Our Trustees Must Support a Fair and Democratic Vote on Pension Cuts

Last Friday, our trustees formally announced that they will begin the process of cutting our pension benefits. That process is spelled out in a law called the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act (MPRA). MPRA overturned 40 years of labor law by allowing accrued (already earned) pension benefits to be cut by trustees.   MPRA was quietly tucked into a must-pass Omnibus Budget compromise bill in late December 2014. It was drafted in secret and was kept from lawmakers until the last minute. It was never debated, and no amendments were offered. The result, as many Senators and Congressmen have stated, is that MPRA is unfair to workers and retirees.    One prime example of MPRA’s unfairness is how it deprives plan participants of any meaningful vote on whether the cuts should go into effect. MPRA states that plan participants should be given the opportunity to vote on proposed cuts to their pensions. However, the law then cynically takes away that right with two additional provisions. First, any participants who don’t vote are automatically counted as votes in favor of benefit cuts. For example, in a pension plan with 20,000 participants, there could easily be 12,000 members who don’t vote. Under MPRA, those 12,000 non-voters will be counted as “yes” votes in favor of benefit cuts.    Another way the MPRA voting process is unfair is that the vote is non-binding for large pension plans. Under MPRA, the Treasury Department determines whether a plan is large (called “systemically important” plans). It is possible that the Treasury Department will rule that the AFM-EPF plan is “systemically important.” If that happens, the Treasury Department can overrule a “no” vote on cuts and allow the proposed cuts to go forward.   Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) and Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), together with three other Senators, have co-sponsored the Pension Accountability Act (S. 833), which would ensure that all votes on any cut proposal would be counted. First, it would prevent unreturned ballots from being counted as a “yes” vote. In other words, there could be no cuts if over 50% of plan participants who vote decide there shouldn’t be cuts. S. 833 also takes away the “systemically important” exception and makes the participant vote binding no matter how large the plan is.   As Senator Brown said in support of S. 833, “Workers sat at the negotiating table and gave up raises because they were counting on these pensions when they retired. It’s common sense that these workers should also have a seat at the table when negotiating the future of the pensions they fought so hard for.”    The plan participants of the AFM-EPF should have a meaningful vote on whether benefit cuts make sense for them. We call on our trustees to support S. 833 so that a fair and democratic vote can take place on any proposed benefit cuts.  Regardless of what Congress chooses to do, there is nothing stopping our trustees from holding a vote on any proposed cuts and then providing a full and fair disclosure of the results. That means telling plan participants whether a majority of voters voted in favor of the cuts. We deserve a transparent, fair and democratic process because after all, it is our hard earned pensions that are at risk of being cut.

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Unchecked corporate power

Forced arbitration, the enforcement crisis, and how workers are fighting back

Report • By Kate Hamaji, Rachel Deutsch, Elizabeth Nicolas, Celine McNicholas, Heidi Shierholz, and Margaret Poydock • May 20, 2019

One year ago, in Epic Systems v. Lewis, the Supreme Court ruled that employers can use forced arbitration clauses that strip workers of their right to join together in court to fight wage theft, discrimination, or harassment. Unchecked Corporate Power, a new report from the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) and the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) forecasts that by 2024, more than 80 percent of private-sector, nonunion workers will be covered by forced arbitration clauses. This trend makes it critical that public enforcement agencies have the resources that they need to ensure that employers respect important worker protections such as minimum wages, earned sick and family leave, fair workweek standards, and protections against discrimination and harassment. Yet our public agencies are crippled by shrinking budgets and struggle to address persistent workplace violations.

The report calls on Congress to override Epic Systems and protect the fundamental rights of working people by passing the Restoring Justice for Workers Act and the Forced Arbitration Repeal Act. And the report urges states to enact “whistleblower enforcement” laws—such as those introduced in Massachusetts, Maine, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington—to empower workers to sue law-breaking employers on behalf of the state and all injured workers, including those covered by arbitration clauses. California’s Private Attorney General Act (PAGA) is a successful model. In the most recent fiscal year, California’s labor agency received over $34 million in PAGA revenue, which has funded a wide variety of enforcement programs, including cracking down on companies that fraudulent misclassify their employees as independent contractors to avoid minimum wage, unemployment insurance, and other basic obligations to workers.

