New Zealand Nurses Prepare More Strikes As Healthcare Crisis Worsens

Thursday, 15 July 2021, 11:09 am
Article: Socialist Equality Group

By Tom Peters, Socialist Equality Group
 

About 30,000 nurses, healthcare assistants and midwives in public hospitals around New Zealand voted earlier this month to hold another three nationwide strikes. The members of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) held an eight-hour strike on June 9 after rejecting a derisory pay rise offer of just 1.38 percent. The District Health Boards’ offer was effectively a pay cut relative to inflation and contained nothing to address the staffing crisis in hospitals.

The Labour Party-led government announced a wage freeze in May for the next three years for the vast majority of public sector employees, including healthcare workers and teachers. The government is imposing severe austerity measures to make workers shoulder the burden of the economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Workers in New Zealand, as in other countries, are seeking to fight back. The main obstacle they confront is the unions, which support the government and function, as they do in every country, as the industrial police force for the state and corporations.

The first 24-hour strike is scheduled for July 29, followed by an eight-hour strike on August 19 and a 24-hour strike on September 9. In announcing these deliberately spread-out dates, the NZNO made clear that it is allowing time to return to negotiations with the DHBs, cobble together another sell-out deal and cancel the strikes.

On July 6 a union spokesperson said recent negotiations had “given us some hope a resolution can be found around pay and safe staffing.” No details were given to support this claim.

The union bureaucracy is using similar tactics as in the 2018 dispute. Then, the NZNO cancelled one of two scheduled strikes and presented nurses with multiple offers that were essentially the same—a wage increase of just 3 percent per annum, combined with empty promises of better staffing. The aim was to wear workers down, isolate them and convince them that no better deal was possible. The NZNO’s 2018 deal set a benchmark for similar sellouts of doctors and teachers.

Three years later, the result is a worsening crisis in the healthcare system. Even though New Zealand has so far not experienced a major outbreak of COVID-19, the country remains extremely vulnerable, with only one tenth of the population fully vaccinated. The virus is spreading more rapidly than ever worldwide, with catastrophic consequences across Europe, in Indonesia, Fiji and many other countries. Through sheer luck, New Zealand avoided an outbreak last month when an infected person visited from Sydney, Australia, where the highly infectious Delta variant is has since surged.

Numerous reports show that NZ’s hospital system is already overwhelmed with winter-related illnesses, revealing that nothing has been done to prepare for an outbreak of COVID-19.

The severe staffing shortage is placing both hospital workers and patients at risk. The government’s border restrictions, some of the harshest in the world, have contributed to the crisis, since a significant proportion of New Zealand’s health workforce are immigrants.

According to the NZNO, Auckland City Hospital has nearly 400 nursing and healthcare assistant vacancies. Last month, the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons told Stuff that nationwide “shortages in just about every part of the hospital system, from specialists and technicians through to administrative staff, are seriously affecting patient care at all levels.” Surgeries, including for cancer patients, are being routinely delayed and cancelled because of the shortage of staff and beds.

On July 9, the Taranaki DHB told Radio NZ (RNZ) that Hāwera and Taranaki Base hospitals had “reached critical levels of demand” with “very high occupancy,” including cases of RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus).

The potentially deadly RSV has spread throughout New Zealand in recent weeks. Government statistics show there were 688 confirmed cases in the week to July 4, up from 538 cases the week before. The New Zealand Herald reported last week that 22 children were in intensive care or high dependency units with RSV or other respiratory viruses. A 63-year-old Auckland woman reportedly died on July 12, possibly from RSV-related complications.

Christchurch Hospital and Burwood Hospital have experienced record numbers of patients in the past week. To try and prevent the spread of RSV, the hospitals have limited visitor numbers.

Earlier this month the Counties Manukau DHB and Auckland DHB warned of longer waiting times for emergency care, and told patients to seek help from a general practice if possible. On July 1, RNZ reported that 11 sick babies were “being cared for in a playroom at Middlemore Hospital [in South Auckland] because it has run out of space in the regular wards.”

Stuff reported that Wellington Hospital’s emergency department was seeing “overcrowding at record levels.” The crisis has been escalating since March, with the department “often exceeding 100 percent occupancy.” DHB spokesperson Joy Farley said higher volumes of patients across the hospital meant emergency patients had to wait longer to be admitted to wards.

“It’s just unmanageable. It’s a ticking time bomb. Patients are going to die, especially the ones in the corridors,” one nurse told Stuff.

On July 12, TVNZ reported that patient Emma Maguire was told by Wellington Emergency Department staff that there was a seven or eight hour wait for her to get an X-ray for a suspected broken leg. She went home instead of waiting, potentially causing further injury. ED staff have issued a Provisional Improvement Notice to hospital management, saying that last Tuesday they were unable to see all patients, and there were no systems in place to manage patients safely.

Health Minister Andrew Little was booed off the stage by healthcare workers outside parliament during the June 9 strike, while trying to defend the government. He has recently feigned concern for nurses, telling Newstalk ZB on July 7 that nurses “have been undervalued for so long.”

In fact, the government has rejected nurses’ demand for an immediate pay increase of 17 percent. As in 2018, Labour is again telling healthcare workers it does not have enough money to fix the crisis in the health system.

The government says it is working on a “pay equity process” to lift nurses’ salaries to a level comparable to male-dominated professions with similar workloads. This has been promised for more than three decades, but never implemented. In 2018, the NZNO cynically exploited the government’s vague pay equity pledge as an argument to vote for its sellout deal.

The crisis in the health system is the result of decades of underfunding, which has gone unopposed due to the unions’ suppression of any resistance by the working class. Before 2018, there had not been a nationwide strike by nurses since 1989.

A real fight against government and corporate austerity requires new organisations: rank-and-file workplace committees run democratically by workers themselves. The International Committee of the Fourth International is calling for an international alliance of such committees, independent of and opposed to the corporatist trade unions and the entire political establishment, including Labour and its allies.

Above all, workers need to fight on the basis of a socialist perspective to abolish the profit system and place the resources of society under workers’ control. The government’s lie that there is no money for decent healthcare services should be rejected with contempt. The tens of billions of dollars hoarded by the super-rich and the banks must be redirected into hospitals, schools and other vital public services.

© Scoop Media

Iranian and Jewish activists in U.S. voice support for striking workers in Iran

Karmel Melamed

July 13, 2021

Courtesy of Twitter Oil workers in Iran holding up signs of protest.

Iranian American and Jewish activists are voicing support for striking Iranian oil workers who are demanding Iranian regime’s state-owned companies pay their past due wages, pay higher wages, and provide other benefits.

Iranian American activists who are not Jewish said the latest Iranian energy workers’ latest nationwide strike, now entering its third week,has been a major blow to the Iranian regime’s already faltering economy which has been suffering due to U.S. sanctions. The strikes could potentially bring down the regime, say activists here.

“The workers have been striking off and on for nearly five years in various parts of Iran,” said Mansour Osanloo, an Iranian trade union leader and activist now living in New Jersey.“But now with the oil, gas and petrochemical workers striking, there’s no money coming into the Iranian regime’s coffers and this could seriously hurt the regime.”



