The commemoration included concerts, panel discussions, church services, rallies and two large-scale marches.
Participants agreed that, despite tremendous progress in the past five decades,
there is much more work to be done to
achieve true equality.
“This is not the time for nostalgic
commemoration,” said King’s son,
Martin Luther King III. “The task is not
done. The journey is not complete. We
can and we must do more.”
The original march created a political momentum for change that eventually led to the passage of the Civil Rights
and Voting Rights acts. Today, with voting rights and union rights under attack,
and economic inequality mounting,
marchers hoped to build momentum for
another political movement.
“We must do more than simply commemorate Dr. King’s call for justice,”
Gerard said. “We must continue to stand
up and fight harder than ever to make
his dream a reality.”
Photos by Dwight Kirk/D’flat
Communications
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
19
A
fter a hard summer of bargaining, some 16,000 USW
members employed by the
three largest major tire companies – Goodyear, Bridgestone Americas and BFGoodrich – have ratified new
contracts.
In each agreement, USW members
made economic and non-economic gains
that improve living standards, preserve
retirement security and provide the best
possible health care coverage.
“Our local union negotiating committees and staff did a great job for our
members given the current environment,” said International SecretaryTreasurer Stan Johnson, who leads the
USW’s Rubber and Plastics Industry
Conference.
“The tire industry has been under
unrelenting attack from foreign competitors, and these contracts allow the
manufacturing operations to continue to
be competitive in the marketplace and
remain viable places of employment into
the future.”
The contract with Goodyear Tire and
Rubber Co. covers about 8,500 members
at six plant locations in Akron, Ohio;
Buffalo, N.Y.; Danville, Va.; Fayetteville,
N.C.; Gadsden, Ala., and Topeka, Kan.
Approved by a three-to-one margin in
August balloting, it expires in July 2017.
Bridgestone pact
The agreement with Bridgestone, a
subsidiary of Michelin North America
Inc., covers some 4,500 members in
Akron, Ohio; Des Moines, Iowa; Russellville, Ark.; La Vergne, Tenn.; Warren
County, Tenn., and Bloomington, Ill.
It passed by a two-to-one margin and
expires in July 2017.
The BFGoodrich agreement covers
2,400 workers in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and
Fort Wayne, Ind. It runs until July 2016.
While each contract is unique to each
company, Johnson said the union was
successful in negotiating agreements that
kept local unions on par with their peers.
“It preserved pattern bargaining,”
Johnson said.
Common bargaining goals at all of
the companies included closing pay and
benefit gaps between senior employees
and newer hires.
“It was closed in different ways,
primarily due to an increase in pay for
the new hires and increasing benefit levels, with the exception of BFGoodrich,
where much of that had already been
accomplished mid-term,” Johnson added.
Plant protection
All six Goodyear facilities are protected from closure during the life of the
contract, and the USW-represented jobs
at the plants are protected with staffing
level guarantees.
“We negotiated a commitment from
Goodyear to invest in our North American facilities so that future generations
can look forward to continuing the
tradition of manufacturing,” said International Vice President Tom Conway, who
led the Goodyear negotiations.
Goodyear committed to a minimum
of $700 million in capital expenditures,
and agreed to give meaningful consideration to using the protected plants for
any new branded products for North
America, Conway said.
The bargaining committee rejected
company proposals that would have
reduced health care benefits and raised
premiums to excessive levels. Benefit
I
mports of Chinese-made consumer
tires into the United States exploded
after the expiration last September of
three years of tariffs initiated by a USW
trade complaint.
In the first half of this year, Chinese
exports of passenger and light truck tires
climbed 74.1 percent to 23.8 million
tires, up from 13.7 million in the first six
months of 2012.
If that pace continues, the value of
Chinese tires exported to the United
States could reach nearly $2 billion this
year, up from $1.55 billion in 2008, the
year before relief was enacted.
The USW filed a petition with the
20
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
changes were kept to a minimum and
premium increases will stay below the
national average for the coverage available.
Wages and the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) were key issues. Conway
said COLA calculations were unchanged
and COLA coverage was expanded to all
USW-represented Goodyear employees.
Johnson said the Goodyear membership demanded a fair contract that
improved living standards without
sacrificing the long-term viability of the
company or placing jobs at risk.
“Thanks to their solidarity and the
hard work of our negotiating committee,
we are proud to have accomplished those
goals with Goodyear,” he said.
Moving ahead
After agreeing to concessions in
past bargaining rounds, USW members
entered this year’s talks with Bridgestone
determined to move ahead, and they did.
“This contract represents a step forward. It provided for wage and pension
improvements while protecting healthcare coverage,” Johnson said. “Substantial gains were also made for those hired
in recent years, which was another goal
set by the bargaining committees.”
The new agreement provided a
$1,000 signing bonus and general wage
increases for all employees, as well
as improvements to the wage tier and
benefit systems for new hires, increased
pension contributions and protection of
retiree health care.
USW members wore shirts during the
negotiations that read “The Concession
Stand is Closed” to highlight the determination of the membership to make
gains.
U.S. International Trade Commission
in 2009 requesting an investigation of
Chinese imports under Section 421 of
the U.S. Trade Act.
That complaint and the subsequent
investigation led President Obama to
that September impose tariffs of 35
percent in the first year, 30 percent in the
second and 25 percent in the third.
Preceding the relief, the domestic
industry had seen its own shipments
decline sharply from 181.3 million tires
in 2004 to 127.5 million in 2008.
The industry stabilized with the
tariffs and experienced some rebound.
The impact on U.S. jobs appeared to
“We made sacrifices
in the past when the company needed us to make
them,” said Randy Boulton,
Bridgestone coordinator
for the USW. “Now, with
significant investments being made in the workers and
in the plants, we’re looking
forward to a prosperous
future.”
For the USW members
at the BFGoodrich (BFG)
plants in Alabama and
Indiana, the second tentative
agreement was the charm.
After the members
rejected the initial tentative agreement in late July,
the bargaining committee resumed negotiations,
resulting in a contract that
members of Local 351L and Local 715L
ratified on Aug. 24.
“Our goal throughout the bargaining process has been to reach an agreement that ensures a solid future both for
our members and their families,” said
Johnson, who led the negotiations for the
union, along with BFGoodrich coordinator
Larry Jackson.
The bargaining committee worked
hard to maintain a high-level health care
plan for USW members, with the same
level of benefits and some increases to copays and deductibles.
The contract also maintains the current job security language and method for
calculating COLA while switching from a
defined-benefit pension plan to a definedcontribution 401(k) retirement plan at the
contract’s end.
