Shifts are from 10am-12pm, 12pm-2pm, and 2pm-4pm. Anyone interested can stop by their office to help out.

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Public Hearings have been extended to today. We urge all UBC members in Alaska to testify, or make your voice heard by telling the state that HB 313 is unfair to the working men and women of Alaska, and that workers performing work on public projects deserve a fair family wage. Urge them to vote “NO” on HB 313.

Public hearings are available at 3:15 March 18th

Anchorage LIO: (907) 269-0111

716 W. 4th Ave., Suite 100
Anchorage, AK 99501

Mats LIO: (907) 376-3704

600 East Railroad Ave Suite #1
Wasilla, AK 99654

Juneau LIO: (907) 465-4648

State Capitol, Terry Miller Building, Suite 111

Juneau, AK 99801

Fairbanks LIO: (907) 452-4448

1292 Sadler Way Suite 308

Fairbanks, AK 99701

Kenai Peninsula LIO: (907) 283-2030

145 Main Street Loop, Suite 217

Kenai, AK 99611

When we fight as one, the fight is won!

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Last night UBC members; mostly from Piledrivers Local 196, packed the hearing and testified on behalf of squashing any additional restrictions on driving pile within the City of Portland. They were successful, and as of now the amendment is shelved. Thank you to all of the UBC members that have been showing up and working hard over the last year to make sure UBC Pile Driver work can continue!

For more information, and some background- CLICK HERE

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ACT NOW- Vote to come 2/26/16

CALL YOUR WA SENATOR 1-800-562-6000 to Pass 2SHB 2804 providing College Tuition for Surviving Family Members of a Fallen Highway Worker on WA Transportation Projects.

 

Washington’s highway worker families need your help. As constituents please ask your Senator for their Vote (“Yes”) to pass 2SHB 2804 on to Gov. Inslee for adoption into law.

 

Currently without passage of 2SHB 2804 only publicly employed fallen highway worker families are eligible for the higher ed tuition exemption on state-funded transportation projects. Tradesmen and women who construct and repair highway projects face the same peril and dangers as our public brothers and sisters; without passage of 2SHB 2804, an unfair discrimination exists based simply on our employer.  All workers, public and private pay into, and are covered by workers compensation, but the survivors’ benefits are not a wage replacement.  We too diligently work in harms way for the greater public good and deserve fair treatment when the ultimate sacrifice is a result of our exposure on a public transportation project.

 

Call 800-562-6000 to leave a considerate message as the Senator’s constituent Carpenter and working family.

Tell them you are a constituent of the Senator who urges the Senator’s  Vote “Yes” to pass 2SHB 2804 WITHOUT AMENDMENT on to the Governor for passage this year.  Request a reply from your Senator to your inquiry, “Can your working family count on the Senator’s support and Vote “Yes” to pass 2SHB 2804 this session?”

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Volunteering usually requires you to drive to a location and spend a few hours. Sometimes our lives are so busy, we just can’t find the time.

Do you have 5 minutes to volunteer for your Union? Here are some ways to help your Union procure more work for you and protect our rights to collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions.

Register to Vote and Update Registration.

Being a registered voter is an important part of being a Union member. As a registered voter, you are a “member” of a powerful voting block that sets the direction of government. If you have moved or your phone number has changed, you need to re-register to vote. County Elections Offices may need to get in touch with you if there was a problem with your ballot. If you are an “absentee” ballot voter, an accurate address is necessary to ensure you receive your ballot packet in a timely manner.

Open the mail the Union sends to you. Read it.

Dozens of members interview candidates for office every year. Those volunteers spend many hours to make it easy for you to make educated choices on who has our backs when it comes to jobs for our members. Honor their hard work by reading their recommendations of candidates running for office.

Vote every time there is an election.

Many members skip voting in Primaries, for School Bonds and Levies and other Special Elections. Don’t let others decide which candidates make it to the General Election, make your voice heard. School Bonds and Levies are a prime example of “voting for jobs.” Passing School Bonds for construction can put hundreds of our members to work, including you.

