Washington Post, September 20, 2004, Monday

Copyright 2004 The Washington Post

The Washington Post

September 20, 2004 Monday
Final Edition

SECTION: Financial; E02

HEADLINE: DID YOU HEAR? . . .

BODY:
"They are creative, aggressive and willing to do what it takes."
-- Kate L. Bronfenbrenner, director of labor eduation research at Cornell University, on Unite Here, the union representing Washington hotel workers as they negotiate for a new contract.

Buffalo News (New York), September 19, 2004, Sunday

Copyright 2004 The Buffalo News
Buffalo News (New York)

September 19, 2004 Sunday, FINAL EDITION

SECTION: BUSINESS, Pg.C1

HEADLINE: A BETTER LIFE FOR WORKERS, BUT AT WHAT COST TO THE CITY?/

BYLINE: Fred O. Williams; NEWS BUSINESS REPORTER

BODY:
Parking attendant Donna Riley got a $3 hourly raise last month, courtesy of a five-year-old city law.
Under Buffalo's Living Wage Law, which applies to city contractors, she earns $9.03 for tending the gate at downtown's Fernbach ramp, plus health benefits.
It's not just more money -- it's a different life, she said.
"I just requested full-time (work) when we got the living wage," Riley said. Working full-time could eventually mean giving up her disability benefits stemming from an accident in 1988. "I was scared, but I decided I wanted to try."
After years of wrangling over who would enforce it, the city's Living Wage Law is starting to boost the paychecks of low-income workers. Contractors with more than $50,000 in sales to the city are supposed to pay their workers at least $9.03 plus health benefits, or $10.15 without benefits.
Buffalo Civic Auto Ramps, which operates city-owned ramps downtown, was the first employer known to have complied. It boosted the wages of Riley and most of its other 53 workers in August, general manager Peter J. Scoma said. The cost: about $200,000 a year.
Raises from living wages should help the city's economy, as well as some of its working poor, by putting money back into neighborhoods, advocates say.
But business proponents wonder how the the nearly broke city and its wheezing economy can pay the bill.
"The bottom line is, someone is going to have to pay for this," said Bridget Corcoran, manager of local and government affairs at the Buffalo Niagara Partnership. "Either the consumer's going to pay for it or the city's going to have to."
The Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority, informally known as the control board, is also withholding its applause.
"To the extent that it increases the city's expenses, BFSA would consider it ill-advised," said a statement from the board, relayed by spokeswoman Dorothy A. Johnson. The control board hasn't analyzed the impact of the wage law, she added.
Buffalo Common Council first passed the living wage in 1999, without an enforcement mechanism. A court battle over enforcement brought the creation of a Living Wage Commission to urge contractors to comply. Created a year ago, the commission recently persuaded some city parking contractors to raise their pay. Meanwhile, volunteers are pushing city departments to write the wage rule into contracts as they are renewed.
Buffalo is one of 58 localities nationwide that have adopted some form of living wage requirement, according to the anti-poverty group ACORN. The laws usually cover service jobs like janitors, security, food service and parking, with wage thresholds ranging from $6.25 to $12 an hour.