Goodyear photo
be positive despite increases in tires
shipped from Indonesia, Taiwan, Mexico
and other countries not covered by the
restraints.
Before the USW filing, imports from
China had grown from 10.8 million
tires in 2003 to 46 million in 2008. In
2010, the first full year of relief, Chinese
imports fell to 30.3 million tires and
dropped further to 24.6 million in 2011.
There are more than 350 tire brands
available to U.S. consumers. Tire Business, an industry publication, estimates
that roughly 50 of them are owned or
controlled by Chinese tire makers or trading companies.
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
21
USW member Alan White (center) stands with Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational
Safety and Health David Michaels (left) and Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez.
A
lan White, a 48-year-old
USW member who works at a
foundry in Buffalo, N.Y., was
told by his doctor four years
ago that he likely will die of exposure to
the silica dust he inhaled on the job.
White was a single father struggling
to make ends meet on government assistance when he landed the job 18 years
ago, meeting a long-held goal of working
at the same foundry as his father.
“I made more than $60,000 the first
year and thought I was set,” White
recalled. “I was ready and willing to give
my all to work. But I never realized that
that included my life.”
White was in Washington, D.C., in
August when the Occupational Safety
and Health Administration (OSHA)
unveiled proposed new rules that would
dramatically reduce workplace exposure
to crystalline silica – tiny, inhalable particles that are known to increase the risk
of lung cancer.
International President Leo W. Gerard
called the OSHA action “long overdue”
and said too many workers have died
from exposure to silica.
The USW has investigated the dangers of silica exposure for many years
and knows that exposure to the particles
100 times smaller than grains of sand can
be controlled, creating safer workplaces.
“The best employers are already doing what OSHA has proposed,” Gerard
added. “But everyone deserves protection from deadly workplace diseases.”
Endurance sapped
The proposed new rules are too late
for White, a new grandfather. But they
could save many other lives
and help to protect millions of
other workers.
“I probably will not be
able to run with my grandchild through the park as I had
hoped … Eventually I won’t
Frac sand destined for the oil and gas fields piles up at the
EOG Resources Inc. processing plant in Chippewa Falls, Wis.
AP photo by Steve Karnowski
22
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
be able to work at the plant. I will probably be too young to retire or to use my
401(k),” said White, who spoke at an
OSHA press conference.
White said he had always been in
good physical condition prior to his
diagnosis. He doesn’t smoke or drink,
watches what he eats and now works in a
part of the plant where exposure to silica
is reduced. But the disease has sapped
his physical endurance and he anticipates
one day not being able to walk short
distances or climb a few steps.
“My health will not improve, but as
OSHA moves forward with this silica
standard, other workers will be able to
enjoy their time with their grandchildren,” he said.
The rules developed by OSHA
would revise standards set more than
40 years ago for workers in a range of
industries, including construction, shipbuilding, railroads, foundries and glass
factories.
Silica exposure is a serious threat
to more than 2 million U.S. workers,
including 1.8 million in construction
and 320,000 in general industry and
maritime, the agency estimates. About
100,000 of those workers perform
high-risk jobs such as abrasive blasting,
foundry work, stone cutting, rock drilling, quarry work and tunneling.
Rules would save lives
In addition, growing numbers of
energy workers risk exposure as a result
of the domestic oil and gas boom driven
by hydraulic fracturing, a production
method that uses large volumes of fine
sand.
If the new rules go into effect, they
would save nearly 700 lives per year
and prevent 1,600 new cases of the lung
disease silicosis annually, OSHA said.
The current rules are “outdated, inconsistent between industries and do not
adequately protect worker health,” said
David Michaels, the assistant
secretary of labor in charge of OSHA.
“The proposed rule brings protections
into the 21st century.”
The new standard, if implemented,
will cut permitted dust exposure levels
in half for general industry and maritime
workers and would slash it by 80 percent for those in construction industries.
The rule would require exposure
monitoring and medical exams for
exposed workers and implementation of
well-established dust-control methods
such as ventilation and water.
“The proposed rule uses common
sense measures that will protect workers’ lives and lungs, like keeping the
material wet so dust doesn’t become airborne,” added Michaels. “It is designed
to give employers flexibility in selecting
ways to meet the standard.”
Public comments
OSHA said the proposal is based
on extensive review of scientific and
technical evidence and consideration of
current industry consensus standards.
The agency held public stakeholder
meetings, conferences and meetings
with employer and employee organizations.
OSHA will accept public comments
on the proposed rule for 90 days following publication in the Federal Register.
Public hearings also will be conducted.
Some business groups have
criticized the proposed new standards
as unnecessary, including the National
Industrial Sand Association, whose
member mining companies supply sand
to industrial users and the oil and natural
gas industry.
White, the USW member, noted that
mankind has known silica is a serious
health hazard for thousands of years.
“This is not rocket science,” he said.
“This is basic workplace engineering to
control hazardous exposure.”
White, a member of Local 593,
said there is a focus on safety, particularly obvious hazards, at his plant. His
employer, Aurubis, seems to follow the
rules, but the rules on silica dust are
inadequate. Aurubis, the largest copper
producer in Europe and a leader in copper recycling, acquired the Buffalo plant
in 2011 from Luvata.
“They tell us to be careful of slips
and trips and mind the heat. They tell us
to lift properly and be careful of traffic
in the plant,” he said. “But they did not
tell us about the unseen dangers. They
never told me about silica and the health
effects that breathing it can cause.”
T
he Health Safety and Environment Department would like
to hear from USW members
who have experienced the
personal toll of working with silica
either to themselves, family members or
co-workers.
The department also needs to learn
about specific workplaces where silica
exposure occurs – both where employers have done nothing to improve conditions and where employers have done
the right thing and reduced exposure.
Submitted examples may be used in
testimony that the HSE Department is
compiling to support the formal adoption of the proposed OSHA rules limiting workplace exposure to silica.
Contact Don Faulkner at
412-562-2581 or safety@usw.org.
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
23
International Vice President
Tom Conway
NOBP conference meeting
T
he energy industry is rapidly
changing and the USW, whose
members in the petroleum
industry operate two-thirds of
the nation’s refining capacity, is taking
steps to adapt along with it.
“We are on the cusp of an energy
revolution and we have to make sure
that it includes our members,” Inter-
24
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
national President Leo W. Gerard told
250 oil sector leaders who attended this
year’s National Oil Bargaining Program
(NOBP) conference in Pittsburgh.