Click here for the full report.

Lordstown Auto Plant Shuts Down.

By John Gallo
Labor Today Ohio correspondent

F**K Mary Barra, Chairwoman and CEO of GM, for closing the plant. Like Youngstown Sheet
and Tube, which was closed down in 1977, Lordstown GM was still making a profit – just not
enough for the already rich. Poor Mary. When she finally broke through the male-only CEO
barrier, most of the larger factories had already been closed. But she showed her mettle by
closing four GM plants in the U.S., laying off 14,000 employees.
F**K Industry Week, the manufacturing trade publication, for praising Barra’s “willingness to
wield the ax.” Why the praise? She was only following the laws of capitalism: make the most
profits possible by any mean necessary – for the stock holders, corporate executives and
herself. She probably feels badly for the workers. That's why she offered them to transfer to
other GM plants across the country – before they closed down. She also showed solidarity
with “her” workers by taking a pay cut of 0.4%. She only “earns” $22 million a year.
F**K Wall Street investors who cheered the shutdown and getting rid of those “legacy” costs
like pensions and health insurance. When the closing was announced, GM stock rose by
5%.The Market works in mysterious and profitable ways.
F**K Trump, Obama and Congress who for 10 years did nothing to save those jobs. All of
them spoke out against the closings but failed to offer a solution, except to blame the Market,
China and high labor costs. Supposedly facing bankruptcy in 2008, GM got a $50 billion
bailout from the government. The Obama administration bought the company stock, and
literally owned the company. The Feds got them back to profitability and gave the plants back
to the private owners. Then it was back to the business of making even higher profits.
As a union man, I won't say f**k the union officials (although...). I would SHAME them for
capitulating to GM and corporations. Union leaders are not the enemy. They're not closing
plants and laying off workers. But, they have bought into the capitalist system of private
ownership and exploitation. This meant they had to keep “their” corporations profitable in the
hope their members would keep their jobs and get better benefits. Class struggle, workers vs.
corporations, had to be abandoned so companies wouldn't outsource production, move
overseas or cut benefits.
In 1937, the UAW became the first major industrial union, after their historic 44-day sit-down
strike against GM in Flint, Michigan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_sit-down_strike Starting out with only
122 members out of the 45,000 auto workers in Flint, the two year old union took on one of
the largest and brutally powerful corporation in the U.S. And they won! The didn't win by
begging for better conditions ans wages, nor by pleading with corporate politicians for help.
They did it by having radicals and Communist organizers talk with and mobilize all the
workers, involving their families and the whole community in supporting and protecting the
strikers who took over the plants.
Little of this happened at Lordstown. The local leadership was ill-prepared. The class-struggle
unionism of 1936 had been crushed during the Cold War, when the Communists, socialist and
left-leaning leaders and activists who had built the Union were expelled. Involvement of the
members declined, as well as keeping ties with community groups. It's very likely that
pressure from regional and national leaders kept the locals in line.
There was no real fight back, no plan, no mobilizations of the membership or the community.
All they had was hopes and prayers – to god, Trump, GM and elected officials. None of them
heard or heeded their calls. Instead, in 2007, the union accepted a contract that created a
two-tiered system, with new hires earning roughly half of what workers already hired were
making, and were denied pensions. The average hourly wage for GM workers is $24.67
Assembly line workers average USD $16.77.
The local union also agreed to allow GM to bring in low-wage temporary and contract workers
to work in the plant. The goal was to save money. But, GM wanted  more. The company
eliminated the third shift and 1,200 jobs, and later the second shift and 1,500 more jobs. They
eliminated half of the skilled jobs and gave their work to cheaper outside contractors. Finally,
in mid-2017, union workers agreed to give $118 million a year in annual concessions to save
the plant. A year and a half later, GM threatened to down the plant. “Everything they asked us
to do, we did,” said a local union official. On March 6, 2019, Lordstown was closed down.
After giving much of their lives to their class enemy, all the workers got was “Thanks for your
service. Now, f**k off.”
Was there anything the union and the workers could have done, or do in the future? Here's a
few suggestions.
• When union leaders seem at a loss or are more worried about their own jobs, or on the
take, the members themselves have to start talking and taking collective actions to
pressure or convince their leaders to take bolder actions. If the leaders won't move, get
them out of office.
• Sit-down inside the plant and strike.
• Organize the entire labor movement and community to demonstrate at the plant, with
posters, support signs in stores. Send union speakers to religious groups, senior
centers, schools, etc.
• Hold sit ins in Congress members' offices. (Where are you, Dennis?)
• Pressure the local and national AFL-CIO and UAW to launch an organized, mass
campaign to demand the plant be maintained, either by by a giving the plant over to
the workers or by a federal takeover.
Solving these kinds of problems won't come quickly or easily. But, as Frederick Douglass said
in 1857 “If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress”
John Gallo is a retired Vice President of AFSCME Local 3360,retired Coordinator of the
Cleveland Retiree Council and former staff and Board member for the North Shore
Federation of Labor.
http://gallosrow.blogspot.com/