At least in the Riley household, the raise from the living wage seems to fulfill advocates' hopes for spin-off economic benefits.
Riley, 47, is thinking of buying a house in her Lovejoy neighborhood, something that was out of reach before. Her husband, Tim, also works for the parking contractor, doubling the impact of the pay raise.
"I thought we were going to live in this apartment 'til the day we died," she said.
Asked where she stood in the economic scheme of things before the pay raise, Riley doesn't hesitate: "Poor. I went bankrupt last May; I couldn't pay my bills, and I tried." Much of her check goes for co-pays on prescriptions.
Now, "I think we're going to end up with a house finally," she said.
Her co-worker Bruce Johnson also received a raise, not one that will alter his circumstances. An 18-year employee, his raise of $1.37 put his wage at $9.81 an hour. (Some senior workers got raises above the required threshold to maintain their pay premium over less experienced co-workers, Scoma said.)
"It's gonna help me out a little but not that much," the South Buffalo resident said. With seven children, from toddlers to teenagers, there are plenty of uses for the extra income, he said, especially at back-to-school time.
Cities should look at living wages as an investment in their tax base, not just an expense, said Lou Jean Fleron, chair of the Living Wage Commission and a faculty member at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
"I think there's clearly a benefit to the economy," she said. The income means workers like Riley can become homeowners and spend more at local businesses, boosting tax rolls and stabilizing neighborhoods while reducing reliance on assistance programs.
"The cost is there -- you can pay with the one hand or with the other," Fleron said.
Maybe so, but just what that cost will be for city coffers is still unclear, five years after the law was passed. Neither the city comptroller or finance commissioner could estimate how many workers at city contractors are covered by the law, and how many might get raises. Decentralized city contracting, done individually by departments, makes the information difficult to collect, officials said.
Buffalo Civic Auto Ramps is thought to be the city's largest contractor in terms of low-wage employees. Its $200,000 in higher costs will reduce the stream of parking revenue to the city, Comptroller Andrew SanFilippo said. Downtown parking income of about $4-$5 million a year goes to service debt on the downtown ramps; any extra goes into a fund to meet payments in slower months.
Now other parking contractors are about to follow suit, after urging by the living wage commission. Allright New York Parking Inc., operator of three city-owned hospital ramps, expects to boost paychecks of about 20 covered workers in October, general manager Teresa Ruggiero said. Under the company's contract, the undetermined cost will be passed along to the city, she said.
Further costs to the city could be relatively light, Finance Commissioner James B. Milroy said. "Frankly," he said, "most of the unskilled work within the city we do with our own employees." e-mail: fwilliams@buffnews.com