Courtesy of Network of Iranian Labor ...
Iranian labor union activist and leader Mansour Osanloo

The average contract worker in Iran’s oil, gas and petrochemical industry makes close to $100 per month, and workers are prohibited by the Iranian regime from forming their own independent labor groups, said Osanloo. Official labor unions in Iran are controlled by the regime and do not advocate on behalf of workers.

Other Iranian American activists said the energy sector workers’ strikes have also encouraged strikes and protests from many of Iran’s truck drivers, teachers, retired government workers, agricultural workers and other industrial sector workers. They said the situation has become so financially difficult for so many families that workers in Iran are willing to endure the regime’s brutal reprisals for striking.

“The regime imposed severe consequences on those who strike, even on their families,” said Cameron Khansarinia, policy director for the National Union for Democracy in Iran, a Washington D.C.-based opposition group to the Iranian regime. “Iranians abroad, including the opposition, are exploring creative and safe ways to get money to the families of these striking workers and political prisoners. This can be an immense help and allow the strikes to last until their ultimate victory.”

Social media sites such as Twitter, Instagram and Telegram have been abuzz over the past several weeks with countless videos of various striking workers within Iran’s industrial sector protesting for better wages, time off from work, safer working conditions and health insurance.

One video posted on Twitter last week showed dozens of protesting dairy workers in the Iranian city of Isfahan beheading their own prized dairy cows in front of regime government offices and dumping several tons of milk on nearby highways in symbolic protest of the regime’s corruption and lack of economic opportunities.

Ali Ebrahimzadeh, an Iranian Muslim-born activist who heads the Los Angeles-based “Normal Life Council” a non-profit group raising awareness about human rights violations in Iran, said the widespread national strikes in Iran are a continuation of a civil disobedience campaign led by millions in Iran who refused to show up at the polls for the country’s recent elections.

“The average workers in Iran see themselves get poorer each year where they can now barely feed their families while the regime’s elite have gotten richer off the nation’s wealth and sent those millions of dollars overseas to terrorists,” said Ebrahimzadeh. “Average Iranians have had enough of this suffering and are coming out in massive numbers to protest.”


Late last month, 80 trade unions worldwide released a statement titled “International Labor Network of Solidarity and Struggle” which voiced their support for striking workers in Iran.

None of the groups listed on the statement were American labor or trade union groups and Iranian American activists voiced concern with the lack of U.S. labor support for Iranian workers.

“American labor unions, the AFL-CIO especially— were once a key backer of unions battling repressive regimes,” said Iranian American activist Mariam Memarsadeghi based in Maryland. “In Poland, American labor institutions’ support for the Solidarity movement were instrumental in defeating Communism. Iranian workers deserve the same support and the outcome of their struggle is just as significant to the world’s security and freedom.”

Calls made for comment to major U.S. unions such as the AFL-CIO union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists union (SAG-AFTRA) were not returned.

Several Iranian Jewish leaders in Southern California and New York declined to comment on the situation with striking workers in Iran. For more than four decades they have primarily refrained from commenting about political matters concerning Iran for fear of the regime’s reprisals against the 5,000 to 8,000 Jews still living in Iran.

Still many individual Iranian American Jewish activists said they have expressed their solidarity with the workers in Iran who are facing a dire situation with the survival of their families.

“These people are being abused under the harshest conditions,” said George Haroonian, an Iranian Jewish activist based in L.A. “To support the striking workers of Iran, who are only asking for fair wages and fair treatment interestingly by mostly government owned entities, is as American as apple pie and baseball.”

Other Iranian Jewish activists expressed sympathy for the striking workers in Iran because many of their ancestors faced similar financial struggles trying to make ends meet while living in extreme poverty in Iran.

“Workers have always constituted the heartbeat of Iran and as Iranian American Jews, we should know,” said Tabby Rafael, an Iranian Jewish writer and co-founder of the L.A.-based “30 Years After” Iranian Jewish non-profit group. “In Iran, our grandparents, great-grandparents and ancestors were almost all downtrodden workers who only wanted a chance at a better life.”

The Progressive Zionists of California , a pro-Israel non-profit group based in Northern California, also released a statement expressing support for the striking workers in Iran on social justice grounds.

“It takes tremendous courage and perseverance to demand accountability, fair working conditions, and fair wages, especially in the face of a repressive and authoritarian regime,” stated the group in its letter. “We know and these brave workers know, these things cannot and will not happen without their work.”

Dr. Danial Jafari, president of the Iranian-Americans for Liberty, a nonprofit advocacy group opposed to the Iranian regime and based in Washington, D.C., said his organization is reaching out to American Jews and non-Jews to support the striking workers in Iran.

“I call on my dear friends in the Jewish American community to please consider the true cost of this regime’s existence to Israel, their freedoms, and their economic prosperity,” said Jafari, who is not Jewish. “We must join together in America to say no to the Islamic regime in Tehran!”

For their part, Iranian American activists said they will continue to advocate on behalf of the striking workers in Iran in the U.S. media and among U.S. elected officials to help bring about monumental changes in Iran.

“I honestly believe that if these workers’ strikes continue for another two months in Iran, it could potentially cause the ultimate collapse of the regime since the Ayatollahs will not have the cash to pay all of these striking workers, their own corrupt cronies, their security apparatus that cracks down on protestors and all their terrorist proxies in the region,” said Osanloo.



Author

Karmel Melamed is an award-winning Iranian Jewish journalist, activist and attorney based in Southern California.

Miners in Ontario Are Mobilizing Against Another Corporate Rip-Off

BYMITCHELL THOMPSON

JACOBIN

Mining multinational Vale is trying to strip its workers in Sudbury of vital benefits using the pandemic as cover. They’ve responded with strike action, building on a long tradition of militant trade unionism in the region.
In Sudbury, Ontario, workers employed by the multinational mining corporation Vale are on strike to fight for better benefits. (Randy Risling / Toronto Star via Getty Images)

In Sudbury, Ontario, twenty-five hundred workers employed by the multinational mining corporation Vale are on strike. The industrial action comes after employees twice rejected a company offer that would significantly reduce the health benefits of younger workers. Vale, which took over the Ontario nickel mine from Inco in 2006, has treated the pandemic as an opportunity to launch an attack on an already insecure workforce.

Vale’s most recent offer — rejected by 87 percent of voting United Steel Worker (USW) members — would eliminate retiree health and insurance benefits for all employees hired after June 1. For future retirees, this would spell the end of over-the-counter drug coverage, funds for semiprivate hospital rooms, life insurance, nonoccupational accident insurance and “dismemberment insurance.” Management have offered to replace the previous benefit system by giving new hires a $1,000 postretirement “health care savings account.”

Across the country, companies have forced employees to accept increased hours, worse benefits, and lower pay in order to return to work. Vale’s attack on employee benefits follows a wave of lockouts by Canadian employers seeking to use the pandemic to launch an assault on workers. Molson Coors, Reliance Home Comfort, Ocean Concrete in Victoria, Delta Hotels, Fenner Dunlop, Welcome Place, and Exceldor have all used the pandemic as an opportunity to weaken the power of labor.

