Today's AFL-CIO Press Clips
MUST READ
Union leaders back comprehensive caregiver campaign
People’s World
By Mark Gruenberg
March 3, 2023
The caregivers’ “work deserves fairness. Work deserves dignity. Work deserves respect,” Shuler declared. “I bring a very simple message: Caregiving is work.”
TRANSPORTATION
The Guardian
By Michael Sainato
March 3, 2023
Edward Wytkind, who served as president of the Transportation Trades Department (TTD) at the AFL-CIO, which represents the unions in the railroad industry, said that throughout his 25 years at the TTD, the railroad industry blocked all attempts to pass legislation or advance regulation on safety. “From attempts to address worker fatigue, lack of coherent mandatory safety plans, increasing transparency to the public and first responders about what trains are carrying, the dangers of such long trains, or establishing floors for minimum train crew, the railroads blocked everything,” said Wytkind.
JOINING TOGETHER
REI Co-op workers at Cleveland-area store vote to join union
Signal Cleveland
By Olivera Perkins
March 3, 2023
“Tonight, we can finally say that REI Cleveland is a union store,” Nick Heilgeist, a retail specialist at the store and a member of the REI Cleveland Organizing Committee, said in a news release from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). “I love working at REI, and with a seat at the table, I know we can make it better for workers and customers alike.”
REI Workers In Cleveland Vote To Join The Retail, Wholesale And Department Store Union
Forbes
By Sharon Edelson
March 4, 2023
“We’re excited to welcome the workers of REI Cleveland into the RWDSU,” said Stuart Appelbaum, president of RWDSU. “When their employer tried to aggressively delay their election, workers walked out, and went on strike, until the employer backed-off. They have stuck together through a horrendous, relentless, and unlawful union-busting campaign and have come out the other side stronger. REI Cleveland workers will now bring their strength to the bargaining table, and we know that together they will win a strong contract.”
NYSNA Nurses Hold Speakout, Vigils, Call For Fair Contract
Black Star News
March 3, 2023
On Thursday, March 2, NYSNA members held actions at public hospitals throughout New York City on the day that their union contract expired. Public sector nurses, who staff New York City’s public hospitals and mayorals agencies, are demanding that the city live up to its agreement on pay parity with the private sector to stop the bleed of nurses from public hospitals that has created a crisis of understaffing harming NYC’s most vulnerable patients.
Cleveland's REI Workers Vote 'Overwhelmingly' To Unionize
Cleveland Scene
By Mark Oprea
March 3, 2023
To cap off a months-long movement toward organizing, the 37 workers at REI's Cleveland location voted in favor of unionizing Friday evening. Their store, situated in Pinecrest, will be the third location nationwide to form a union. Citing unfair wages and poorly structured hours, union-favoring employees filed with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union on January 11. The group soon ran into expected backlash from corporate, which told the National Labor Relations Board that half of the group's 56 workers were "ineligible" to organize. That changed Friday. All 56, RWDSU said in a statement, were free to vote.
IN THE STATES
Labor Organizer: Gov. Reynolds, Please Let Iowa’s Kids Be Kids
Iowa Starting Line
By Jen Pellant
March 2, 2023
It’s starting to look a heck of a lot more like the 1880s than the 1980s in our state. It’s certainly not the Iowa the Greatest Generation fought and died, and worked and sacrificed, to leave to us. In just weeks Reynolds has detonated what we’ve built over a century and a half. The sweep of her destruction is eye-popping, and it’s barely March. This week, Reynolds’ Republican legislative allies are ushering yet another child-experimentation bill through the Iowa House and Senate. This one, Senate File 167 (or HSB 134), rolls back child labor protections and seeks to expand the kinds of work 14- and 15-year-olds can do as well as ratcheting up the hours they can spend doing it. Can’t attract adult employees to Iowa with a radical agenda? No problem, put the kids to work.
Leaders Voice Opposition To PEIA Bill
WV Public Broadcasting
By Randy Yohe
March 3, 2023
West Virginia AFL-CIO President Josh Sword led the union charge.“The plan is designed in their mind to address the solvency of PEIA by reducing benefits on the plan participants and kicking people off the plan,” Sword said. “As opposed to finding and directing a dedicated revenue stream. That’s our number one goal.”