Tag Archives: usw

Tom Mulcair to Address Steelworkers’ National Conference Tuesday

Posted on by

MONTREAL, April 4, 2016 /CNW/ – Federal New Democratic Party Leader Tom Mulcair will address hundreds of labour activists on Tuesday as guest speaker on the opening day of the United Steelworkers (USW) National Policy Conference.

“We’re honoured to welcome Tom Mulcair to our National Policy Conference,” said USW National Director Ken Neumann.

“We are looking forward to hearing Tom address some of the most important issues for our members and all Canadians – income inequality, economic fairness, social justice, the shrinking middle class,” Neumann said.

Mulcair will address conference delegates at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, three days ahead of the federal NDP convention in Edmonton.

The four-day USW National Policy Conference begins Tuesday and runs until Friday at the Centre Sheraton Montreal Hotel, 1201 Boulevard René-Lévesque West.

Approximately 600 USW activists from across Canada will attend the conference, held every three years to set the national union’s policies and priorities. The USW represents 225,000 workers in virtually every sector of the Canadian economy.

Other speakers at the USW conference will include Alberta Premier Rachel Notley; United Steelworkers International President Leo W. Gerard; Canadian Labour Congress President Hassan Yussuff; former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm; and Stephen Lewis, former Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations and former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa.

SOURCE United Steelworkers (USW)

Source: Media Advisory – Tom Mulcair to Address Steelworkers’ National Conference Tuesday

Latest Lake Erie U.S. Steel Offer Not Endorsed By Steelworkers Union Committee

Posted on by

 

Lake Erie Works of US Steel Canada in Nanticoke.

By Steve Arnold  http://www.thespec.com  AUGUST 29, 2013

PORT DOVER – U. S. Steel’s latest offer to end a bitter four-month lockout of Lake Erie Works employees got a cool reception from workers who got their first look at the package Wednesday.

The tentative deal, which the union negotiating committee is not backing with a recommendation, was negotiated in Pittsburgh recently under pressure from the international headquarters of the United Steelworkers.

Union president Bill Ferguson, of Local 8782 of the United Steelworkers, said even though the local leadership doesn’t support the proposal he felt it was necessary to bring it back to the membership.

“There have been some moves by the company,” he said. “We don’t recommend this, but we’re taking it to the members because we are not going to make unilateral decisions that affect the lives of 1,000 people.”

“This is still a concessionary package,” he added. “We’re bringing it to the members because we feel it’s time for them to tell what they feel.”

Union members, who have been locked out since late April, have twice rejected company offers by votes of 70 per cent.

Ferguson said the company has made some improvements to previous packages, but changes have not been extensive.

The chief improvements to this offer over previous company packages include adding strong language protecting workers from having their jobs contracted out, restoring a signing bonus to $2,500 after an earlier cut to $2,000, dropping demands for increased co-payments for prescription drugs and adding lump sum payment of $500 for each year of a five-year term.

There is also a profit-sharing plan that would pay workers a maximum of $3,500 if Lake Erie plant profits top $25 million.

On the negative side, the package does not include a base wage hike, it continues to demand changes to the cost of living allowance that trigger payments only when inflation hits 3 per cent and caps vacation entitlements for current and future employees at five weeks. (Workers who already have more than five weeks vacation keep that entitlement.)

Ferguson said getting the job security language members wanted was an important step, but the economic side of the agreement remains a disappointment.

“We still have all the economic issues so it’s still a concessionary contract,” he said.

Outside the meeting, workers were not excited by the package and predicted a close vote when it is presented for ratification Friday.

“It’s better than the last one, but I’m going to have to think about it some more,” said veteran worker Alan Laufs. “I think it will be a close vote.”

“Maybe we can do better, but just don’t know right now.”

Many predict a vote divided by age with veterans like Laufs, who is mortgage free and three years from retirement, tempted to hold out for a better deal while the cadre of younger workers with mortgages and growing families voting for a paycheque after four months of $200 a week in strike pay.

“There’s more at stake here than just having a job, but a lockout like this is hard to take,” said one worker who refused to give his name. “It takes a long time to recover from something like this.”

James Nelles is one of the younger cohort and is strongly opposed to the deal.

“It’s nowhere near good enough,” he said. “There are a couple of carrots here for the desperate, but I’m not ready to concede yet.

“This is an improvement from the past offers, but it’s too small an improvement for me.”