Remember Maria Isavel: 11th anniversary of tragic heat death of 17-year-old farm worker

Today marks 11 years to the day when 17-year-old Maria Isavel Vasquez Jimenez collapsed from the heat and tragically died two days later.

The family of Maria Isavel unveiled a memorial marking the 11^th anniversary at the wine grape vineyard east of Stockton where the pregnant immigrant from Oaxaca, Mexico was stricken by heat stroke. The ceremony was attended by United Farm Workers members and union Secretary-Treasurer Armando Elenes.

Maria Isavel’s uncle, Doroteo Jimenez, organized the memorial. He shares, “I want to do everything I can to make sure this does not happen to other farm workers. I don’t want any other families to go through the sorrow and heartbreak ours has.“

Maria Isavel’s death was especially tragic since it was likely preventable: She was stricken after laboring more than nine hours without adequate access to shade or water. The farm labor contractor never called 911, there was a long delay in obtaining potentially lifesaving medical care and the contractor told workers to lie about events leading up to her death.

UFW Secretary Treasurer, Armando Elenes shares, “This is personal to me. I was the first contact for the UFW with this grieving family. I remember the marches where we all joined with them, how we walked the halls of California’s state Capitol with them, the meals and strategy meetings we’ve had together. The stories haunt me. Maria’s death and the deaths of the other farm workers from the heat leave a permanent place in my memory. The UFW and I will do all we can to prevent another family from having to experience this loss and pain. We are working to take national the state rules we won protecting farm and other outdoor workers from the heat.”

The memorial service comes at the beginning of the harvest season 

After Maria Isavel perished in 2008, her family, including uncle Doroteo Jimenez, tirelessly worked with the UFW to strengthen the heat rules, which happened under the Governor Jerry Brown administration in 2015. The UFW encouraged Governor Brown torename the state heat standards the Maria Isavel Vasquez Jimenez Heat Illness Prevention Regulation in 2018.

Corporate Media Target Gabbard for Her Anti-Interventionism—a Word They Can Barely Pronounce

by Owen Walsh

Presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard has not garnered much press coverage since announcing her bid on February 2; she’s the 13th-most-mentioned Democratic candidate on TV news, according to FAIR’s most recent count (4/14/19).

But when corporate media do talk about the Hawaii congress member, they tend to reveal more about themselves than about her.

A veteran of the Iraq War, Gabbard is centering her presidential campaign around anti-interventionism (2/3/19): the belief that US interference in foreign countries, especially in the form of regime-change wars, increases the suffering of the citizens in those countries.

When corporate outlets talk about this anti-interventionist position, they primarily use it to negatively characterize the candidates who espouse it. Few in establishment media seem interested in going any deeper or considering the veracity of arguments raised by anti-interventionists.

The Washington Post (1/15/19) listed Gabbard’s anti-interventionism as a factor that hurts her electability in a video titled, “Why Some See Tulsi Gabbard as a Controversial 2020 Candidate.” Part of the video’s explanation: “The congresswoman has raised concern among Democrats in the past when she criticized Obama’s strategy on Iran, ISIS and Syria.”