Vale’s attempt to defeat Sudbury’s miners, based in one of Canada’s strongest union locals, is a clear attack on organized labor. But those miners have fought and won when pitted against the bosses in the past, and they can do so again.
“Rewriting the Industry Standards”

According to Vale’s own data, since its most recent collective agreement in 2016, its rate of workplace injury has more than doubled. Despite this, the company is demanding cuts to health benefits. This is part of Vale’s ongoing attempt to lower, as much as possible, any and all worker-related costs.

After a wave of layoffs last fall, Vale won similar concessions from its workforce in Thompson, Manitoba. Vale then retroactively defended the results of these renegotiations, imposed on its workers, as examples of good practice. “They say it’s in line with industry standards,” says Anderson, a Vale Sudbury worker currently on strike: “In fact, they are rewriting the industry standards to offer less.”

Anderson points out that Inco — Vale’s predecessor — paid five times the minimum wage in the 1990s. Today, the company’s pay is only two and a half times what is legally required of them. At Vale, decreasing pay has gone hand in hand with increasingly dangerous conditions.You work for thirty years. You destroy your body, then they take your health benefits.

In recent years, Anderson has seen coworkers suffer life-threatening injuries or have to work despite being seriously ill. Equipment used to torque bolts damaged one worker’s back. Another coworker, based at the nearby smelter, logged long overtime hours, but “looked sickly” during a past strike — “he died right after retirement.”

A third colleague of Anderson’s still had to work at the mine despite requiring a colostomy bag. The fact that management forces workers to endure these conditions, he notes, “speaks volumes about the need for a solid benefit plan later in life.”

As Ethan, another Vale mine worker in Thompson, Manitoba observed: “You work for thirty years. You destroy your body, then they take your health benefits.” In the first quarter of 2021, Vale delivered $3.9 billion to its shareholders.
The Last Crisis

When the 2008 economic crash ravaged Ontario’s manufacturing sector, Vale demanded deeply regressive “concessions” from its employees. Workers, the company claimed, needed to come to terms with “new international realities.”

The Globe and Mail reported that Vale, the new owners of Inco, spent significant resources meeting with government officials “to win support for cutting costs and jobs.” Federal minister of industry Tony Clement championed Vale’s cause, claiming that without the company Sudbury, would become a “valley of death.” The Ontario Liberal government meanwhile refused to support legislation to curb strike breaking. Instead, the provincial Liberals opted to call for “consensus” between the company and the union.

In a surprisingly candid interview with the Globe, one former executive admitted that consensus wasn’t actually part of Vale’s agenda:


They just want to break the union. They want to completely hit the reset button on the entire labor situation and the agreements that have been put in place in the past.

To aid this, Vale launched a sweeping wave of reactionary reforms. The company imposed layoffs, demanded wage freezes, and made changes to grievance procedures to facilitate future layoffs and cut bonus pay. In addition, Vale demanded pension reform, proposing a shift from the more secure Defined Benefit (DB) pension plan to a Defined Contribution (DC) scheme.

The union rejected this offer. Vale then hired the strikebreaking private security firm AFI International to force workers to accept the agreement. AFI, now AFIMAC, is proud of its close ties to the police and military personnel, many of whom have gone on to be directly employed by the international security company. Over the course of the strike, AFIMAC broke picket lines and a community blockade and worked to help Vale secure injunctions against its workers.

With the help of its strikebreakers and around twelve hundred scabs who crossed the picket, Vale was able to remain operational throughout the strike. The company also fired nine workers and sued them for thousands in damages. Despite nearly a year of opposition from the union, the company had the resources to wait them out.Vale hired a strikebreaking private security firm AFI International to force workers to accept the agreement.

The company’s war of attrition led to a 20 percent contraction in Vale’s unionized workforce. After this wave of creative destruction, the corporation was able to reshape labor relations as it saw fit. Vale seized new transfer and grievance rights, increased its use of nonunion contract labor, and reduced the pensions of new hires.

Despite cutting the wages, pensions, and health care benefits of its workers, the company has paid a total of $13.55 billion in dividends since 2015. As of late last year, Vale was sitting on a cash stockpile of $12.9 billion.

The Vale strike came in the context of a series of layoffs and plant closures in Ontario. Workers took part in a wave of militant strikes and occupations to protect their jobs and improve their standards of living. These included the March 2007 walkout at Collins & Aikman; the occupations of Hamilton Specialty Bar and the Mississauga’s masonite manufacturing plant in May 2017; and the 2009 blockade of Windsor’s Aradco-Aramco plant.

The Canadian Auto Workers Union, which organized thirty-two occupations between 1980 and 2009, led several of these efforts. However, many of these occupations were isolated actions. But management at other firms, such as General Motors in Oshawa, joined Vale’s lead and implemented the same regressive workplace reforms.

Companies like Vale take advantage of so-called “pattern bargaining” by which employers standardize the terms in collective agreements across large workplaces. Struggles over working conditions at a large workplace like Vale’s Sudbury mine are therefore strategically important because the conditions imposed on workers there will go on to shape industry standards.
A History of Struggle

To go on the attack, labor needs to emulate the strategic planning of the business class. This is, of course, easier said than done. The Left should, however, find inspiration in the long history of militant action by Sudbury’s nickel miners.

During their 1958 strike, the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (who merged with the USW in the 1960s) faced Vale’s predecessor, Inco. The mining conglomerate had built up a year-long nickel stockpile to weather the storm in case of union opposition to wage and hour cuts.

When miners did go on strike, they understood that their employer’s preparation meant that they had to act militantly. Mine workers launched a two-month strike in which workers and supporters surrounded Inco’s Toronto headquarters and marched around Queen’s Park. Union supporters also picketed foreign nickel shipments at the Montreal port. In the end, they won a sizable wage increase during a recession.

In 1978–79, Inco attempted to use an economic crisis to weaken the union, foreshadowing current events. At the time, Canadian Business speculated that the strong wage settlements Sudbury’s mineworkers had won were a key target for employers and the federal Liberals. Large companies, and their political allies in the Liberal party, worked in tandem to impose wage “restraint” on Canada’s labor movement by breaking strikes, jailing union leaders, and rolling back wage gains.

Inco’s attempted to resolve the crisis by proposing a new contract for workers that took into consideration the economic constrains imposed on the firm. The offer, as Mason Godden writes, “infringed on several areas of the existing grievance procedures and workers’ seniority rights.” It was soundly rejected, and Inco’s workers went on strike in September 1978.The USW and the adjacent Wives Supporting the Strike mobilized community members and surrounding unions to fund collections, toy drives, and community clothing provision to help wait the company out.

The USW and the adjacent Wives Supporting the Strike mobilized community members and surrounding unions to fund collections, toy drives, and community clothing provision to help wait the company out. Fishers in British Columbia donated fish, and the St Catharines and District Labour Council sent thousands of toys for striking workers’ children.