Voting regularly is a regulation in some states to remain an Active Registered Voter. If you stop voting, you may have to re-register. Don’t like to drive to the polls after a long day at work and stand in line? If you don’t live in a state with mail-in ballots, register as an Absentee Voter. This gives you the opportunity to vote at your leisure (and hopefully with the list of recommended candidates next to your ballot). This also gives you the opportunity to vote as a group with your family, friends and coworkers.

Still not sold on why it’s important to “vote jobs”? One lawmaker led the charge to kill the Columbia River Crossing project, a multi-Billion dollar bridge. Building that bridge will put hundreds of carpenters to work. Do you know that this politician won his last election by only 78 votes & that 77 members in that Legislative District didn’t vote? 78 votes could be the difference in our members collecting unemployment or earning Union wages and working. He’s up for re-election in 2016. Let’s show him the door!

So, can you spare 5 minutes?

Go here to register: https://vote.usa.gov/

Your job may depend upon it!

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Senator Maria Cantwell- (202) 224-3441

Senator Patty Murray- (202) 224-2621

Download Talking Points here: Long and Short Senate Fast Track TPs June 18, 2015

Anti-Fast Track TPs for Senate – June 19, 2015

Top Lines (Quick Coverage of Main Points):

• Voting for the fast track bill that came back from the House still would not only send American jobs overseas but would now also endorse opposition to dealing with climate change, reforming immigration, and doing nothing about currency manipulation. This is unacceptable.

• Asking the Senate to trust that the House will eventually pass a repaired Customs bill and TAA is like holding hands and jumping off a cliff and hoping you don’t hit bottom. Senators should not be expected to vote on TPA until the customs bill is fixed and TAA is on the President’s desk. Otherwise, the House will have no incentive to fix these things after they have fast track.

• Far from helping America lead in the world, by preventing trade negotiations from addressing climate change, the customs bill has put TTIP in jeopardy, according to members of the European Parliament.

• Trade Adjustment Assistance should not be a sweetener or a hostage for fast track. Manipulating elected officials with the well-being of their constituents in order to make it easier to ship American jobs overseas is wrong. TAA should be made permanent, fully funded, and include public sector workers.

• This version of fast track will hurt workers and fails to make any progress on enforcing labor or human rights standards.

More In-Depth Details on Specific Issues (if needed):

Customs Bill

• The House-passed customs bill contains language that guts Senator Menendez’s human trafficking language, language that has become more important given the recent discovery of 139 unmarked graves for workers trafficked through Malaysia.

• Through amendments to the customs bill, Fast Track 2015 was actually made even worse. The House added provisions that would prevent trade agreements from addressing climate change or ensuring protections for migrant workers.

• The climate provision threatens U.S. manufacturing and could send more production overseas to countries that aren’t addressing carbon emissions. It would also jeopardize the future of TTIP talks, according to European legislators.

• More than 60 immigrant rights organizations oppose the immigration negotiating objective.

• The Schumer currency bill, which has bipartisan, bicameral support, was stripped from the bill. Ensuring the executive branch can treat currency manipulation as a countervailable subsidy has been a business and labor priority for more than a decade. This move will cost jobs.

• The customs bill was also weakened enforcement in a number of ways that hurt firms and their workers, including changes to the ENFORCE Act and the omission of Green 301.

• The weakening of the customs bill means we will continue to bleed manufacturing jobs.

Human and Labor Rights

• Since the Senate last voted on Fast Track, unmarked graves containing 139 trafficking victims were unearthed in a migrant worker camp on the border of Thailand and Malaysia. This proves—for anyone who had any doubts—that Malaysia is not an appropriate TPP partner: it is not meeting minimum standards to protect labor and other human rights. And it’s demonstrating a lack of political will to improve.

• Instead of requiring immediate action by Malaysia, USTR’s response to the recent news was to continue to push to weaken the Menendez amendment, which would have denied Fast Track privileges to trade deals that include countries, like Malaysia, on Tier 3 of the annual trafficking report. The House ultimately weakened the Menendez amendment, allowing Fast Track for Malaysia if the administration certifies that it is “taking steps” to improve.

• More than 60 immigrant rights organizations oppose the weakening of the Menendez amendment.

• In addition, USTR has still refused to share with the LAC or Congress its plans to bring Mexico, Vietnam, Brunei, and Malaysia into compliance with ILO core labor standards, as Ambassador Froman has repeatedly promised the TPP will do.