The industry could look completely
different in 10 years with the boom in
natural gas drilling, and changes in both
government energy policy and how the
companies operate, Gerard said.
“The industry is changing, and we
need to change with it to keep up,” he
added. “They’re not going to wait for
us.”
A task force of NOBP policy committee members, local union members
and staff will meet with rank-and-file
oil workers to discuss the collective
bargaining process and determine if it
meets their needs, Gerard said.
The union is just beginning the
review process, said International Vice
President Tom Conway. He noted that
the union bargains differently in steel,
oil and paper and is not tied to any one
way of conducting negotiations.
“We do what works,” Conway said.
International Vice President Gary
Beevers, who leads the oil bargaining
program, said feedback from oil workers will be collected at regional meetings and then reviewed by the NOBP
policy committee before or if any action
is taken.
In contract bargaining years, the
policy committee helps put together
the union’s proposals, keeps in touch
with local unions for their direction in
bargaining, and votes on whether to
accept the lead company’s offer. The
oil industry chooses a lead company to
negotiate with the union.
Bargaining was last held in 2012,
and the next round of talks will take
place in 2015. A three-year agreement
reached with Shell, the lead company
in the 2012 bargaining, was used as a
pattern for other companies.
USW-represented oil workers received a 2.5 percent wage increase for
the first year and 3 percent increases in
each of the two remaining years of the
pattern agreement in the 2012 round.
Average pay is about $34 an hour.
The agreement also called for a
union process safety representative at
most facilities. Process safety refers to
issues like equipment reliability, inspection and testing of equipment, adequate
training and preventative maintenance.
In addition, the contract included
process safety training, implementation
of a fatigue prevention standard and an
annual site process safety review.
Refining volatile
Profit margins in refining have been
extremely volatile as the industry grapples with fluctuating crude oil prices,
uncertainty in the world economy and
the development of new and alternative
sources of energy including the hydraulic fracturing of rock to reach natural
gas and oil deposits.
Some major companies have sold
refineries to other operators and turned
their attention to the more lucrative
exploration and drilling sides of the
business while others have planned
significant refinery expansions.
Gerard and International
Secretary Treasurer Stan Johnson noted
the union’s recent successes in working with politicians and helping to find
buyers to keep open refineries that were
threatened with closure in Pennsylvania
and Hawaii.
“If people think that politics don’t
matter, all they have to do is look at
what we did there,’’ Gerard added.
“Who you have in office makes a difference.”
Johnson said the refinery victories
were an example of how the USW and
its active and retired members can effect change, but, he said, those battles
for good jobs are best fought with allies,
not alone.
“It’s no longer good enough to just
pay your dues and let somebody else
fight the fight. We are it,” Johnson said.
“We need allies. We need to be talking to our families, our friends and our
neighbors to get them on board.”
In preparation for the 2015 talks, the
oil workers who attended the Aug. 1-3
conference elected a new NOBP policy
committee and attended workshops on
issues including the National Labor Relations Board and how to bargain health
care benefits in light of the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Justin Donley, vice president of Local 912 at PBF Energy in Toledo, Ohio,
said the workshops prepared him for a
meeting he had two weeks later with
management on employee benefits.
Progress needed in safety
Besides fighting for better wages
and benefits, the USW needs to make
more progress toward making refineries
safer places to work, Gerard said, noting that in 2011 there was, on average, a
refinery fire once a week.
“Way too many people were injured,
killed or maimed,” Gerard said. “We
have to do more. We need to elect
legislators who will make these (safety)
changes.”
The USW is making it clear to employers that if they want to work with
the USW, the union will be a constructive ally. If not, they are in for a fight.
“How you mobilize your membership is important,” Gerard told the
delegates. “We can only win through
our solidarity. We won’t let anyone
undermine it.”
M
embers at the National
Oil Bargaining Program
(NOBP) Conference in
August witnessed a changing of the guard.
NOBP Policy Committee members
for a combined 38 years, Don Houtchens and Mike Maloney were replaced
with two new leaders, Steve Garey
of District 12 and Mike McFadden of
District 11.
Houtchens served on the committee since 1995 when his local, 12-590
in Ferndale, Wash., was part of the
Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers
(OCAW). He retired Aug. 1, just as the
conference got under way, giving him a
chance to say goodbye.
“The timing was a wonderful
coincidence,” said Houtchens, who also
served as president of his local from
1990 to 2009.
Maloney, of Local 241 at the HollyFrontier Refinery in El Dorado, Kan.,
said that he was proud of the accomplishments the committee made during
his tenure.
“We all felt an ownership,” Maloney said. “We all felt we were working
together toward one common goal.”
The policy committee, with members elected from five regions, drafts the
USW’s national oil bargaining proposal
and works with Vice President Gary
Beevers during negotiations.
Both retirees said the “successorship” clause, which preserves union
rights when companies are sold, was an
important bargaining victory.
Maloney, who has worked for six
different employers, said the clause
helped him and others maintain good
wages and benefits.
“Without it, you’re at their mercy,”
he said.
Houtchens, who worked at the
Phillips 66 refinery in Ferndale, said
changes in the industry make it important to have a union willing to stand up
to employers.
“We need to be willing to take them
on,” he said.
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
25
T
he way Peter Hamryszak sees
it, decades of building railroad
cars for FreightCar America
and its predecessors – along
with signed contracts negotiated by the
USW – entitled him and hundreds of
other retirees to receive company-paid
health and life insurance benefits.
Showing none of the loyalty that
USW members showed to it, FreightCar is seeking federal court
approval to evade its contractual obligations
to some 800
retirees who worked at its now-closed
“car shop” in Johnstown, Pa.
“We were promised health care
benefits for the rest of our lives on
retirement, and now the company says
no, they want to renege on it,” said
Hamryszak, president of the Johnstown
FreightCar chapter of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees
(SOAR).
The USW called the move a meanspirited scheme by FreightCar to shed
its obligations and a greed-fueled
money grab aimed at the men and
women who dedicated their lives and
careers to building rail cars and earning
profits for FreightCar and its predecessor companies.
It’s a shame that a big company
would hurt retired workers who earned
the benefits over many years of work,
Hamryszak said. “It’s a terrible situation
for the retirees and widows of retirees,”
he added. “They could take a beating.”
Fighting back
The Johnstown retirees have the
USW and its legal department to fight
Peter Hamryszak
26
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
back on their behalf, unlike non-union
employees who have been faced with
the same type of corporate greed.