CBS News (2/4/19) briefly interviewed Honolulu Civil Beats reporter Nick Grube regarding Gabbard’s campaign announcement. The anchors had clearly never encountered the term anti-interventionism before, struggling to even pronounce the word, then laughing and saying it “doesn’t roll off the tongue.” When asked to define the candidate’s position, Grube equated it to President Trump’s foreign policy. But “America First” rallying cries aside, it hardly seems accurate to call Trump an anti-interventionist, given his administration’s regime change efforts in Venezuela, his unilateral reimposition of sanctions on Iran (FAIR.org, 5/2/19) and his escalation of the drone wars (Daily Beast , 11/25/18 ).

Tulsi Gabbard being challenged on The View (2/20/19)
by Ana Navarro: “Why are you so against intervention in Venezuela?”

When Gabbard appears on talkshows, she is typically on the receiving end of baseless questions coated in assumptions of military altruism. Gabbard appeared on ABC’s The View (2/20/19) and articulated her argument that US intervention does more harm than good to the people purportedly being helped. Rather than respond to any of the points she raised, however, the hosts resorted to the kinds of shallow questions that have been supporting interventionism for decades.

Sunny Hostin asked, “So should we not get involved when we see atrocities abroad?” Fellow panelist Ana Navarro elaborated:

I’m very troubled by the tweets about Venezuela that you’ve put out…. [Maduro] is not allowing humanitarian aid, he is a thug, he is a dictator, he is corrupt. And I am very supportive of what the United States is doing right now…. Why are you so against intervention in Venezuela?

On CBS’s Late Show With Stephen Colbert (3/11/19), the host resorted to old-fashioned American exceptionalism and Cold War–style paranoia to counter the congress member:

Nature abhors a vacuum. If we are not involved in international conflicts, or trying to quell international conflicts, certainly the Russians and the Chinese will fill that vacuum…. That might destabilize the world, because the United States, however flawed, is a force for good in the world, in my opinion.

Comments like these may seem harmless; why not, after all, fight “atrocities”? In fact, they contain the same language that media have used for decades to justify interventionism and quiet dissenters.

Tulsi Gabbard being asked by CBS‘s Stephen Colbert
 (3/11/19) why she doesn’t see the US as a “force for good in the world.”

Colbert’s exceptionalism argument, in particular, is reminiscent of the centuries-old vision of the US as a “shining city upon a hill.” It’s also a frame historically employed by media to rationalize the country’s foreign policy. As communications scholar Andrew Rojecki wrote in his 2008 research article (Political Communication, 2/4/08) on elite commentary of George W. Bush’s military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, “Over the course of the two crises, American exceptionalist themes made up a constant background presence in elite commentary and opinion.”

In other words, the assurance that Colbert has that the US has been “a force for good in the world” has paved the way for some of the greatest disasters of the modern world, including the 17-year-old war in Afghanistan (or almost 40 years, if you date from the US deliberately provoking the 1979 Soviet intervention) and the half-million-plus killed in the Iraq War. Other difficult cases for proponents of intervention include Libya, where removing an authoritarian ruler devastated the nation and brought back slave markets , and Syria, where hawks evade responsibility for the hundreds of thousands killed in a US-backed effort to overthrow the government by pretending that the US has failed to intervene .

Currently, in Venezuela, where Navarro is “very supportive of what the United States is doing,” Washington has imposed sanctions that are blamed for killing 40,000 in the last two years (CEPR, 4/25/19). Meanwhile, the US offers as a publicity stunt a convoy with “humanitarian aid” valued at less than 1 percent of the assets it has blocked Venezuela from spending.

Another easy to way to discredit anti-war critics is to accuse them of siding with the enemy (FAIR.org, 4/1/06). So it’s not much of a surprise that when Gabbard gets mentioned in establishment news, a comment about her meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is usually soon to follow.

Gabbard traveled to Syria in 2017, on what her office called a “fact-finding mission.” During her trip, she met and spoke with al-Assad, prompting the media to question her loyalties ever since, equating her meeting to tacit support of his regime. (Gabbard callsAssad a “brutal dictator,” but says US efforts to overthrow his government are “illegal and counterproductive.”)

New York Times columnist Bari Weiss appeared on the popular Joe Rogan Experiencepodcast (1/21/19) and confidently called Gabbard an “Assad toadie.” When Rogan asked her what “toadie” meant, she couldn’t define the word, asking the show’s producer to look it up for her. (It means “sycophant”).