• The Department of State—as of June 18—has still not published its Human Rights reports for 2014. This is an unprecedented delay.

• The Ambassador is simply not living up to his promises about protecting labor and human rights in the TPP and other trade deals.

Fast Track

• Fast Track 2015 hurts workers. It will kill jobs and lower wages.

• Fast Track 2015 failed to make any progress in ensuing that trade deals meet negotiating goals before according Fast Track privileges or to ensure that trade deals create raise wages, ensure high environmental standards, or protect our democracy.

• The House made it worse: adding bad trade objectives, weakening trade enforcement and human trafficking provisions, and stripping worker assistance altogether.

• Promises by the House Republicans to fix these shortcomings simply can’t be trusted.

Ex-Im Bank

• As with TAA, many House Republicans hope to kill off the Ex-Im Bank for good. Rep. Kevin McCarthy stated on the House floor on June 18 that there is at present no plan to act to renew the Ex-Im Bank in the House.

• The Ex-Im Bank is the one piece of U.S. trade policy actually designed to create U.S. jobs.

• At a time when other countries are expanding their export credit agencies, losing the Bank will put U.S. firms and their employees at a serious disadvantage.

• McConnell has proved himself untrustworthy on the Ex-Im Bank, and there is no path forward in the House without leverage. More promises on Ex-Im action cannot be trusted. The Senate must act now to renew the Ex-Im Bank.

TAA (Avoid implying TPA + TAA = OK)

• If TAA is truly important, counting on Republican “promises” to pass TAA later is a fool’s errand. The fact is that there is no clear path for TAA passage in the House.

• As we’ve seen with McConnell’s promises on the Ex-Im Bank, they often ring hollow. House Republicans have stated their desire to kill TAA. If they didn’t support it as part of a quid pro quo for something they liked, what would make them change course now?

• Trade is permanent and TAA should be permanent. Congress should stop using it as a bargaining chip to make Fast Track easier to swallow.

The City of Portland is about to try out a new kind of project labor agreement on public construction contracts. The 23-page “Model Community Benefits Agreement” approved Sept. 5 mandates that on future City construction projects, unions will represent workers, and women and minority workers and contractors will have expanded opportunities. The community benefits agreement, approved in a 5-0 vote, was developed in nearly two years of meetings among unions, minority contractors, pre-apprenticeship training programs, and city officials, and will apply to projects of over $15 million.

The agreement sets goals:

• At least 18 percent of the work will be performed by minorities, and 9 percent by women, and the targets apply both to journeymen and apprentices;
• At least 20 percent of the work on contracts of over $200,000 (and subcontracts of over $100,000) will be performed by apprentices;
• At least 20 percent of the hard construction costs will go to women-owned, minority-owned and “disadvantaged” businesses, and joint ventures with minority and women-owned businesses will get a preference of up to 5 percent in bidding on contracts; and
• At least 30 percent of the workforce will be hired from areas identified by the U.S. Small Business Administration as “historically underutilized business” zones, census tracts that include downtown Portland, inner Southeast and Northeast Portland, and the Lents, and Cully neighborhoods in outer Southeast and Northeast, as well as areas of Gresham, Hillsboro and western Clark County.

In the new community benefits agreement, contractors agree to abide by the terms of union contracts, and to use union hiring halls. Except in this case, nonunion contractors that are state-certified as “disadvantaged business enterprises” are allowed to use some of their existing “core employees” — those who’ve worked the equivalent of seven months full-time work in the previous 18 months — with no requirement that the workers become union members or that the employer provide union benefits. However, the contractors have to document that their health and fringe benefits are comparable to the union benefits. And new hires would have to come through union hiring halls.

Meanwhile, the community benefits agreement spells out that unions will represent all workers on the project — whether they’re members or not. Accordingly, even nonunion contractors will deduct union dues — whether or not workers are union members — to cover union costs of collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance processing.

The agreement also commits unions and contractors to use a veterans employment program known as Helmets to Hardhats. And it mandates that managers, supervisors, and owners be given “cultural competency” training.