Rob Weatherston, also from the younger group, wanted to know why workers are being pressed for concessions when U. S. Steel’s executive class continues to enjoy multi-million pay raises and bonuses.

Despite that, he said he’d likely vote for the deal for himself.

“I’d take it for myself because I think we could come back in five years and do better,” he said.

Even without a wage increase, there are still the annual lump-sum payments and the chance of overtime to make up the difference. And if things don’t change, he’s still young enough to look for something else.

“I’ve got a five-year plan to get myself in a position to leave if I want to,” he said, adding part of that effort is taking night school courses at McMaster University.

The Lake Erie plant workers were locked out for eight months in 2009-2010 as the company backed demands for radical changes in its pension plans. U. S. Steel has said repeatedly it needs further changes in the labour agreement to make the plant “competitive.”

The Friday ratification vote will be held from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the union hall in Nanticoke.

Cheap labour and the lessons of the Plaza Hotel strike

Posted on by

Robyn Benson By Robyn Benson on August 23, 2013   http://www.aec-cea.ca

 

plaza hotel strike.JPG

Who are those people pounding the pavement outside Toronto’s Plaza Hotel, whom the owner called “animals?” They are workers with little or no hope for the long-term, decently-paid jobs that many of us take for granted, living a precarious existence. If you want to know how many of them there are these days, take one Plaza Hotel and multiply by a very big number.

The low-wage workers at the Plaza are at least unionized. Largely due to their Steelworkers Union and to the Ontario Federation of Labour, the public is becoming more aware of the appalling working conditions there.

But this is just the tip of the cheap-labour iceberg.

I’ve posted before about the Temporary Foreign Workers program, a part of this new race to the bottom, in which the Harper government has been complicit. A victory or two have been won in that area, but there is much more to the problem than offshore workers entering Canada on a government program. In some ways, that was just a matter of domestic Canadian cheap labour being edged out of jobs by foreign cheaper labour.

Take the North American fast-food service industry, for example. It used to be that this was a good sector for young people to find a job for a while, and then move on. Now more adults than teens are asking if you want fries with that, and they’re in it for the long haul.

The new employees of this largely non-union sector are more experienced and better educated than formerly, but their wages and benefits don’t reflect that. Small wonder, as we have seen recently in Halifax with coffee-shop baristas, and in the US with employees of McDonald’s and other franchises, that these workers are beginning to look to unionization—and a substantial increase in the minimum wage—as a way of making their circumstances comparatively less precarious.

Would this make hamburgers, coffee and fried chicken too expensive? That’s always the scare-story put about by the anti-union types. But it’s not founded upon fact:

Several studies show that raising the minimum wage would have minimal effects on the industry as a whole. One letter signed by more than 100 economists and published by the University of Massachusetts said that raising the minimum wage to $10.50 would increase the price of a Big Mac by a nickel. Another study shows that doubling the salaries and benefits of all of McDonald’s employees would add 68 cents to each Big Mac.

Perhaps one of the more comical aspects of the corporate fightback was the spectacle of McDonald’s solemnly informing its low-wage employees how to budget. The bosses’ scheme works perfectly—if the minimum wage is doubled, and you can do without water, clothing, gas, heat and child care.

Are low wages the natural cost of working for a living wage in the service sector these days? Well, no:

Consider Costco and Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club, which compete fiercely on low-price merchandise. Among warehouse retailers, Costco…is number one, accounting for about 50% of the market. Sam’s Club…is number two, with about 40% of the market.

…A 2005 New York Times article by Steven Greenhouse reported that at $17 an hour, Costco’s average pay is 72% higher than Sam’s Club’s ($9.86 an hour).

On the benefits side, 82% of Costco employees have health-insurance coverage, compared with less than half at Wal-Mart.

…In return for its generous wages and benefits, Costco gets one of the most loyal and productive workforces in all of retailing, and, probably not coincidentally, the lowest shrinkage (employee theft) figures in the industry….Costco’s stable, productive workforce more than offsets its higher costs.

A cheap labour strategy doesn’t work. It costs just about everybody. Costco knows this from experience, and has resisted calls to lower its wages and benefits.

So the push-back against impoverishing workers is not only a union concern, although we can certainly play a lead role in it. But we in the labour movement can’t do that by focusing too narrowly. We need to be part of a wider movement to defend the right to a living, dignified wage and secure employment for everyone. After all, it’s our whole society that is at stake here—and surely that makes it everybody’s fight.