The New York Times (1/11/19) and Associated Press (Washington Post, 5/2/19) both identified Gabbard’s meeting with Assad as a factor that made her a controversial candidate. In an article about Gabbard’s apparent fall from grace within the Democratic party, Vox (1/17/19 ) characterized Gabbard’s opposition to the funding of Syrian rebels as “quasi-support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the dictator responsible for the outbreak of the Syrian civil war and the conflict’s worst atrocities.”

Interviewers from MSNBC’s Morning Joe, ABC’s The View, CBS’s Late Show and CNN’s Van Jones Show all asked Gabbard to justify her meeting with Assad, or pressured her to renounce him as an enemy. None were interested in asking even the most basic question of substance, “What did you and Assad talk about during your meeting?” The implication is clear: When it comes to those designated by the state as official enemies, communication is suspect.

So perhaps the simplest explanation for corporate media’s treatment of Gabbard is that she opposes the kind of intervention that they have historically been complicit in.

FAIR (e.g, 4/91, 3/19/07, 8/11) has documented mainstream media’s consistent support for US intervention across the globe. FAIR has also been documenting corporate media’s support for intervention in Venezuela, finding recently that zero percent of elite commentators opposed regime change in that country (4/30/19) and noting corporate media’s harsh admonishment of Bernie Sanders after he tepidly questioned US intervention in Venezuela (3/5/19).

Gabbard’s campaign is just one small piece of a larger phenomenon in the mainstream media: Space for dissenting opinions on the US’s neoliberal, interventionist foreign policies must not be allowed.

DEVASTATING ATTACKS ON PUBLIC EDUCATION IN FLORIDA

Here's what you need to know this week:

This is the last week of the 2019 Legislative Session, and with it comes one of the most significant attacks on public education in Florida, to date. On Tuesday, SB 7070 passed in the house to be sent to the desk of Governor DeSantis. This massive voucher scheme takes $130 million dollars in public money and diverts them to private schools in the form of tuition vouchers. This money could have been used to properly fund our public schools and help meet the needs of the millions of students attending them, but instead, it will be funneled into the pockets of charter school owners hoping to strike it rich on taxpayer money. In addition, the bill also raises the income threshold for approval, meaning that  those that could likely afford  private schools will be able to use tax dollars, which could instead be being used to repair some of our schools in the greatest need of assistance.


While legislation like this was previously ruled unconstitutional, the legislature is hoping that the newly appointed court by Governor DeSantis will overturn this. All of these interworking pieces are a somber reminder that all elections on the ballot have consequences, and that remaining disengaged comes at a price. 

Here's what's coming up:

- Tomorrow (3/3) our Florida Future Labor Leaders chapter will be rallying for worker's rights outside Hillsborough School Employees Federation (5126 N Florida Ave) at 5PM. They will be speaking out against attempts to privatize the custodial staff at our public schools, attacks on public education, and other issues that hurt working people today.


- Tuesday (3/7), our sisters and brothers from Hillsborough School Employees Federation (HSEF) will be rallying at the school board (901 E Kennedy Blvd, Tampa) in opposition to privatization of custodial services in Hillsborough County Schools. There will be a rally at 9AM with night shift employees who will be working during the school board meeting and a second rally at 3:30PM during the actual meeting. More info about this effort can be found by CLICKING HERE, and a printable flyer for the event can be found HERE.

- After the rally on Tuesday (3/7) swing by our CLC Meeting at IBEW 824 (6603 E Chelsea St, Tampa) at 7PM to be a part of everything we've got going on in our CLC!

Keep in Mind:

The national AFL-CIO is still opposing a vote on the new NAFTA deal until it is fixed. While the labor movement has been asking for renegotiation for years, this new deal lacks protections for workers and does little or nothing to foster an inclusive and sustainable economy. Sign the petition from the AFL-CIO by CLICKING HERE.

That's all for this week! Check out our website at wcflc.org or follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more updates. If you would like to receive text message alerts from the Florida AFL-CIO (Msg & data rates may apply), text FLUNION to 235246!

In Solidarity,

West Central Florida Labor Council