Significantly, it dedicates 1.5 percent of City construction budgets to help women and minority workers and contractors get ready for the job:

• 0.25 percent will pay to monitor and enforce the agreement, overseen by a committee composed of representatives from labor, management, and community groups;
• 0.75 percent will go to Worksystems Inc. to award grants to pre-apprenticeship training programs that focus on training women and minorities; and
• 0.50 percent will pay for “technical assistance and business support” for women- and minority-owned contractors, such as that provided by the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Metropolitan Contractor Improvement Partnership. [A disparity study by the City showed that out of $660 million in City contracts over the five-year period ending mid-2009, minority-owned businesses accounted for 0.6 percent, and women-owned businesses 1.9 percent. Women- and minority-owned businesses got 140 of the 547 contracts over that period, but most were relatively small. The technical assistance fund would help them scale up to be better positioned to handle bigger contracts.]

Calling the community benefits agreement “1.5 percent for equity,” former Portland city commissioner Jim Francesconi likened it to Oregon’s “1 percent for art” mandate, in which a portion of public building costs is dedicated to public art.

Francesconi, now an attorney, was hired by Operating Engineers Local 701 and Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters to develop the community benefits agreement. Groups including the Columbia Pacific Building and Construction Trades Council, pre-apprenticeship training programs like Oregon Tradeswomen Inc., Constructing Hope, Portland Youthbuilders, and Construction Apprenticeship & Workforce Solutions (CAWS), also had a hand in crafting the agreement.

The City Council resolution which enacted the model agreement declares that the City has “a compelling governmental interest in ensuring that it is not a participant, either passive or active, in perpetuating the effects of past or present discrimination.”

Maurice Rahming, immediate past president of the Oregon chapter of the National Association of Minority Contractors, explains that in the past, construction contractors didn’t hire women and minorities. Racial and gender disparity continued after overt discrimination ended, Rahming says, in part because sons tend to follow fathers into careers in construction. And access to these jobs matters a great deal, because journeymen can earn $39 an hour or more plus benefits — depending on the trade — on public construction jobs that are subject to state and federal prevailing wage laws.

The community benefits agreement is a breakthrough, Francesconi told the Labor Press, for several reasons: It’s the first time in Oregon that a government has required project labor agreements on its construction projects, and it represents a new unity between unions and minority communities.

Nonunion contractors have often defeated proposals for project labor agreements, Francesconi said, by forming alliances with minority contractors or community members and arguing that unions don’t work well with minorities.

“Minority contractors have been pitted against the unions as if they’re opposing sides of an argument. This agreement says, ‘You know what? We’re not on opposing sides.’” — Maurice Rahming

“Here the opposite has happened,” Francesconi said. “Minority contractors and community representatives want a relationship with the unions, and advocated for this project labor agreement. And the unions went a long way to provide training and support for minority and women workforce and minority businesses, and carved out this exception for disadvantaged minority- and women- owned businesses where they didn’t have to join the union.”

Rahming, who is both a black business owner and a signatory contractor with IBEW Local 48, agrees: “Minority contractors have been pitted against the unions as if they’re opposing sides of an argument. This agreement says, ‘You know what? We’re not on opposing sides.’”

To test run the community benefits agreement, City Commissioner Randy Leonard offered up two Water Bureau projects that are already under way: the Kelly Butte reservoir replacement, and the Interstate Maintenance Facility renovation. The Kelly Butte project — to replace the 10-million-gallon above-ground steel tank with a 25-million-gallon reinforced concrete underground reservoir — had already been awarded to Hoffman Construction, but the City is modifying that contract. In the Interstate Maintenance Facility Renovation, the City will construct a 28,000-square-foot LEED Gold building to replace a 1925 building that rates poorly for seismic and fire safety and disabled access. An adjacent 38,000 square foot building will be built in a second phase.

The day the community benefits agreement was approved, City Council chambers were packed to the edge of the second-floor gallery with 175 people who turned out in support, most wearing red T-shirts made by CAWS bearing the slogan, “community benefits for all.”

Portland Mayor Sam Adams told the crowd the community benefits agreement is about “taking another step to become a city of the most equal opportunity for all Portlanders.”

Doug Tweedy, executive secretary-treasurer of the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters, commended the City Council for being the first agency to “step up to the plate and do the right thing.”