The Washington Post, September 17, 2004, Friday

Copyright 2004 The Washington Post
The Washington Post

September 17, 2004 Friday
Final Edition

SECTION: Financial; E01

HEADLINE: Old Labor Tactics Resurface in New Union;
Unite Here Involves Younger People, Has History of Not Backing Down

BYLINE: Amy Joyce, Washington Post Staff Writer

BODY:
Labor experts say Unite Here, the newly merged union that is representing the D.C. hotel workers in their current contract dispute, is one of the most outspoken and toughest unions under the AFL-CIO umbrella.
One example: Unite, which represented textile workers before its merger, took an unusual tack in negotiations on behalf of airline laundry workers with Royal Airline Laundry Services. The union found workers who said they were being asked to increase productivity by repackaging used blankets and headphones without laundering them first.
So Unite's president, Bruce S. Raynor, started a campaign in late 2000 in which air passengers were given a test tube and swab to find out whether bacteria was crawling on the blankets they cuddled with in their window seats.
Airlines called Royal and begged officials to settle with the union, recalled Kate L. Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University. What followed, she said, was a contract that provided workers with more pay and better working conditions. "They are creative, aggressive, and willing to do what it takes," Bronfenbrenner said.
Some of that same attitude is on display in Washington this week as Unite, which merged this summer with the hotel workers' union, called Here, presses for a new contract for local hotel workers.
Besides finding resourceful ways to get members' issues heard, Unite Here is adept at involving college students and recent graduates -- an enthusiastic population rarely tapped by the union world -- who are eager to help organize immigrant and low-wage workers. Both unions also have a history of not backing down.
In other words, what is old is new again.
"They remind people like myself of the kind of full-throttle organizing that was in the '30s and '40s," said Robert A. Bruno, associate professor of labor and industrial relations at the University of Illinois.
But organizing in the 21st century has not been easy. Union membership has been on the decline for years as manufacturing jobs disappeared and the economy changed toward a more white-collar environment. In 2001, Unite had 207,000 members, while Here had 241,000. The combined group now claims 440,000 members . Labor union membership as a whole dropped to 16 million in 2002 -- 13 percent of the workforce.
Unions have suffered, said Charles B. Craver, labor law professor at George Washington University and author of the book "Can Unions Survive?" "If the AFL-CIO can't organize big service companies, they're dead."
That's why Raynor's efforts to negotiate a new contract for hotel workers here, part of an effort to bolster union influence in large, corporate hotel chains, are being watched closely.
Raynor, 54, now serves as president of Unite Here. He graduated from Cornell and spent his life organizing companies, mostly in the South. He lives in Nyack, N.Y., with his wife and has five children.
Raynor has "a strange way of looking at things," said Bill Adams, a labor relations consultant for corporations. "He thinks if you get angry, you'll be successful. That shows how he runs things."
One focus of the local negotiations is a two-year contract, as opposed to the typical three-year contract. That's so it will expire at the same time as contracts in New York and other major cities.
"For the union and the workers to have representation with these chains, we can't negotiate Washington, D.C., as if you're dealing with a dozen locally owned hotels," Raynor said in a phone interview yesterday. "We think by the union contracts expiring the same year, these multinational companies will sit down to talk with us."
Seeking contracts with the same termination date is a practice that has been used for years, though it was more common decades ago, according to Ruth Milkman, director of the Institute of Industrial Relations at the University of California at Los Angeles. The rubber workers union, which covers workers for companies such as Firestone, has established the same termination date as well.
Unite Here has "mapped out the country, saying, 'Here's the employer, here is where they interlock. We have to get all these areas to the same standard and locked into the same deals. Then ultimately . . . we may be able to pull off a nationwide strike,' " Bruno said.
Before the two unions merged, Unite and Here created the New Unity Partnership, led by Raynor and John W. Wilhelm, president of Here. The group was designed to help unions work together to gain more power as corporate consolidation became the norm. It came about as workers and union leaders voiced concern that the AFL-CIO had not kept up with the transformations of the global workplace.
Unite and Here merged in July because "we recognize that corporations are getting bigger," Raynor said yesterday. The two unions have a history of representing immigrants and low-wage issues, and thought that together, they could form a stronger force. "Membership-wise, we're the same, and philosophically we're the same," Raynor said.
In addition, Unite suffered from losses due to globalization, and Here suffered greatly as a result of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. So merging meant greater financial resources.
"Here has history in recent years of dynamic organizing. Unite has a lot of financial resources which Here has not had," Milkman said. "So putting those together could be very powerful. We'll see how they do."
According to a filing with the Department of Labor, Unite has $177 million in net assets and owns and operates Amalgamated Bank in New York.
Local union officials said they have $1 million in dues and investments to help its 3,500 D.C. workers weather a long strike, if needed. Staff writers Dana Hedgpeth and Neil Irwin and staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.

Business Week, September 13, 2004

Copyright 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. http://www.mcgrawhill.com
All Rights Reserved

Business Week

September 13, 2004

SECTION: Cover Story; Pg. 80 Vol. 3899

HEADLINE: Can This Man Save Labor?;
Andy Stern wants to radically retool the U.S. labor movement. But first he must win over some powerful union leaders

