In this economic crisis it’s as important as ever for union officers and the rank and file membership to keep up-to-date. Our School provides instructors who are experienced practitioners in their fields, guest lecturers who are top experts and a chance to discuss ideas and network with others. Come to school. Bring a friend or co-worker, encourage your membership to participate. The School of Labor Relations, sponsored by the Labor Guild will start its spring term on Monday March 15th and run Monday evenings (7-9:30) until May 17th . You will find a school flyer enclosed and we are happy to send out a packet of flyers to your group. Check the web site (www.laborguild.com) for course descriptions.
EXPANSION
As many of you know, Newbury College had held night school on the 2nd floor of our building They are no longer using any off site campuses, leaving that space empty A committee has been working with Sacred Heart parish to rent part of the 2nd floor. We hope to increase our conference room allowing more arbitrations, negotiations and meetings to be held here As we send out our annual Guild dues notices, we are conscious of the many financial pressures upon everyone. Be assured, then, of our gratitude for whatever support you are able to offer the Labor Guild at this time.
INSTALLATION OF OFFICERS AND EXECUTIVE BOARD MEMBERS 2010-2011
The Labor Guild’s post holiday social and installation of executive board took place at the Quincy Neighborhood Club on January 7, 2010.
Officers:
President Kevin Kelley, Carpenters Local 275 V-P Steve Finnigan --Dist 4, USW Treasurer: Edward Ahearn, MCOFU Secretary: Eileen Norton, Mass Nurses Assoc. Executive Board members
Jeff Bollen --UFCW 1445 Martin Callaghan --Printing Pressmen 3, IBT John Cronin- Teamsters Local 25 George Embleton --AFSCME Int'l
Chuck Fogel -- Painters DC 35 Tom Gosnell -- Fed of Teachers, MA Michael Grunko – SEIU Local 509
John Hudson, IBAC Tom Kerr- Pipefitters Local 537
Paul Kelly - Segal, Roitman Paul McCarthy --Collective Bargaining Assoc Chuck Monahan -- IBEW 103 Kevin Murphy -- USW 9432 Barbara Owens -- Boston Musicians Assoc Rafael Santana -- Ironworkers L 7 Joseph Sheehan- OCAW, PACE
Mark Smith - AFSCME 1700 Lee Vigil- IBEW Local 103
John Walsh -- IBEW 2222
The Chaplains Corner
“It’s The Economy”
Whatever the fate of the health care bill, other political issues of importance to labor-management relations must come to the fore. Personal and party preferences may embrace job retention and creation, economic stabilization and justice, fair and honest trade, labor-management legislative reform, and climate change. Pope Benedict XVI’s 2010 message for the World Peace Day was, “If You Want to Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation” (America, 12-14-10) and his encyclical, “Charity and Truth”, insisted on climate control by all nations. However with all due respect to Benedict XVI’s moral and practical leadership, most immediately pressing for labor-management relations is the economy --- jobs, incomes and credits. We understand the underlying role of trade and banking, as well as labor-management legislative reform and union power and cooperation. However, most recent events have revealed public outrage over job and income losses.
A Northeastern University study recently documented that the recession has been more like a depression for Massachusetts blue-collar workers, who are losing jobs much more quickly than the nation as a whole. For many, that’s a reminder of their hunger, pains, and doubts with no job or reduced to part-time or temp work. Blue-collar industries (which did not yet move elsewhere) have slashed one in six jobs since 2007, compared with one in twenty jobs for all industries. They’re competing for rare openings in construction or manufacturing, with as many as 70% unlikely to work in those sectors of the economy ever again. Here in Massachusetts there are 65 unemployed construction workers and 24 manufacturing workers for each position. Hundreds of thousands have given up looking for work.
The January 18, 2010 issue of the Bloomberg Business Week features an in-depth study of the permanent temporary work force – 26%
of U.S. workers, no paid vacations, zero sick days,
no company health insurance, no company-funded retirement plan, higher rates of depression and anxiety. The 26 % breaks down as follows – 13.2% work fewer than 35 hours a week for a particular employer, 7.4% are “independent contractors” (maids, real estate agents, management consultants), and the remaining 6% are on-call workers or day laborers, employed by agencies and landscaping or programming services. Scary, indeed, is the November prediction that 22% to 29% of all U.S. jobs will be off shore within two decades and temp workers will have to compete with former manufacturing and construction workers. Especially hard hit are workers 16 to 24 years of age. They have lost jobs by 13% since 2000, while those over 55 years of age have edged up slightly.
What to do? Labor unions and liberal economists insist on New Deal types of programs and lessening of trade pacts. Conservative economists insist on less government intervention in the economy. Some look to better days when baby boomers retire, labor shortages appear and some bargaining flows back to younger workers. Given opposition to the size of any job-stimulus plans, new-found zeal for debt reduction and budget cutting by silent collaborators the previous eight years, and century long opposition to labor unions, there should be no hesitation to have recourse to Judaic-Christian social justice tradition. Namely, the insistence on respect and support for workers’ moral rights for organizing unions, bargaining collectively, a living wage, safe and healthy working conditions, limited working hours, workers compensation, health care, vacation time and retirement benefits.