“Opportunity is what this is all about,” he said. “The disparity within our workforce and our contracting community is documented and does exist.”

The 99 Percent Plan is a joint Roosevelt Institute-Salon series that explores how progressives can shape a new vision for the economy. This is the third essay in the series.

The fate of the labor movement is the fate of American democracy. Without a strong countervailing force like organized labor, corporations and wealthy elites advancing their own interests are able to exert undue influence over the political system, as we’ve seen in every major policy debate of recent years.

Yet the American labor movement is in crisis and is the weakest it’s been in 100 years. That truism has been a progressive mantra since the Clinton administration. However, union density has continued to decline from roughly 16 percent in 1995 to 11.8 percent of all workers and just 6.9 percent of workers in the private sector. Unionized workers in the public sector now make up the majority of the labor movement for the first time in history, which is precisely why — a la Wisconsin and 14 other states — they have been targeted by the right for all out destruction.

The urgency is striking. Instead of being fundamentally discredited, the oligarchs and plutocrats who crashed our economy are raking in record profits and acting even more aggressively to bury the American labor movement once and for all. Over the last year, several labor leaders have told me that they believe unions have only about five more years left if they don’t figure out some kind of breakthrough strategy.

The complete collapse of unions would have devastating consequences. The labor movement has played a crucial role in advancing economic justice in the workplace and in politics. Union membership raises median weekly earnings and reduces race- and gender-based income gaps, and union workers are much more likely to receive health care and pension benefits than workers who are not members of a labor union. The decline of organized labor is directly linked to the rise in economic inequality over the last 40 years and the onset of a “Second Gilded Age.” The decline in union density coupled with the decline in the real value of the minimum wage explains one-third of the dramatic growth in wage inequality since the early 1970s.

Over the past 30 years, American employers have become even more aggressive at violating their workers’ rights to organize under a toothless and outdated labor law regime. Contrary to the intent of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which made it national policy to encourage and promote collective bargaining, the NLRA now provides incentives for employers to break the law routinely and ignore any compulsion to negotiate collective agreements. When there is little outrage for the daily violations of workers’ liberty (employers fire workers illegally in 1 in 3 union campaigns for attempting to exercise freedom of association), our democracy is in peril.

As worker power has eroded in the workplace, the labor movement’s political clout has also declined. Measured by both members and money, unions are still the most influential and resourceful left-wing constituency in American politics. Organized labor also remains the most powerful core of the national Democratic Party by several measures, including campaign contributions, grassroots mobilization efforts, lobbying and setting the party’s legislative agenda. Indeed, the labor movement spent a record amount of money to help get a Democrat elected to the White House in 2008.

With a labor-friendly White House and a Democratic Congress, organized labor began strategizing about how and when to push for its No. 1 priority, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Labor law reform would not only help the flagging movement survive but also offer an indirect solution to our growing problems of economic inequality and the catastrophic Great Recession. By leveling the playing field between workers and employers, higher union density decreases wage inequality in the American labor market while increasing purchasing power of consumers.

But the move to pass EFCA failed, revealing just how weak organized labor has become. Now, with no hope for labor law reform in sight, is the time to rethink the role of the labor movement in the 21st century. Progressives need a strong and vibrant labor movement that focuses not just on workers’ rights, but can also act as a democratizing force advancing social justice and expanding worker, citizen and resident power in the workplace and in their communities.

The labor movement is the critical anchor and enabler of democracy grounded on a notion of freedom. Most people have an intuitive understanding of what democracy means: rule by the people (as opposed to rule by the few or an elite). Yet, as Corey Robin so eloquently points out in his book on fear, Americans give up their individual freedom and democratic voice every single day they walk into work. The workplace is an authoritarian dictatorship, and we accept this as legitimate.

Now is the time to challenge that feudal relationship. We need to call into question the assumption that Americans believe democracy stops at the workplace door. If we would not stand for a despot to rule over us with impunity, why do we let the boss do so every day of the workweek? Any progressive advance needs a strong labor movement to achieve a fully free and democratic workplace and society. This vision of freedom and democracy manifests in two domains: the workplace and the southern region of the country.