BYLINE: By Aaron Bernstein

BODY:
The symbolism couldn't have been more stark: The son trying to overthrow the father. Seventy-year-old AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney had come to San Francisco in June to give a pep talk to 3,000 members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a union of public-sector, health-care, and janitorial workers he had run before becoming labor's chief honcho in 1995. But instead of a rousing homecoming reception, his successor and former protege, 53-year-old SEIU President Andrew L. Stern, let rip a razor-sharp swipe at Sweeney's largely failed struggle to rejuvenate the labor movement over the past nine years.
Stern's message: Labor remains in a death spiral, and its house needs a top-to-bottom overhaul if it's ever going to revive. The AFL-CIO, he charged, has become an antiquated structure that ``divides workers' strength.'' When the SEIU's own policies and traditions hindered its expansion, Stern reminded his audience, he swept them aside. Barring drastic action, he told his delegates, the 1.6-million-member SEIU should break away and start a new federation. Change ``is so long overdue that we either transform the AFL-CIO -- or build something stronger,'' he proclaimed.
In the clubby world of organized labor, these harsh public words were an open declaration of war -- one that has been roiling the nation's labor leaders ever since. It comes after several years of increasingly vocal criticism by Stern and four fellow union leaders who have been agitating for a fundamental revamping of labor. The five men, including the heads of the carpenters, the laborers, and the needletrades and hotel-workers' unions (table), which merged this summer, formed the New Unity Partnership (NUP) in 2003 to showcase what they want to do.
Now NUP, led by Stern, is accelerating its campaign, hoping to shake up the entire 16 million-member labor movement. The goal: to get unions growing again in an economy in which their membership has fallen to just 13% of the workforce. Stern, who leads by far the largest and fastest-growing U.S. union, is aiming high, planning to force the federation to confront its malaise with constitutional changes when the AFL-CIO meets next July for its quadrennial convention. He and fellow NUPsters haven't worked out the details, but they have been hashing out the broad themes for a year. The central idea is to slash the AFL-CIO's 60 unions to 15 or 20 powerful mega-unions -- and get those to focus on building what they call membership density, or share of the labor market, in specific industries, thereby giving unions more clout to lift wages.
Capturing the leadership is also in the plan: John W. Wilhelm, former hotel-workers president and NUPster, is likely to run against Sweeney, who's up for reelection next year. But the group faces a tough battle. Some labor leaders say they see Stern as power-hungry and arrogant, and he has made enemies by poaching public-sector workers claimed by Gerald W. McEntee, president of the 1.4-million-member American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). In a sign of how hard-fought the contest could be, United Brotherhood of Carpenters President Douglas J. McCarron, who quit the AFL-CIO in disgust over Sweeney's policies in 2001, swallowed his pride and told the federation chief on Aug. 24 that he would rejoin the AFL-CIO. That would allow him to cast his 520,000-member vote for Wilhelm next summer.
Right now the entire labor movement is obsessed with putting a Democrat back in the White House. But come Nov. 3, Stern and his NUP pals say they'll refocus on reversing labor's decline. ``What we're doing in the labor movement isn't working. There has to be dramatic change,'' says Wilhelm, who's now No.2 in the merged needletrades and hotel union, called UNITE/HERE. ``After the [November] elections we're going to have a full and vigorous debate about what to do.''
Nothing less than a deep sense of desperation about the fate of organized labor drives Stern & Co. The forces of globalization that began pounding labor's manufacturing strongholds in the late 1970s have intensified in recent years as offshore production has exploded. Membership has slid steadily in service industries, too. In everything from retailing to health care to office work, deregulation, heightened competition, and cheap immigrant labor have forced employers into a ceaseless struggle to keep down costs, including wages and benefits.
The so-called Wal-Martization of the economy has fueled the trend: Many companies feel pressure to seek out the lowest costs, even if it means paying skimpy wages. American paychecks have slid again after the gains of the 1990s, more employees are losing company-paid health coverage, and worker anxiety has been heightened by the shift of white-collar jobs overseas. ``If you understand that employers are subject to global pressures and have to keep profits up, it may well cause employees to say, 'You know, it's not in my interest to vote in a union,''' says Charles I. Cohen, a management-side labor attorney at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP.
STIFF RESISTANCE