Workers at Falconbridge and Laurentian Universities also doubled their union dues to support the strike. Unions and social movements organized solidarity rallies across Ontario. Support came in from unions in the United States, Britain, and elsewhere.

The USW explicitly linked the struggle of its members to those against similar cuts that governments and employers were trying to impose across Canada. In November 1978 alone, the union was able to send around a hundred of its members to support striking postal workers.

The growing strength and militancy of the union movement became a concern for the federal government as well as employers. A report commissioned by Emergency Preparedness Canada warned:

The power of the union grew during the strike. The effects appear to have spread far beyond Sudbury.

By the spring of 1979, the company’s reserves were running dry.

The company’s net growth had fallen from $34.9 million in the pre-strike first quarter of 1978 to just $500,000 in Q1 of 1979. Inco’s attempt to defeat the strike by amassing enough reserves to wait out the union failed because of the continued increase in militancy on the part of organized labor. In the end, the USW won a wage increase and full pensions for workers after thirty years of service, regardless of age.

The history of USW teaches us that workers can win against companies wishing to use economic crises to justify layoffs and benefit cuts. The Left must work to unite the struggles with all employers using the pandemic as a justification for increasing the rate of exploitation. Bosses and not workers should bear the cost of any economic crisis.

Names have been changed to protect the anonymity of the sources.

Contract coal miners face longer hours, higher risk than full-time peers

Mining companies increasingly rely on cheaper contractors who are reluctant to report safety problems or decline overtime, experts say

A miner holds a Peabody Coal pin badge at his home in Sparta Illinois. Credit: © Neeta Satam

Trebr Lenich always called his mother before driving home from his overnight shift at Hamilton County Coal’s Mine #1.

The call she got on the morning of Aug. 14, 2017, worried her.

“He said, ‘Mom, I am just so exhausted, so wore out,’” said Teresa Lenich, who worried about the long hours and consecutive days her son routinely worked.

That night, Trebr Lenich never made it home.

Coworkers driving behind Lenich saw him driving erratically and suspected he was falling asleep at the wheel, they told his mother. On the way to the West Frankfort home he shared with his parents, girlfriend and baby daughter, he drove off the road into a ditch and hit an embankment, then the engine of his car caught fire, according to a sheriff’s report.


Trebr Lenich Credit: Teresa Lenich / Courtesy

Like many young miners, Lenich was employed through a contracting company that provides temporary employees for mines, usually at lower wages than direct hires and with no promise the mining company will hire them permanently.

This staffing structure, and the disappearance of labor unions from Illinois mines, have made conditions less safe in mines and work more grueling for miners, according to experts and studies. With no job security, temporary staffers are reluctant to complain about potentially unsafe conditions — including long work hours — or report minor accidents, experts say. And temporary workers often have less experience in a given mine, so they may not understand the specific conditions and risks in that mine as well as a longtime employee.

A miner who retired in 2014 after 25 years in several Illinois mines said he saw firsthand the loss of union representation, the increasing use of contractors, and the increasing pressure to work long hours, with debilitating consequences for mine safety and miners’ well-being.

“Guys are working as contractors because, guess what, there are no other jobs in the industry,” said the miner, who asked his name not be used since he has family working in mines and fears retaliation. “If you have two little kids at home you’re trying to feed and they say, ‘Hey you’re staying over tonight or you’re working [overtime] tomorrow,’ basically you’re doing the job or you’re not going to be there anymore. It was never that way in the union.”

Nationwide coal mine work by contractors
The proportion of total coal mine work nationwide done by contractors increased steadily and significantly from 1983 to 2018, from 4% in 1983 to 26% in 2018.Nationwide coal mine work by contractors | Created with Datawrapper

The most recent death in an Illinois mine was a contractor, like Lenich, in Hamilton County Coal’s Mine #1. John Ditterline had been a miner for 28 years at various mines in Illinois. He had been working for six weeks as a contractor through S&L Industries when he died in the mine in the early morning hours of Jan. 5, 2019. At the time of his death, 11 of the 34 people working in the mine were contract workers, according to Mine Safety and Health Administration records. MSHA determined that Ditterline died after being pinned by a pneumatic door in the mine that malfunctioned while he and three other contract workers were investigating a power cable.

 
Data provided by MSHA in response to a public records request showed that between 1983 and 2018, the proportion of total coal mine work nationwide done by contractors increased steadily and significantly, from 4% in 1983 to 26% in 2018. The percent of total coal fatalities among contractors also generally increased during that time, with some years being exceptions, even as fatalities overall declined.


Longer hours, lower pay

Teresa Lenich said that her son feared losing his job if he declined to work the seven-day-a-week shifts he was assigned. An Illinois state law that mandates all employees get a full day of rest each week has an exception for coal miners, as well as for agricultural workers, workers canning perishable goods and several other jobs.

According to Lenich’s pay stub from Custom Staffing Services, the Indiana firm that employed him, he worked 65 and 67.5 hours for $18 an hour in each of the two weeks before he was killed. Teresa Lenich said her son told her that the miners were under pressure to work overtime, and he felt the job he did on the overnight shift required twice as many miners as were assigned to it.

Heather Dunlap, a representative of Custom Staffing, said that mining companies like Hamilton County Coal, not Custom Staffing, set miners’ hours. A representative of Hamilton County Coal referred questions about work with contractors and Lenich’s schedule to a lawyer for parent company Alliance Resource Partners, who did not return calls and emails.


A roadside memorial for Trebr Lenich. Credit: Teresa Lenich / Courtesyby Kari Lydersen
July 13, 2021

Teresa Lenich said she sometimes urged her son to refuse overtime or call in sick.

“He said, ‘Mom, you don’t understand, I can’t. I’ll lose my job, and if I lose my job I can’t support my daughter,’” she recalled in an interview. “I said, ‘Buddy, we’ll help support you until you find something else.’ He said, ‘Mom, it’s not your responsibility. I’m an adult now.’”

Researchers have found that a reliance on contract miners can correlate to longer hours worked and higher rates of injuries and fatalities. Lee S. Friedman, an associate professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, found in a 2018 study that “working for a contractor was strongly associated with injuries occurring during extended work hours,” as Friedman described it. Contract employees’ “odds are significantly and substantially higher than non-contract labor of being injured after eight hours of work,” he said.

Friedman’s study concluded that injuries occurring after nine hours of work are more likely to be fatal and more likely to involve more than one miner. And miners new to the mine or working irregular shifts were more likely to suffer fatal injuries.

“Working for contractors is associated with working extended hours and irregular shifts, and the use of contract labour has been reported to be associated with inadequate training, lower compliance with occupational safety laws and higher injury rates,” Friedman’s study found. “An international shift towards using contract labour and extended workdays indicates that injuries during long working hours will likely continue to grow as a problem in the mining industry.”

Mining experts agree there is an important role for contractors in mines. They can provide specialized services and extra help in times of high production. And temporary or contract work often functions as a probationary process, with the mining company eventually hiring some employees directly. But critics say that mines rely too heavily on contract workers, in part to save money.