First, labor’s role must be made much more central at the workplace and in the economy more broadly. Labor can, and should, be a governing co-partner with business and government in the economy. What labor brings to the table is a vision of growth with equity. And there are already examples of this kind of union and worker organizational influence in the economy at the regional level. The Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) and Working Partnerships USA, both in California, have shown how labor can become a governing partner in economic decision-making at the regional level.

Another aspect of centralizing labor’s role in the economy and advancing workplace democracy is to expand workers’ voice and power at the bargaining table. A 21st century vision of the American labor movement is one that destroys the divide between labor and community that has long governed the politics and practices of unions. What the emergence of new forms of worker organizations have taught us is that workers are also residents in communities, while residents are also workers, and there are organizational models available that take all workers’ identities into account.

While labor law constricts the scope of issues that unions can negotiate at the workplace, it doesn’t prevent worker organizations from bargaining in the political arena for affordable housing, equitable development, local, regional and national economic policy, criminal justice, or the wide range of issues that affect poor and working class people. Stephen Lerner, among others, has outlined what a wider scope of collective bargaining might look like. Imagine, for instance, that the United Auto Workers could negotiate over the environmental standards of the cars they produce instead of just wages and benefits. Such a vision requires a far-reaching campaign to redefine the scope of collective bargaining and workers’ voices at work. This is a 10- or 20-year effort to be sure, but one that will be crucial to any future the labor movement has in the U.S.

Directly related to expanding labor’s role in the economy and expanding the scope of collective bargaining is advancing freedom in the workplace. In short: democracy, over autocracy, at work. This would go beyond the softer slogan of the AFL-CIO’s “voice at work.” This is an admittedly long-term project. But several concrete demands arise out of the broad notion of a workplace democracy. For instance, the Employee Free Choice Act would have allowed workers a modicum of political liberty at the workplace; it aimed to restore workers’ rights to freedom of association. But a deeper and even more controversial demand proposes an end to management prerogative over all workplace decisions. Workplace democracy means truly giving workers a “voice” at work. Whether through work committees or required seats for employee representatives on the company’s board of directors, a deeper vision of workplace democracy enables workers’ voices to have a real impact.

The second domain for a 21st century labor movement is geographic: finally democratizing the South through the building of a Southern labor movement. After the CIO’s Operation Dixie failed to organize Southern workers in the late 1940s, with a few exceptions mostly in the public sector, organized labor gave up on the South. We’ve been suffering the consequences ever since. The Southern, Walmart model of low-wage labor markets is being imported to the North. We only have to look at the attack on public sector workers in Wisconsin and Michigan and the recent passage of Right-to-Work legislation in Indiana to understand that Northern governors and the Republican Party are trying to turn their states into Yankee versions of Southern Right-to-Work (for less) states.

Instead of retreating to a defensive posture, organized labor should launch an ambitious and bold campaign to organize the South. A Southern labor movement would galvanize workers in the region who, contrary to popular belief, would like to become dues-paying union members. Given the dramatic demographic changes occurring in the South involving increased migrations of people of color who tend to be the most pro-union and pro-worker organization (see the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ recent victory over Trader Joe’s), the opportunity for organizing and building a Southern labor movement is greater today than even 60 years ago under Operation Dixie. This effort would not only transform the low-wage economic model of the South, it would prevent the race to the bottom from North to South, and most important, it would transform the politics of the region and fundamentally the country.

What grounds this vision of a 21st century labor movement is the core idea of extending what Americans claim to cherish in politics and civil society to the workplace: democracy, liberty and freedom. The consolidation of income, wealth and political power by the 1 percent over the last several decades is directly related to the decline of workers’ voice and power. Rebuilding a truly countervailing (and democratic) power, as the labor movement did in the 1930s and 1940s, will require a bold and convincing vision of workplace democracy and freedom. Workers and their organizations have historically played this anchoring role for progressive politics throughout American history. Now is the time to reclaim this historic charge for the 21st century.

John Ward, president of R&H Construction, responded to the union’s grievances, saying, “Obviously, they have something that they are very passionate about and they have decided that our company doesn’t do something they believe in. We are an open shop contractor that pay people great wages and full benefits, some just under what the unions pay and some more. We’ve got a full workforce that has been with us for an average of 12 years, some over 20. They choose to show their beliefs in a way that I don’t necessarily agree with, and they have every right to do so.”