Employer-paid health coverage nationwide has been under attack since the
early 1990s as costs increased and new
accounting standards forced companies
to declare future health care liabilities
on their books. Only about half of large
employers now provide the benefit, a
decrease of about 80 percent from two
decades ago.
Workers built railcars in Johnstown
for more than a century from 1901 to
2008 when management closed the facility in a clear attempt to avoid pension
liabilities to its union workforce.
Bethlehem Steel operated the factory from 1923 to 1991, when it was
purchased in a management buyout and
renamed Johnstown America Industries.
It became Johnstown America Corp. in
1999 and FreightCar America in 2005.
On July 9, FreightCar informed the
USW and retirees that it intended to
cancel contributions for health and life
insurance benefits for the Johnstown
retirees beginning Oct. 1, a deadline that
has since been extended to Nov. 1 while
court-ordered mediation takes place.
Company sues union, retirees
Before making the announcement
and giving retirees and the USW a
chance to respond, the company filed a
lawsuit in Chicago against the union and
each individual retiree.
FreightCar is seeking a declaratory
judgment from a federal court in Illinois
that it has the right to unilaterally eliminate benefits under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).
Retirees received a formal summons
requiring them to respond within 20
days.
The USW filed a motion to dismiss
the company’s lawsuit in Chicago and
brought a class-action lawsuit against
FreightCar in federal court in Johnstown
to require the company to pay the contractually agreed upon benefits.
Over the company’s objection, USW
attorneys won a stay from the judge,
so that retirees need not immediately
respond to the summons. The USW also
sought an injunction in Pennsylvania to
prevent the company from terminating
the benefits.
Retirees, meanwhile, are scrambling
to find alternative coverage while wait-
ing to see what happens in the courts.
Many of them are angry and frightened.
“It’s awful and a crying shame,” said
Melvin Poborsky, 78, as he and his wife,
Susanne, looked over the costs of alternative coverage at a meeting of retirees
held in late September.
Worrying about money
Because of the shutdown, many of
the retirees are too young to qualify for
Medicare coverage and worry that they
cannot afford to buy replacement coverage if the company prevails.
“We went to work every day for this
corporation. We did what they told us to,
and now this,” said retiree Bob Christen,
who at 64 is not yet eligible for Medicare. “The people in Washington have
no idea.’’
The USW maintains that the collective bargaining agreements between
the workers and FreightCar are binding
contracts requiring the company to pay
for the benefits.
The collective bargaining agreements
said the employer’s obligation was to
provide the now-contested benefits for
as long as the retirees remained retired,
“notwithstanding the expiration of this
agreement, except as the company and
union may agree otherwise.”
The USW never agreed to convert
important retirement provisions into
benefits that are “gratuitous” or terminable at the employer’s whim, as the
company’s lawsuit claims.
Not the first time
It’s not the first battle to be waged
with management over employee
benefits. In 2002, the company eliminated retiree insurance benefits when
Bethlehem Steel went bankrupt and
stopped reimbursing Johnstown America
for benefits. USW attorneys sued, and
retirees won a settlement in which the
company reinstated benefits.
Then in 2006, former FreightCar
President and CEO John Carroll explicitly told union members that layoffs
would take place or the plant would be
closed before a group of workers hired
in 1988 and 1989 earned enough service
to qualify for pensions.
Mass layoffs took place in 2007, and
the company ceased railcar production,
removed equipment from Johnstown and
assigned the work to other non-union
plant locations.
The USW supported a lawsuit that
accused the company of unlawful discrimination for furloughing employees
in order to deprive them of pension benefits. Judge Kim Gibson of Johnstown
federal court ordered the company to
reinstate employees and reopen the plant
until they could qualify for pensions.
FreightCar appealed Gibson’s order
and sought to vacate an arbitration
award that found it had violated the
union’s contract by laying off workers
with 20 or more years of service.
In 2008, the USW announced a
settlement that obligated the company to
provide pensions to 201 union members and severance pay to another 110
workers who were laid off in 2007. It
resolved the lawsuit and the arbitration
award and recognized May 15, 2008,
as the official shutdown date for the
purposes of collective bargaining and
benefits.
Most retirees had hoped that would
be the end of attempts to reduce or cut
their benefits. But they underestimated
the corporation’s desire to cut retirement
costs.
“It’s never ending,” retiree Dennis
Conahan told the Johnstown TribuneDemocrat, the local newspaper. “We
thought they’d never bother us again,
and here we are back at it.”
Vintage railroad car and shop photos courtesy of the Johnstown
Flood Museum Archives, Johnstown Area Heritage Association
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
27
O
ver the past 40 years, the
National Labor College
(NLC) has helped to train and
educate thousands of union
leaders, many of them USW members,
at the school’s campus in Silver Spring,
Md.
Today, however, all of the college’s
instruction is done online, and the NLC
has put its 47-acre campus in the Washington, D.C., suburbs up for sale.
“We have really followed the needs
of our students,” NLC President Paula
Peinovich said of the recent shift to online learning. “It has become a very accepted mode of delivery of education.”
For most of the NLC’s existence,
union members attending the college
would travel to the campus for an intensive week of study, then head home
for weeks of follow-up work, Peinovich
said.
“Now, online education is completely accepted in the community,” she said.
“This is just how you do business.”
Jimmy Easter, retired secretarytreasurer of Local 227 in Pasadena,
Texas, attended a one-week course at the
campus in 2008. Though he continued
to take NLC courses, eventually earning a bachelor’s degree in labor education, that week was his only on-campus
experience.
“I learned more about unions taking
online courses at NLC than I have for
the previous 65 years after being raised
in a union home and working for the
past 21 years as a union craftsman and
representative,” Easter said.
Founded in 1969
Founded in 1969 by the AFL-CIO as
the George Meany Training Center, the
school became a degree-granting college
and got a new name in 1997. It remains
the only college in the country that exclusively serves the educational needs of
union members, offering seven degree
programs and 13 certificate programs.
The NLC’s shift to web-based courses, made gradually over the past few
years, has meant lower costs for union
members wishing to participate, and a
28
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
corresponding increase in enrollment.
Since 2010, 40 USW members have
sought bachelor’s degrees at the school,
with another 16 taking courses in union
skills. Overall, the NLC has served
about 800 students in the past year in its
degree program, along with 400 students studying union skills and another
1,000 learning to deal with hazardous
materials through a program funded by a
federal grant.
Peinovich said enrollment has grown
by an average of 18 percent per year
over the past three years, and she expects enrollment to continue to increase.