Custom Staffing’s website says it helps mining companies “reduce employment costs.” Ditterline’s employer, S&L Industries, based in Kentucky, offered a similar pitch. “With labor costs continuing to rise, our manpower services can provide a cost-effective solution,” the S&L website said at the time.

Bob Sandidge, then the primary owner of S&L and now the owner and CEO of a mining contracting company called RWS Resources, said that miners employed through his company typically earn between $1 and $6 per hour less than those directly hired by the mine.

He said that for S&L, miners may work long hours for several-week stretches, but “you can’t drive them into the ground.”

“If you have a special project and someone has to hammer 60 hours a week for a couple weeks, then everyone jumps in and does it,” he said, “but then we give them a break.”

The data

Friedman and his colleagues found that nationally the proportion of injuries to contract miners compared with direct hires increased fourfold from 3.3% to 12.5% between 1983 and 2015. Meanwhile, an analysis of Mine Safety and Health Administration data by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that between 2006 and 2015, mining contractors had higher odds of being killed than direct hires.

A study by the University of Pennsylvania published in 2013 found that contract coal miners in surface and underground mines were more likely to be killed than direct hires, and were more likely to be killed after working more than eight hours on a shift, especially if they were on the overnight shift.


“We found that for contractors, a higher proportion of injuries that occurred more than eight hours into a shift and on the first [overnight] shift were fatal, compared to other times of day,” said study co-author Kristin Cummings, who is now with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health but worked on the study before joining the government. “We did not see the same pattern for [direct hires]. We do not know the reason why, but speculated that contractors may have less experience and more difficulty functioning safely after working overnight into the morning.”

Her team found that contractors’ odds of fatal versus nonfatal injuries were about three times higher than those of direct hires, but direct hires had higher overall injury rates.

“There are two ways to look at this,” Cummings said. “It could be because contractors were actually at greater risk of having a fatal injury, or it could be that contractors were just less likely to report a nonfatal injury.”

The University of Pennsylvania study also found that contractors had higher odds of being terminated or transferred due to injury.

“Possible explanations are the contractors had more severe injuries, so couldn’t continue in the same job; that there was a lower threshold to transfer injured contractors; or there were fewer options for modified jobs for contractors, so they couldn’t be transferred to another job and instead had their employment terminated,” Cummings said.

While Friedman’s and Cummings’ studies did not examine the reasons for increased risk during long shifts, they said they believe fatigue is a “critical element,” as Friedman put it. He said he sees longer shifts and exhaustion as an increasing concern for both contractors and direct hires.

“The mining industry has moved away from eight-hour shifts and is moving toward 10- and 12-hour shifts,” Friedman said. Federal data shows that workers in mining and logging — which are lumped together — work more weekly hours on average than other private sector occupational categories, with an average of 46.1 weekly hours in February 2019 for miners and loggers, compared to an average 34.4 weekly hours across the private sector.

No unions, little recourse

Union officials say contract miners may work longer hours and in more dangerous conditions because they can be easily terminated and, as a result, don’t want to speak up about concerns. Since contractors also typically earn lower wages, they also may be more eager to accept overtime.

“They’ve got contractors coming in and doing the same job regular employees do for half the money with no future,” said Ronnie Huff, an international representative of the United Mine Workers of America who is based in Illinois.

The labor union once represented tens of thousands of workers in Illinois mines, but today there is not a single unionized mine in the state. The last underground coal mine with union representation — Peabody’s Willow Lake — closed in 2012. Foresight Energy, the state’s largest coal mining company, has never had unions in its mines.

If direct hires were unionized, the union would likely fight against the extensive use of contractors. But without a union, Huff and other labor experts say, miners hired by contractors or the mining company have less power to demand better conditions or shorter hours.

Since her son’s death, Teresa Lenich has tried to highlight and change the law that exempts miners from a guaranteed day of rest each week. She contacted then-Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and wrote to former President Donald Trump in hopes they’d help. Madigan’s office communicated with her periodically, but Madigan is no longer in office and Lenich has not been in touch with the current state attorney general. Lenich said she was surprised not to hear back from Trump, “since he says he’s for the people.”

She sometimes scrolls through photos on her son’s phone, of the mine, and his family. She reminisces about how Trebr seemed to grow up overnight after his daughter was born. Earning money to support his daughter was what kept him going during his long shifts, she said, but now he won’t see her grow up.

“I can’t do nothing for my son. But if I could get it where no other mother has to hurt like this, that would be something,” she said. “He was just so tired. Nobody should lose their life because the company won’t give them a day off.”

DANGER UNDERGROUND

Faulty equipment, poor training are main factors in Illinois coal mining deaths

A small price to pay: Illinois mines routinely appeal safety penalties

For generations of Illinois coal mining families, risk is part of everyday life

Contract coal miners face longer hours, higher risk than full-time peers

Black lung, a scourge of the past, still plagues Illinois mines



KARI LYDERSEN
Kari has written for Midwest Energy News since January 2011. She is an author and journalist who worked for the Washington Post's Midwest bureau from 1997 through 2009. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times, Chicago News Cooperative, Chicago Reader and other publications. Kari covers Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana as well as environmental justice topics.More by Kari Lydersen

 UNITED STATES

Freedom of speech according to the gospel of Koch

Mark A Ashwill  17 July 2021

Jonathan Zimmerman, professor of history of education at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, kicked off his 1 July 2021 essay, “Universities, we have a problem we are afraid to speak of”, by citing a 2020 survey of free speech among US university students with the result that “six out of 10 felt they could not express an opinion for fear of negative reactions from peers, faculty or administrators”.

This annual publication, also known as the “worst colleges for free speech in America” list, is a must-have guide for every parent concerned that her or his child’s “conservative” views may not be respected at a particular higher education institution.

Says Zimmerman about the survey results: “At most colleges and universities, we pretend like that never happened. We need to get our own house in order, but we still have our heads in the sand. US colleges and universities better get their act together, or else.”

The bête noire in his dire scenario is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who recently signed a bill that requires state colleges and universities to “conduct an annual assessment of the intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity” which enables students who feel their freedom of speech has been violated to sue their institution.

What he failed to disclose to readers is that the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which conducted the survey in cooperation with a fellow traveller organisation called RealClearEducation (RCE), is a proponent of the oxymoronic “intellectual diversity movement” whose goal is to “dismantle the so-called liberal bias” in US academia, according to Sourcewatch, a website of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).

FIRE’s mission is “to defend and sustain the individual rights of students and faculty members at America’s colleges and universities”, which is to say “conservative” students and faculty members.

A politically active non-profit is born

The impetus for FIRE’s founding in 1999 by Alan Charles Kors, the Henry Charles Lea Professor Emeritus of History at Penn, tells you all you need to know about this organisation.

Six years earlier, one of his advisees, a freshman by the name of Eden Jacobowitz, was angry because of a sorority event taking place near his dormitory. His response was to open the window and yell the following to a group of African American women below: "Shut up, you water buffalo! If you want to party, there's a zoo a mile from here." This nasty incident became a cause célèbre, a rallying point for US “conservatives”, well-heeled and otherwise.