Wow! What a list of rights so blatantly ignored today! What a challenge to employers! What an affirmation again and again for union agendas! There may be differences over specifics state-by-state, nation-by-nation, but ignoring that tradition earns us the rebuke, “Have we no shame”.
LABOR AND WORK LIFE PUBLIC FORUMS“WHY DAVID SOMETIMES WINS: Strategy, Leadership, and the California Agricultural Movement” by Marshall Ganz, Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School of Government Thursday, Feb. 4, 4-6pm
“TRANSFORMING POWER: From the Personal to the Political” by Judy Rebick, Author, and Sam Gindin Chair in Social Democracy, Ryerson University Thursday, Feb. 11, 4:00 – 6:00 pm Both events are open to the public and will be held in Ropes Gray Room, 2nd Floor, Pound Hall, Harvard Law School
PAST CUSHING-GAVIN AWARDEES
Greg Thornton, senior vice president of human resources for the Boston Globe and CGA management awardee in 2002 retired from the Globe in late December. Greg’s duties will be assumed by Harriet Gould and Chris Hall
Joanne Goldstein, labor attorney awardee in 2000, Goldstein joins the Governor’s cabinet as the new Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, after serving since 2007 as chief of the Attorney General’s Fair Labor Division, where she was responsible for enforcement of the wage and hour laws of the Commonwealth. Joanne Goldstein was a recipient of the Women’s Bar Association 2009 Women of Justice Award, as well as the AFL-CIO Achievement Award. Said Mass AFL-CIO President Bob Haynes, “We are confident that she will build upon her already impressive record of pursuing economic justice and fairness in the Attorney General's office to continue the good work of the Labor and Workforce Development secretariat for the hard working people of Massachusetts.”
2008 Cushing-Gavin Awardee, Joseph Sandulli announces that his firm, Sandulli & Grace will be moving February 1 to 44 School Street, Suite 1100, Boston, MA
EARLY NOTICE
December 3, 2010
ODDS & ENDS
Guilder Paul DiPietro. a retired Local 7 Ironworker and Local 7 Treasurer was elected President of the Malden City Council in January
A new AFL-CIO report in Working America “Young Workers a Lost Decade” discovered:
31% of young workers are uninsured, up from 24% , and 79% say they can’t afford it
31% make enough money to cover bills and put some money aside, up from 22% in 1999.
70% have not saved money equal to two months of living expenses, a real danger as so many jobs disappear.
The public sector unions have thrived in 2008 with 37% of government workers unionized, nearly five times the share in the private sector. However, the National League of Cities expects municipal revenue to continue to drop. States will have faced $256 billion of budget gaps between fiscal years 2009 and 2015. Twenty-three states sacked workers. Only 11 states cut employee benefits. Both states and cities required workers in 2009 to take unpaid holidays, 25% of cities revised healthcare downward.
Northeastern University’s Barry Bluestone, son of a former UAW Vice-President, thinks public-sector unions must adopt policies to improve productivity and , improve, devise and find innovative ways to deliver them.
1988 Guild President Kit Plunkett swears in 2010 President, Kevin Kelley.
LINKS
http://faireconomy.org/files/SoD_2010_Drained_Report.pdf will bring you to United for a Fair Economy’s latest report in their annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day series, State of the Dream 2010: Drained — Jobless and Foreclosed in Communities of Color which explores the U.S. racial economic divide in the wake of the Great Recession and spotlights a targeted policy approach as the best way to close that divide and rebuild our economy. This year's report contains a broad range of accessible data and analysis about the current racial divide in terms of unemployment, income, poverty, wealth, and foreclosures. It also includes policy suggestions that would target economic benefits to communities most deeply devastated by the current recession. Check out the link above or contact Anneka Landgraf by email or phone to reserve a bound copy of the report (alandgraf@faireconomy or 617-423-2148 x100)
http://www.glasshouseforum.org/news_videos.htmlwill get you to a program download as well asvideos from the Glasshouse Forum-Stanford University conference "Inequality in a Time of Contraction", 12-13 November 2009
The conference “Inequality in a Time of Contraction” was a joint venture between The Stanford Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and Glasshouse Forum. It took place at Stanford University on 12-13 November 2009.
The aim of the conference was to clarify the development of inequality in the West in recent decades and to try to identify the mechanisms driving the development. The ambition was further to tentatively explore possible effects of the Great Recession on inequality.
AROUND TOWN:
Kit Plunkett, Norm Teed, Chuck Monahan
Fr. Pat celebrates Labor Day Sunday Mass on TV
Guild executive board members Thomas Gosnell 
& Chuck Monahan at Health Care rally on Labor Day
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