Jess Sifford, a full-time safety representative and Rapid Response coordinator for Local 338 in Spokane Wash.,
started taking classes through the NLC
in 2011. He said he would not have been
able to do so if the classes were not online because the travel expenses would
have been too high.
“It can be tough for a working family
to afford,” said Sifford, who has worked
at Kaiser Aluminum for the past nine
years.
Sifford said online classes allow for
more flexibility, both with his finances
and with his time. “If a person has the
drive, then it’s a great thing,”
he added.
Both Sifford and Easter
said that the NLC’s instruction
system allows for significant
interaction among classmates, despite the geographic
distance, and helps to forge
bonds among members from
different unions, all of whom
must balance their educational goals with their work,
family and union responsibilities.
Through his classes
Sifford said he has made
connections with other USW members
around the country, as well as with
members of the Service Employees
International Union (SEIU) and the
National Education Association (NEA),
learning from them as well as from the
NLC about new ways to approach union
issues.
“It helps you think outside the box,”
Sifford said of his inter-union connections. “The biggest thing is the camaraderie between union members. It doesn’t
matter what union you’re in or where
you’re from, they’re there to help.”
The training and connections found
through the NLC can help new and seasoned union leaders develop the skills to
build strong local unions, giving them
the chance to learn how to deal with
complicated situations before they come
up, Easter said.
“You learn things as you go, but if
you have a better foundation, you have
a broader view and a better understanding” through exposure to NLC training,
Easter said. “The frustration level for a
lot of people would be a little bit less.”
International Vice President Fred
Redmond, a member of the NLC Board
of Trustees, said the college is important
to the future of the labor movement.
“Now more than ever, unions must
recommit to educating our members and
our allies in the community about the
importance of collective action, and the
concrete steps we need to take to build
a strong and lasting labor movement,”
Redmond said. “The National Labor
College is a vital part of that mission.”
Coupled with the USW’s Next Generation program, NLC training can help
spread a positive message of unionism
to a younger group of workers, who
may not have been exposed to unionism
before, Easter said.
“We learned from experience and
the people who came before us,” Easter
said. “We need to give people a foundation of what we are as a union, and why
it’s so important.”
In Easter’s local, formerly part of
OCAW and PACE, he has used what
he learned at the NLC to implement a
training program for fellow members,
providing instruction on broad issues such as the history of unions
and the functions of government
agencies like OSHA and the
NLRB, while also training
members about day-to-day
tasks such as bargaining
and writing grievances.
“They learn from each other as well
as from the professor,” Peinovich said.
“There are a lot of ways of interacting.
You don’t have to be face to face to have
solidarity.”
Energized, ready to go
Peinovich said the NLC will be moving this fall to a new location in Silver
Spring.
“It’s time to go. It was a very hard
decision to sell the property. There are
lots of attachments to this beautiful
campus and everything that it has represented over the years,” she said. “But
there’s really a lot of energy about our
future. People are ready to go.”
Peinovich said recent anti-union
political movements, such as the 2011
attacks on workers in states like Wisconsin, helped to energize union members
across the country, including those taking classes through the NLC.
“The Wisconsin experience was a
huge and wonderful lesson for
everyone about what
the union movement is and how it fits
in,” she said.
The NLC, she said, helps to bridge
the gap between a union member’s individual local and the global labor movement. “We fill that very important role,”
Peinovich said.
Easter said the NLC’s role in bridging that gap is essential to building a
thriving labor movement.
“We see extraordinary measures
being taken against workers’ rights, yet
many union leaders and members have
remained lethargic in response,” he said.
With anti-union politicians continuing to push Right to Work (for less) and
other regressive policies, education and
communication will be the key to building solidarity among the next generation
of union activists, Easter said.
“Management wants to
get everything out of the
workers that they possibly
can,” Easter said. “We
need to get everything we
can out of our union.”
National Labor College website and campus
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
29
T
he USW urged Republic Steel
to cooperate with the union on
improving safety after federal
regulators cited the steelmaker
for 24 violations at its Canton, Ohio,
plant and fined it $1.14 million.
The Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (OSHA) issued the citations and proposed fine in August after
investigating a formal complaint from
the USW alleging inadequate protection
against falls and other unsafe practices
in the plant’s melt shop.
“We always prefer to work jointly
on safety with employers,” said District
1 Director Dave McCall. “But when
they refuse to correct conditions that
threaten our members’ lives, we’re
thankful for OSHA.”
The union said it was unfortunate
that the inspection and enforcement
were necessary. “We have tried to work
jointly with Republic to avoid these
violations,” McCall added. “However,
it is obvious that some in management
do not understand the seriousness of
inaction.”
Republic, headquartered in Canton,
filed a notice to contest the citations.
The company employs approximately
2,500 workers in Canton and at mills
located in Lorain and Massillon, Ohio,
and Blasdell, N.Y.
During the OSHA inspection,
which began in February, OSHA said it
discovered that two workers had been
seriously injured in falls at Canton in
June and August of 2012.
Of the citations issued, 15 were
willful violations for failing to provide
fall protection. Willful violations, the
highest level of infraction, are issued to
employers who either knowingly fail to
comply with safety requirements or act
with plain indifference to safety.
Among the willful violations was
lack of fall protection for employees
working on runway girders located 66
feet above the ground, and missing and
damaged guardrails at heights of 30
feet.
Workers were also exposed to falls of
up to 30 feet above the slag pit and falls
of 20 feet above an electric arc furnace
and molten steel ladles, OSHA said.
Eight violations were described as
serious, which means there is a substantial probability that death or serious
U
30
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
SW leaders have joined an
ally, the BlueGreen Alliance
(BGA), and an adversary, the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce,
in supporting creation of a national
infrastructure bank to help fund revitalization of the nation’s transportation,
environmental protection, water, energy
and communication systems.
International President Leo W.
Gerard said the National Infrastructure Bank Development Act, currently
before Congress, is a plan that the USW
has long supported.
“This is work that needs to be done
to move the country forward,” Gerard
said.
The USW is actively working with
the BGA, a coalition including the
USW and 13 other labor and
physical harm could result from a
hazard about which the employer knew
or should have known.
One repeat violation was issued for
failing to post danger signs or other effective means of indicating the existence and location of confined spaces in
the melt shop that require a permit for
entry.
Republic has a history of failing to
address fall hazards, OSHA said. In
2011, the agency issued willful citations
to Republic for lack of fall protection
after a worker was seriously injured in
Lorain.
Dr. David Michaels, assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety
and health, called it “unacceptable that
Republic has not taken more effective
steps to improve safety at the Canton
plant, particularly in light of the 2012
settlement aimed at exactly that.”