After Jacobowitz was charged with violating the campus speech code by using racist hate speech, both student and adviser claimed that “water buffalo” had no history as a racial epithet, an example of deflection and dissembling that would make any “ends justify the means” lawyer proud.

His lame excuse that he may have been thinking of the Hebrew word “behemah”, which means “beast”, in reference to people who don’t know how to behave around others, beggars belief.

Using this twisted logic, why not use insults that are obvious references to different groups of “the other” but have no “history” as such? That way you can cloak yourself with a veneer of plausible deniability. The charges were subsequently dropped and Jacobowitz agreed to apologise for “rudeness”.

To punish someone like Jacobowitz for calling a group of Black female students “water buffalo”, whether or not it has no history as a racist term, is not political correctness; it is common decency in a civil academic community and society.

Freedom of speech does not give one licence to say anything to anyone at any time, including yelling “Fire!” in a theatre, “Bomb!” on a flight, “I’ve got a gun!” while going through airport security or "Shut up, you water buffalo!" on a college campus.

The same logic also applies to hurling insults at people you’re angry at and may even hate because of the colour of their skin or another distinguishing feature. Limits on absolute freedom of speech are in defence of fellow human beings who deserve freedom from verbal abuse and attacks related to their ethnicity, gender, race or sexual orientation – who deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.

We are all accountable for what we say, write and do. As the last of the Buddha’s Five Remembrances reminds us: "My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand." People like Jacobowitz and the organisation that rose from the wreckage of his misdeed stand on shaky ground, at best.

The limits of labels

The US is a country in which duality reigns supreme. A black and white view of the world is deeply embedded in the thinking of most US Americans, including those with advanced degrees. Good versus evil, us versus them, conservatives versus liberals, Democrats versus Republicans. This view of the world is best expressed in the saying: There are two sides to every argument. In reality, of course, many arguments and issues have multiple sides. To view the world in such childlike terms is to grossly oversimplify a complex reality.

Labels invariably fail to do justice to the people being labelled. The definition is in the mind of the labeller. Let’s define what these labels mean rather than assume that everyone knows. To call someone a conservative or a liberal says little about their world view and the values in which it is rooted and what makes for a just and humane society. Why not use words as precision tools rather than bandy about murky terms that sow confusion and misunderstanding?

A related cultural point is the US American notion that 1) everyone has a right to their opinion; and 2) all opinions are equal and therefore morally equivalent. The former is correct, the latter is not. This misconception evokes Daniel Patrick Moynihan's comment: "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."

While people have the freedom to spout lies, they should be challenged at every turn with facts.

Finally, the US population, in a society already characterised by an especially virulent strain of anti-intellectualism, has been dumbed down to such an extent that it’s much easier to deceive and manipulate people.

According to a recent study, 54% of US adults between the ages of 16 and 74 are functionally illiterate, meaning they cannot use reading, writing and calculation skills for their own and their community’s development. That’s 130 million people, or nearly 40% of the population.

In a 2004 essay “‘Intellectual Diversity’: The Trojan horse of a dark design”, Stanley Fish noted, in response to the question about who is winning the culture wars in academia, that “if the palm is to be awarded to the party that persuaded the American public to adopt its characterisation of the academy, the right wins hands down, for it is now generally believed that our colleges and universities are hotbeds [what is a “hotbed” anyway?] of radicalism and pedagogical irresponsibility where dollars are wasted, nonsense is propagated, students are indoctrinated, religion is disrespected, and patriotism is scorned”.

Whose bread I eat, his song I sing

As with most organisations, regardless of the flowery rhetoric on their website or the Orwellian code they use, all you have to do is follow the money to discover FIRE’s true agenda.

This non-profit is flush with the millions of dollars in donations it has received over the years from the Charles G Koch Foundation (US$3,427,561 from 2008-19), the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation: US$1,815,000 from 2000-19) and the Sarah Scaife Foundation (US$1,305,000 from 2012-18), among many others. FIRE and RCE are the loyal institutional soldiers in the ongoing US culture wars that were ignited long before the founding of the republic.

It's worth noting that Charles Koch, chairman of the board and CEO of Koch Industries, ranks 16th on Bloomberg’s list of US billionaires with a net worth of US$63.6 billion, as of 3 July 2021. Charles and the family of his late brother, David (1940-2019) each own 42% of the company.

Since FIRE is consuming enormous quantities of Koch, Bradley and Scaife bread in pursuit of its mission, I thought it would be instructive to briefly review exactly what their agenda is, of which the centrepiece is limited government, including examples of what it means to be “conservative” and “libertarian”.

In the world according to Koch, their beliefs are based on the amorphous concept of freedom, including freedom of the individual, free trade, freedom from high taxes and business regulations, etc, ad nauseam.

They believe in low personal and corporate taxes, skeletal social services for those in need, less industry oversight, especially environmental regulations, in order to maximise corporate profits, fossil fuel dependence, patriotism (read nationalism), tax cuts for the wealthy, defunding teachers’ unions and taxpayer vouchers for private and religious schools.

Specifically, “conservatives” are against climate crisis rules and regulations, consumer and animal welfare organisations, drug decriminalisation, gun control, increases in the minimum wage, labour unions, public transit, renewable energy, same-sex marriage, worker rights, etc.

The Koch brothers and others who support organisations like FIRE and RCE have used their 12-figure fortunes to promote this agenda on steroids.

The ideal society its adherents envision is a cruel, unjust and heartless one that is devoid of compassion, caring and solidarity, and favours the wealthy, the financially fittest, over everyone else.

As one commentator noted: “In their view, every area of human life should be subjected to the destructive whims of predatory capitalism.”

This belief system has worked exceedingly well for people like the Koch brothers: white, uber-rich and “captains of industry”.

Through their considerable influence funded by millions of dollars of inherited wealth, they have convinced other US Americans, primarily white males who don’t benefit from their ideal world, at least economically, to internalise the same beliefs. Jonathan M Metzl documents this “politics makes strange bedfellows” phenomenon in Dying of Whiteness.

This story illustrates the fact that money buys influence. Utah State University has a Koch scholars programme, sponsored by Charles Koch. Fifteen business students are given a US$1,000 stipend and selected to participate in a “reading group” in which they are required to read one book per week.

One of the recipients, the son of Latino immigrants whose goal is to become a social worker, felt honoured at first but soon became convinced that the programme was promoting an ultra-conservative view. Required readings had titles such as Order Without Law and Anarchy Unbound. In other words, freedom is good, government is bad – the heart of the libertarian message.

The truth will set you free

In a November 12 2020 op-ed piece for the Chicago Tribune, Zimmerman, beating the same old FIRE drum, wrote that he was “saddened by the way his [Donald Trump’s] sadistic and vindictive spirit has infused our entire culture, including our institutions of higher education”. He says: "I grew up imagining the university as [a] place where you were free to pursue any line of argument as far as you could take it, so long as you could marshal evidence for it.”