Republic has been in OSHA’s
Severe Violator Enforcement Program
since 2011. Under the program, OSHA
may inspect any Republic facility if it
has reasonable grounds to believe there
are violations.
The USW and Republic have formed
a joint health and safety task force to
address these issues, improve conditions
and prevent future problems.
environmental groups with 15 million
members, to push for the plan. The
proposal also has the support of the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other
business leaders, as well as a coalition
of big city mayors.
The legislation, introduced by U.S.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), would
direct funding to mass transit and rail
projects, environmental infrastructure
projects such as clean water, and communications upgrades such as broadband and wireless systems. It would
place $25 billion into an infrastructure
bank over the next five years that would
be used to leverage private investment
through low-interest financing options
such as loans, bonds and subsidies.
A $1 billion investment in water infrastructure alone would create 20,000
jobs and help mitigate future disasters,
Gerard said. “It’s the right thing, not
just for this generation, but for the next
generation,” he added.
T
he USW achieved important
safety gains in contract negotiations with Packaging Corp.
of America (PCA) as the paper
company was facing citations from
OSHA for violations at a pulp and paper
mill in Wisconsin.
The gains came in the two most
recent global agreements with PCA –
one covering 1,900 USW-represented
workers at 25 PCA box shops and the
other covering about 1,200 employees
at four PCA mills.
“Our latest deal at PCA is a great example of how a strategic and disciplined
approach to collective bargaining not
only improves and enhances economic
progress during negotiations, but also
permits the union to prioritize and make
gains in other critical areas like health
and safety,” said International Vice
President Jon Geenen, who oversees
bargaining in the paper industry.
“There is no doubt that these successful negotiations will lead to safer
workplaces within PCA, and what we
learn there will be transferable to paper
mills across the country.”
The membership approved the box
T
he USW is upgrading the international headquarters building
in Pittsburgh to drastically
reduce energy consumption – a
move that will pay for itself over time
and generate 20,000 hours of green,
union work.
The project was announced in September, and the first noticeable change
in a series of planned infrastructure
upgrades is a brighter lobby, thanks to
the installation of dozens of better, more
efficient light bulbs.
Renovations will also include the
installation of solar water heating, upgrades to air conditioning and elevator
systems and boiler replacements.
“If we’re going to be a voice for
energy efficiency, if we’re going to be a
voice for carbon reduction and all those
things, we ought to find a way to live up
to what we’re saying,” said International
President Leo W. Gerard. “So, we started
a discussion and found that we could do
a lot of things over a short period of time
agreement in June. The mill agreement
was ratified in September shortly before
OSHA cited PCA for 30 safety violations carrying $185,560 in proposed
penalties related to the severe burning in
March of a worker who was relighting a
steam boiler in Tomahawk, Wis.
“
There is no doubt
that these successful
negotiations will lead to
safer workplaces
within PCA.
”
“Through our discussions, PCA saw
the value of a joint approach to safety
that doesn’t just lower the number of incidents that get reported, but ultimately
lowers the number of fatalities and lifealtering injuries we’ve too often seen at
PCA,” said Leeann Foster, assistant to
International President Leo W. Gerard
and PCA council chair.
In the PCA box shops agreement,
ratified in April, Foster said the USW
insisted on joint training at the 25
facilities. In the mill global agreement,
ratified in September, “we would not
that would pay for themselves.”
The planned upgrades will take place
over the next year and will save the
USW an estimated $200,000 in annual
energy costs. This includes reducing
electricity consumption by 36 percent,
natural gas consumption by 47 percent
and water consumption by 42 percent.
All the work will be done using union
labor and materials. Whenever possible,
the materials and equipment used will be
made by Steelworkers.
“Major energy efficiency projects
create work in the building and manufacturing industries, lower energy costs
and make the world a better place for
our children and grandchildren,” Gerard
said. “Everyone benefits when we do the
right thing.”
The upgrades will help the USW
meet efficiency standards established by
the Green Building Alliance, a non-profit
local coalition that focuses on reducing
the operating costs and environmental
consequences of commercial buildings.
leave the table without obtaining
agreements on a yearly safety and
health roundtable with the USW
and its locals and an agreement to
pilot a hazard mapping and abatement
program,” she said.
The global mill agreement covers
employees at Valdosta, Ga., Counce,
Tenn., Filer City, Mich., and Tomahawk.
The boiler accident at Tomahawk,
which employs about 440, followed
two separate fatal accidents in 2012 and
2008 that killed five workers, Robert
Bonack, OSHA’s area director in Appleton, Wis., said in a statement.
OSHA said its investigation uncovered seven repeat safety violations, 17
serious violations including inadequate
precautions to prevent ignition of flammable vapors, and six other-than-serious
citations.
In 2012, two contractors employed
by a Michigan-based industrial cleaning
company died after being burned by fly
ash at the Tomahawk mill. The cleaning
company was fined $2,800 by OSHA.
In 2008, three PCA workers were
killed and another was injured by an explosion while performing maintenance
atop a storage tank for recycled fiber at
Tomahawk. OSHA fined PCA $22,500.
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
31
SOAR Director on DNC Board
J
im Centner, director of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR), has been elected to a
four-year term on the executive board of the National
Democratic Committee Senior Coordinating Council, a
unit of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
Centner pledges to be a strong advocate for retirees on
the council and to work hard to make sure seniors maintain
a voice in the Democratic Party. “SOAR and the United
Steelworkers are proud to have Jim representing seniors in his newly-elected position,” said SOAR
International President Bill Pienta.
USW Applauds Obama on Chemical Safety
P
resident Barack Obama won praise from the USW for issuing an executive order calling on
federal agencies to improve the safety and security of hazardous chemical manufacturing
sites in the United States.
The order was signed on Aug. 1, three months after an explosion at a fertilizer plant in West,
Texas, killed 15 people, including a dozen volunteer firefighters, injured 300 and destroyed dozens
of buildings.
International President Leo W. Gerard applauded Obama’s “bold action to protect working men
and women and communities across the country from hazardous chemical releases and explosions.”
The presidential order directs the government to streamline, modernize and enhance cooperation
among federal, state and local agencies, to modernize regulations and policies governing chemicals,
and to work with stakeholders to identify best practices. The effort will be coordinated by a new
Chemical Facility Safety and Security Working Group.
The USW, which represents workers in many of the nation’s most dangerous facilities, is
prepared to participate with the working group as an engaged stakeholder committed to protecting
workers, their families, communities and the environment, Gerard said.
“Ultimately these measures will save jobs, save lives, and improve both public health and the
environment,” said International Vice President at Large Carol Landry.
DOE Concerns Atomic Workers
T
he government shutdown altered the agenda of the USW Atomic Energy Workers Council
(AEWC) meeting in October, but it didn’t stop members from voicing their concerns with
the Department of Energy (DOE).
Though DOE officials were unable to attend due to furloughs, the relationship between the department and its contractors and the difficult situation that creates for local unions, took center stage
at the Washington, D.C., conference.
“DOE drives the contractors,” Local 689 President Herman Potter said. “The contractors will do
anything DOE tells them to do because money is involved.”
Retiring International Vice President and Assistant to the President Kip Phillips said the “incestuous relationship” between contractors and the DOE makes it hard for local unions to stand up
against both.
“I encourage you to work together,” Phillips said. “Hopefully with [new Secretary of Energy
Ernest Moniz], we’ll see some changes.”
International Vice President at Large Carol Landry,
who heads the atomic council,
formed a team of staffers to address contractor non-accountability and other issues. Landry
said the DOE and contractors
point fingers at each other and
refuse to sit down together.
“We want contractors to
know the locals aren’t on their
own,” she said.
32
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
ITC: Steel Pipe Dumped in U.S.
S
teel pipe manufacturers from nine countries violated anti-dumping rules by selling products used by oil and natural gas
producers at unfairly low prices in the United
States, the U.S. International Trade Commission
(ITC) said.
The ITC ruled that the unfair conduct by
producers of oil country tubular goods had
harmed the American industry. The countries
are Taiwan, South Korea, India, the Philippines,
Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, and
Vietnam.
The ITC decision allows the U.S. Commerce
Department to continue its separate investigation
on anti-dumping tariffs. A decision from Commerce is expected in the fall.
Chevron to Pay $2 million Fine
C
hevron Corp. agreed to pay $2 million in fines and restitution after
pleading no contest to six misdemeanor charges stemming from an
explosion and fire at its San Francisco Bay refinery.
The oil giant will also spend 3½ years on probation as part of a plea
agreement with the California attorney general’s office and the local district attorney. The Aug. 6, 2012, fire sent thousands of people to hospitals,
many complaining of respiratory problems. Investigators blamed it on a
corroded pipe.
“While nobody was killed or seriously injured, we know that if the
circumstances had been just slightly different, that certainly would not be
the case,” said International President Leo W. Gerard. “We hope these citations ensure that this never happens again, because next time we might not
be so lucky.”
AK Ashland Workers Ratify
M
embers of Local 1865 at AK Steel’s Ashland Works in northeast
Kentucky are working under a new 18-month contract that was
ratified in August. It covers about 860 members and runs until
March 1, 2015.
“This agreement represents a step forward for the workers at Ashland,
and provides some stability for them and their families,” said International
Vice President Tom Conway.
NLRB at Full Strength
T
Scholarship Application Deadline
C
urrent and retired USW members, their
spouses and dependent children are eligible to apply for post-secondary school
scholarships from Union Privilege, the AFL-CIO
benefits program.
Complete applications for Union Plus scholarships must be submitted by 12:00 p.m. (noon,
Eastern Time) on Friday, Jan. 31, 2014. Union
Plus is the branded name of benefits offered by
Union Privilege.
The scholarships are one-time cash grants
ranging from $500 to $4,000 and are awarded to
qualified students accepted by accredited U.S.
colleges and universities, including undergraduate and graduate schools, community colleges,
technical and trade schools.
Applications are available only online at
www.unionplus.org/scholarships.
The Union Plus scholarship program is offered through the Union Plus Education Foundation, which is funded in part by donations from
Capital One, the new provider of Union Plus
credit cards.
Information on the credit card and other
Union Plus benefits is available at
www.unionplus.org. You do not have to participate in a Union Plus program to apply for the
scholarship.
he National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has a full complement
of five members after months of right-wing obstruction delayed
President Barack Obama’s nominees.
Republicans agreed to allow the confirmations as Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) considered changes to Senate rules that would
have eliminated filibusters against certain executive branch nominees.
The full board now includes Chairman Mark Pearce, former AFL-CIO
Associate General Counsel Nancy Schiffer, NLRB attorney Kent Hirozawa, and management attorneys Philip Miscimarra and Harry Johnson.
Solidarity Successful at BASF
M
embership solidarity combined
with international and council support led to a five-year
contract covering 310 workers at BASF’s
flagship chemical plant in Geismer, La.,
Local 13-620 members ratified the agreement on Aug. 30.
“The guys did a really good job and
the council pulled together,” District
9 Director Dan Flippo said. “It really
proved to the Geismer group what happens when you have the strength of a
council.”
The Brazilian National Confederation
of Chemical Workers (CNQ/CUT) also
supported the local in its negotiations,
Flippo said.
Wages will increase 13.5 percent over
the contract term. BASF also agreed to
contribute 3 percent into each worker’s
401(k) and match contributions up to 7
percent of income.
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
33
Sparrows Point Monument Preserved
H
undreds of union members and their families attended a September
ceremony rededicating a memorial to 118 brothers and sisters who
died while working at the now-shuttered Sparrows Point steel mill near
Baltimore.
Originally dedicated in 1993, the memorial was moved to Heritage Park in
Dundalk, Md., because of the sale of its original home, the Local 9477 union
hall. The ceremony included honor guards from the Dundalk American Legion
and the Dundalk High School JROTC.
“It’s hard to believe it was 20 years
ago we sat down and
decided to create
this monument,”
said Don Kellner,
president of Retirees
United Local 9477.
“There is no group
of people I love and
cherish more than
steelworkers. Until
the day I die, I’ll be a
steelworker.”
Grant Funds Mine Safety Study
T
PCA Mill Workers
OK Contract
U
SW members at four Packaging
Corporation of America (PCA)
mills ratified a new contract by a
7-to-1 margin. The four-year master global
economic and security agreement covers
about 1,200 members at mills in Valdosta,
Ga., Counce, Tenn., Filer City, Mich., and
Tomahawk, Wis.
“This agreement will allow PCA to
remain competitive in a challenging environment, while maintaining good jobs and
continuing to ensure a solid economic future for USW members,” said International
President Leo W. Gerard.
The agreement includes wage and pension increases, maintains industry-leading
health, dental and vision benefits, and takes
forward steps on plant health and safety.