He neglected to add that people like the Koch brothers don’t care about evidence. They care about creating a reality, Karl Rove-style, whose benefits disproportionately accrue to them. Those of us who know the score about politically motivated non-profits with an axe to grind, like FIRE and RCE, and know who the power behind the throne is, do not share Zimmerman’s unassailable belief in their credibility and legitimacy.

What I’m afraid of is that 1) too many US higher education leaders, hands outstretched, are happily taking the Koch brothers' and similarly tainted money, thus allowing the latter to buy influence; and 2) others are not taking a bold stance against the intrusion and interference of people like the Koch brothers because they’re afraid, don’t care or want their own piece of the pie. Now that’s a problem worth speaking of.

The battle lines in the culture wars are clearly drawn. There is neither a middle ground nor the possibility of compromise. The first step in jamming their transmission and derailing their attempts to help shape the thinking of the next generation of political and business leaders is to know thine enemy.

Dr Mark A Ashwill is managing director and co-founder of Capstone Vietnam, a full-service educational consulting company with offices in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City that works exclusively with regionally accredited colleges and universities in the United States and officially accredited institutions in other countries. Ashwill blogs at An International Educator in Viet Nam. A list of selected English and Vietnamese language essays can be accessed from his blog.

SURPRISE, SURPRISE
Ray-Ban Maker Luxottica Accused of Anti-Union Behaviour at U.S. Georgia Plant



By Reuters
July 15, 2021

 The Luxottica name is reflected in a pair of sunglasses in this photo illustration taken in Rome February 4, 2016. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi/REUTERS

By Claudia Cristoferi, Silvia Aloisi and Richa Naidu

MILAN (Reuters) -U.S. and international unions have accused Ray-Ban maker Luxottica, the Italian arm of eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica, of violating workers' right to unionise at a U.S. plant in Georgia and asked the Italian, French and U.S. governments to mediate.

In a statement sent to Reuters, the Communications Workers of America (CWA), together with the AFL-CIO and two other workers' groups, alleged that managers of the Luxottica plant in McDonough, near Atlanta, Georgia, unleashed an "aggressive and fear-inducing" campaign to discourage its 2,000 employees from seeking union membership.

The unions filed a complaint on Thursday under guidelines for multinational firms set by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which say multinational firms should not interfere with workers' organising rights.

The filing is an example of non-unionized U.S. factory and warehouse workers seeking the intervention of international labour authorities in their attempt to gain union representation, instead of turning to the domestic National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Last year, a group of international labour unions complained about McDonald's to the OECD, saying the fast-food chain did not adequately address sexual harassment issues.

"The NLRB is really broken," Tim Dubnau, deputy director of organising at CWA, told Reuters. "We know exactly what's gonna happen. We go the NLRB, the company stalls and then spends 80 days intimidating people, acting like thugs at work, forcing people to listen to union-busting nonsense."

The NLRB said its regional staff throughout the country are committed to ensuring each case is thoroughly investigated. Reuters could not find any record that a case was filed by Luxottica with the NLRB.

The CWA said Luxottica - which was founded 60 years ago by Leonardo Del Vecchio and made him one of Italy's richest men - like other European companies, has good relationships with unions at home but operated differently in the United States, taking advantage of weaker labour laws there.

"I don't think it's going to fly when the Italians understand that this company that prides itself on having a good reputation of being pro-worker is treating people in America very, very differently," Dubnau said.

A U.S. spokesperson for Luxottica told Reuters the company maintains "strong and productive relationships with unions globally, wherever our employees choose to be represented by them.

"In Atlanta, our employees overwhelmingly voted in favour of a direct relationship with us instead of union representation less than three years ago," the spokesperson added.

The plant in McDonough produces lenses for Luxottica's subsidiaries Lenscrafters, Pearle Vision, Oakley, and other company-owned brands.

"The climate in the United States is changing. Support for unions is growing and President (Joe) Biden has been very clear that his administration believes that union membership is the best way for workers to improve their wages and working conditions," said CWA spokeswoman Beth Allen.

Just over 6 percent of U.S. private-sector workers belong to unions.

'A VERY DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENT'

The unions say the Georgia plant managers used a company app called "LiveSafe" to warn employees about the alleged risks of union organising, including that they might lose pay and benefits if they succeed in forming a union.

The unions said the app was originally meant to inform workers on COVID-19 issues. The Luxottica spokesperson said the app was introduced in 2018 and is a valuable platform for reaching employees without access to email.

Organizers also accuse the Georgia plant managers of creating an anti-union website, hiring Labor Relations Institute, a U.S. consulting firm that specialises in helping companies fight union organising, and requiring employees to attend mandatory union-bashing meetings.


"We do not believe that having a union is in your best interest or ours," the website https://luxfacts.com says.


"With a U.S. union, the open culture at Luxottica would change. Your ability to be an individual contributor and succeed based on your own merit and hard work might be compromised." SUCH BULLSHIT FACTORY WORKERS ARE NOT DISTINGUISHED FOR MERIT OR HARD WORK, THEY WORK ON AN ASSEMBLY LINE

The OECD requires each member state to have so-called "national points of contact" - or government offices - to review complaints about alleged breaches of its guidelines for multinationals and offer to mediate. But it cannot impose sanctions or force firms to resolve disputes.

The unions also accuse Luxottica's global management in Milan and Paris of failing to address the situation in Georgia.


The U.S. spokesperson for Luxottica said all employee communications by the company that have referred to unions "are in compliance with U.S. labour laws and common practice for U.S. companies."


Georgia is a so-called "right-to-work state", meaning private sector workers cannot be required to join a union or pay dues as a condition of employment.


“These European companies, many of which deal with unions in Europe, exist in a very different environment there,” former NLRB Chair Wilma Liebman said. "Call it Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, because these companies sort of have two different operating philosophies."


Sonia Paoloni, a senior official at Italy's biggest union CGIL, told Reuters the company had excellent relations with unions in Italy and offered extensive benefits to its 14,000 local workers, including, for example, reimbursing expenses for school books for the children of employees.


"I certainly struggle to recognise the behaviour of Luxottica in Georgia as coming from the same company I know in Italy. If Luxottica did the same things in Italy we would sue them for anti-union activity under our labour laws," she said.


(Additional reporting by Richa Naidu in Chicago and Dan Wiessner; Editing by Dan Grebler and David Gregorio)


Copyright 2021 Thomson Reuters.

TENNESSEE 

STRIKE OVER: Union strikes new deal with NAS

STAFF WRITER Erin McCullough
Jul 16, 2021 

Members of the Air Engineering Metal Trades Council toast to the new collective bargaining agreement reached between them and negotiators with National Aerospace Solutions, LLC. The Council membership ratified a new three-year contract with NAS after a two-week strike over unfair labor practices.Erin McCullough photo


The strike against unfair labor practices by National Aerospace Solutions, LLC (NAS) and the Air Engineering Metal Trades Council (AEMTC) has come to a conclusion, according to officials on both sides of the picket line.