“We were determined to build on our
previous successes,” said International Vice
President Jon Geenen, who oversees paper
bargaining. “We’ve proven that by working
together, we can meet any challenge.”
he USW has been awarded a $600,000 grant to conduct a two-year research project that will focus on finding and fixing
health and safety hazards in metal and non-metal underground mines.
The grant was awarded by the Alpha Foundation for the Improvement of Mine Safety and Health, established in
2011 after an explosion killed 29 workers at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia.
Alpha Natural Resources acquired Massey after the disaster and agreed to establish a $48 million trust fund dedicated to
mine safety. The USW grant is part of the foundation’s first round of awards worth $10 million.
“We are excited to begin working on a project that we know will save lives and make all mines safer places to work,” said
Nancy Lessin of the USW’s Tony Mazzocchi Center for Health, Safety and Environmental Education. “We will never forget
that it took a deadly tragedy to make this possible, and we consider it our duty to make sure such a horrific event never happens again.”
Imports Threaten U.S. Lumber Workers
T
he USW is calling for greater support for U.S.
lumber workers in response to an Environmental
Investigation Agency (EIA) report on how wood
is illegally harvested abroad and sold as manufactured
goods in the United States.
The EIA report highlights the extent and complexity of the illegal timber trade, showing how wood is
illegally harvested in Russia, shipped into China for
manufacture into hardwood flooring and then imported
into the United States.
“This report makes it very clear that stronger enforcement of trade and environmental law is essential
to the survival of American lumber workers and their
employers,” said International President Leo W. Gerard.
“The illegal practices highlighted in this report undercut
the U.S. economy and destroy good-paying American
jobs. We must demand that our leaders put a stop to it.”
The USW is the largest North American union representing workers in the pulp, paper and forest products
sector. View the report at www.eia-global.org.
34
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
Hundreds Rally for Rotek Workers
A
crowd of 300 steelworkers and community members came
out on a rainy day in September to support 80-plus members of Local 8565 who have been on an unfair practice
strike at Rotek in Aurora, Ohio, since January.
District 1 Director Dave McCall, Ohio AFL-CIO President
Tim Burga and U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan urged Local 8565 members
to stay strong and fight for decent wages and a fair health care
plan. U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown and State Rep. Kathleen Clyde
met workers on the picket line and contacted Rotek management.
Local 8565 also received numerous support letters from global
trade unions including IndustriALL Global Union, IG Metall and
the ThyssenKrupp European Works Council.
Rotek, a subsidiary of German steel conglomerate ThyssenKrupp, manufactures large diameter bearings and forged rings
used by the military and in wind energy products.
Is Japan Ready for
Trade Agreements?
T
he USW challenged Japan’s readiness to participate in free trade
agreements with the United States
after nine Japanese automotive suppliers
and two executives agreed to pay $740
million in fines for fixing the price of auto
parts sold in the United States and abroad.
International President Leo W. Gerard
called the U.S. Justice Department’s
investigation into price fixing a success
but said it adds to the concerns of workers who see the Obama administration
embracing Japan’s entry into the TransPacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement
negotiations.
“Japan cheats, it’s that simple,”
Gerard said. “We do not want the trade
negotiations to grease the way for Japan’s
auto and auto parts companies to capture
more of our market and jeopardize more
U.S. jobs.”
The corporate guilty pleas to conspiracy charges at the end of September were
the latest in what the Justice Department
has called its largest criminal antitrust
investigation.
More than 25 million cars purchased
by American consumers and $5 billion in
parts were affected by the illegal conduct,
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said
in a statement. The parts included seat
belts, radiators, windshield wipers and
air-conditioning systems.
The long-running probe, which has
involved the participation of authorities
from Asia to North America and Europe,
has netted agreements from 20 companies
to plead guilty and pay penalties of $1.6
billion. Some 17 executives have so far
been sentenced to prison.
Retired District 20 Director Tony Rainaldi Dies
A
nthony “Tony” Rainaldi, retired director of former
District 20 in Pennsylvania, died on Oct. 19. He was
89 and a resident of Ambridge, Pa.
After graduating from high school in 1942, Rainaldi went
to work at the National Supply pipe mill in Ambridge and
joined Local 1360, where his father, Louis, was treasurer.
He soon joined the U.S. Navy and served until 1946.
Back at National Supply, he won his father’s old post as Local 1360 treasurer, then won elections as grievance chair, vice
president and president.
Rainaldi joined the USWA staff in 1966 and became education coordinator
for District 20. He was elected district director in a 1983 special election and
re-elected in 1985 and 1989. He retired in 1994 and was an active member of the
Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR).
The district, which later merged into District 10, included a large concentration of workers in basic steel, foundries and industrial machinery, in addition to
mushroom growers and nursing home employees.
Rainaldi served as chairman of the LTV Steel negotiating committee, leading
the bargaining team that saved jobs and benefits for active and retired members
during LTV’s first bankruptcy reorganization. He also chaired negotiations with
J&L Specialty Steel and Sharon Steel, and was secretary of the union negotiating
committee for Allegheny Ludlum.
USW Protests Crown Holdings
U
SW members from the United States and Canada rallied outside Crown
Holdings Inc.’s Philadelphia headquarters on Oct. 16 to demand it bargain fairly with workers who were forced out on strike in Toronto.
Crown provoked a strike by some 120 workers at its Toronto, Ontario, beverage and food can plant on Sept. 6 by demanding major concessions, including
two-tier wage rates and pension freezes, despite strong profits. The company inflamed the dispute by importing strikebreakers from a non-union plant in Alberta.
“This fight is not just about us but about future generations of working families,” said Local 9176 President Ken Hetherton, who noted that the company this
year gave Toronto plant employees an award for their excellent record of safety,
productivity, quality and budget management.
As of Oct. 10, more than 7,000 people
have joined an Internet-based campaign
against Crown, one of the world’s largest
manufacturers of food and beverage containers with 149 plants and operations in 41
countries.
U S W @ Wo r k • F a l l 2 0 1 3
35
Have You Moved?
Notify your local union financial secretary, or clip out this form
with your old address label and send your new address to:
USW@Work
USW Membership Department,
3340 Perimeter Hill Drive, Nashville, TN 37211
Name ______________________________________
New Address ________________________________
City ________________________________________
State _________________________ Zip _________
International President
Leo W. Gerard
Van Tenpenny and
Tim Sweeney
Don Furko
Ephrin Jenkins
John Spickard
The United Steelworkers Press Association
(USPA) is in its 47th year of working with
local union volunteers to improve the USW’s
communications. See page 18 for more.
See page 8 for more.