According to Jimmy Hart, President of the Metal Trades Department, AFL-CIO, a tentative agreement between the parties was reached late Wednesday night, July 14. The AEMTC membership then took three hours Friday morning, July 16, to vote on the revised offer from NAS and Chugach.

The tentative agreement was “wholeheartedly endorsed” by the AEMTC negotiating committee and the affiliated local unions, Hart said. He further noted that the agreement amounted to “what is proven to be the best contract offer their council has ever received,” in that the negotiating committee was able to address member demands “with sizable gains without giving up any previously earned ground.”

“The struggle that Metal Trades working families and the surrounding communities of the revered Arnold Air Force Base endured during a two week strike resulted in the council being able to negotiate a proposed contract that contains fair wages, protects much needed, hard earned healthcare and disability benefits, while significantly beginning the process of restoring dignity to skilled tradesmen within the Metal Trades workforce that have been selfishly exploited by a 35-year-plus practice that solely served the contractor at the workers’ expense,” Hart said in a statement.

NAS Communications Specialist Sheila Gideon confirmed the agreement late Friday morning, saying a new three-year collective bargaining agreement was ratified by the AEMTC membership.

“The negotiations teams worked closely together to come to a fair and reasonable agreement that recognizes the valuable contributions our union employees make to the Air Force mission,” said NAS General Manager Richard Tighe, Ph.D. “This new agreement will ensure the important work at AEDC will continue in the same outstanding manner as it has for decades.”

Gideon said NAS was appreciative of the efforts from both negotiations teams to resolve the AEMTC strike.

“We look forward to our union colleagues returning to work,” Gideon said.

According to Hart, the ratification vote had a three-to-one approval and was “a great effort by a great bunch of people.”

“They were forced to strike over wages, health care and dignity in the workplace, and they achieved all their goals,” Hart told The News Friday afternoon. “I’m very proud of them. They got good raises that’ll help them defray the inflationary society we’re living in. They kept long-term disability benefits, which were very important because of the dangerous work they do at Arnold Air Force Base, and just as important, they negotiated away the cap, which is a sharing mechanism between the employer and the employee on paying for health care.”

Negotiating team members told The News the union was able to secure a 3% raise, kept the Individual Disability Plan (IDP) coverage at 18 months and secure an 80/20 cost-sharing plan for health insurance—items all members were keen on gaining or keeping at the negotiating table. Additionally, union workers were able to preserve their vacation accrual process with a small sacrifice of wages.

“We gave up money in our wages to do so,” Hart said.

He said waiving the cap on health insurance meant both AEMTC union employees and NAS held a stake in the workers’ health care.

“No matter how much the costs go, there’s a partnership there,” he said. “We’re very thankful to NAS and to the Air Force for seeing their way through to do that.”

Another thing the union was able to re-establish was “dignity in the workplace,” Hart said.

“For many years at Arnold Air Force Base, they had a progressive salary scale—it goes back maybe 30, 40 years,” he told The News. “The workers decided to strike over that issue and to try to mitigate it somehow, to alleviate it and recognize someone who has skills. What the agreement is now, if you are a graduate apprentice—if you have gone to school, learned your trade, have experience—you’ll be recognized for that education in that skillset with appropriate pay.”

Hart noted that while it was sad that the union workers had to lose two weeks’ worth of pay, which was a strain on every working family and an inconvenience to Tullahoma, Manchester and the Arnold Air Force community, the union “couldn’t be more thankful” for the support locally and nationally.

“At the end of the day, the metal trades and NAS came to an agreement that we both can live with,” he said, noting that the process was a fair negotiation. "We appreciate the fact that the company came to the table and got serious. We’re looking forward to a great partnership in the metal trades on Arnold Air Force Base and do great things for our country and its national defense mission.”

Negotiating team members echoed Hart’s feelings on the new agreement.

“I’m thankful we had a resolution that…we can live with, and we’re happy with the outcome,” Paul Mosely, a 15-year pipefitter at the base said. He added it was “definitely” worth the two-week strike to fight for the wages and benefits they wanted.

“I think the agreement is very fair and equitable for the employees; I think it’s a plus for us,” Jason Kelley, recording secretary for AEMTC and operating engineer said. “I’ve been here 29 years. This is the first time we have not had to give up or take a major loss or hit to get a contract in. We didn’t sacrifice basically nothing. It’s a very good, equitable contract.”

Bobby Walker, an operating engineer for the last 14 years, agreed the new contract was a good agreement.

“We’ve fought hard to get what we’ve got,” he said. “The people seem happy. I’m happy. It could be a whole lot worse; it could be a whole lot better, but we’re happy with what we’ve got. This one will work for me, and I think it’ll work for the majority of people out there.”

Operating Engineers Business Agent Manager John Taylor said he was impressed that the workers were able to negotiate the 3% raise, as the raise percentage had not previously been that high in previous contract negotiations he was party to.

“I’ve been in probably six or eight negotiations when I worked out there, and it’s never been a three percent raise,” he said. “It’s always been less than three percent. Getting a three percent raise plus having stuff being left alone, like their insurance, no cap on the insurance—it’s a good contract. It’s absolutely a good contract.”

Walker added that he and the other union workers had to show NAS that they were “tired of the same, old status quo.

“Sorry we had to do that, but this didn’t have to happen,” he said of the strike.

Now that the strike is over, Hart said, union members would return to work any time between this afternoon afternoon and Wednesday, July 21, depending on their schedules.

White House summons labor and business groups to talk infrastructure

Hans Nichols, Alayna Treene


U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the East Room of the White House on July 15, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Biden administration officials are inviting labor and business groups to the White House on Friday to strategize on how to pass the $579 bipartisan infrastructure deal, according to an administration official.

Why it matters: By welcoming groups as disparate as the Chamber of Commerce and the Ironworkers, top White House officials Anita Dunn and Cedric Richmond are working to build a broad coalition to ensure the bipartisan agreement for “hard” infrastructure becomes law.

Dunn and Richmond will update the groups on the general timing for the Senate to consider the deal and stress the importance of the organization’s support for the package.

The agreement could fall apart over concerns of how to fund some of the new spending, with some Republicans now balking at additional money for Internal Revenue Service enforcement.

Driving the news: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) surprised lawmakers Thursday morning when he outlined an ambitious timeline for the bipartisan infrastructure proposal, which would move toward floor action next week.

The bipartisan group of 10 negotiators huddled for hours Thursday afternoon and were joined by White House officials Steve Ricchetti, Brian Deese and Louisa Terrell.

Democratic and Republican negotiators have a variety of challenges ahead of them, with concerns over how to pay for bill and keep Republicans from defecting.

In additional to the Chamber, the private sector will be represented by Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Outdoor Industry Association, the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, the American Clean Power Association, the National Retail Federation and the Zero Emission Transportation Association.

The union side will also be represented by Sheet Metal Workers International Association, United Steelworkers and Transportation Trades Department (TTD).
Last week, the Chamber and the AFL-CIO announced a coalition of groups — from manufacturing — to retail that will band together for passage of the infrastructure package.