Heightened corporate power has checked union growth, too. Unionization elections are typically so lopsided today that most unions have all but given up on them. Most employers pull out the stops when labor organizers appear, using everything from mandatory antiunion meetings to staged videos showing alleged union thugs beating workers, backed by streams of leaflets and letters to workers' homes. While most of these tactics are legal, companies also illegally fire union supporters in 25% of all elections, according to studies of federal data by Cornell University labor researcher Kate Bronfenbrenner. That's triple the percentage of the 1960s. So companies are often able to turn employees against a union, even though a rising number of Americans have said in national polls over the past two decades that they would join one.
Most employers disagree with that assessment. They see unions as more suited to an industrial age, with often-rigid work rules and little to offer in a high-tech, knowledge-based economy. Certainly, unions' ability to protect pay and benefits has diminished drastically, as seen in the huge pension losses for unionized workers in steel and airlines. ``I don't believe that secret-ballot union elections have been corrupted by management. The problem is that unions have lost their relevance to the American workplace,'' says Andrew M. Kramer, a labor law partner at Jones Day who represents large employers such as General Motors Corp.
Still, Stern's drive to kick-start labor comes from watching the SEIU and a few other unions succeed in becoming relevant to workers despite all the obstacles. Some observers see him as trying to play the role of labor giant John L. Lewis, who helped create the Congress of Industrial Organizations in the 1930s when the craft-oriented American Federation of Labor he belonged to seemed incapable of aiding low-skilled factory workers. Lewis fanned out hundreds of organizers from the then-powerful mineworkers union, which he headed for 40 years, to help form unions in autos, steel, and telecommunications -- largely because he felt that his group couldn't survive on its own.
Stern has been taking analogous steps, laying the groundwork for a parallel, CIO-style federation should the campaign to transform the AFL-CIO fail to take hold. The SEIU recently ponied up $1 million to help the United Food & Commercial Workers tackle Wal-Mart Stores Inc. He's building separate political muscle, shelling out an astonishing $65 million to elect John Kerry and make the political atmosphere more receptive to a labor comeback. Stern helped found the Democratic Party's most successful 527 political committee, America Coming Together, which is headed by former AFL-CIO Political Director Steve Rosenthal (a close personal friend with whom he has shared a New Jersey beach house for 25 years).
The SEIU also set up a political network aimed at nonunion Americans called PurpleOcean.org, modeled after a similar effort the AFL-CIO launched last year. Stern told his convention: ``We know that even if we build strength in our industries, no one union, including SEIU, can succeed as an isolated island of strength in a nonunion sea. As the largest union, it is our job to help rebuild U.S. labor's strength.''
An ambitious, impatient man with the lean frame of a regular runner, Stern has turned the SEIU into a whirlwind of activity that he thinks others could emulate -- if they're willing to change how they operate. The SEIU nearly doubled in size, to 1.1 million, during Sweeney's tenure there, in part due to Stern's role as recruitment chief (a job Sweeney tapped him for in friendlier days). Then Stern took the reins and cracked the whip even harder. At the SEIU's 2000 convention, he persuaded delegates to set a specific recruitment spending target for all locals: 20% of their budgets, totaling $80 million. And he got them to come up with $50 million more for an organizing fund.
Meanwhile, Stern funneled half of the international union's $100 million annual spending into membership growth. Overall, the SEIU and its locals devote some $180 million a year to expansion, says SEIU Executive Vice-President Tom Woodruff. That's nearly twice the AFL-CIO's entire annual budget.
It has worked -- which is one reason even labor leaders Stern rubs the wrong way still pay him heed. While most unions are shedding members, the SEIU will hit 1.8 million by the end of the year, with only about 100,000 of the growth coming from mergers with smaller unions, says Woodruff. No other union comes close to matching such a record. Stern also has succeeded with low-skilled minorities and immigrants in high-growth occupations such as janitors and hospital aides. Their unionization is a sharp departure from the white males who historically comprised the rank and file of industrial unions.
A CLEAN SWEEP
Much of Stern's vision for labor is honed from his own experience battling employers. Consider the case of janitors. The union long had strongholds in major cities such as New York, where its 50,000 office-building janitors earn up to $18.57 an hour, plus benefits. But across the Hudson River in New Jersey, some 10,000 nonunion janitors make little more than the $5.15-an-hour minimum wage -- even though they're the same largely immigrant workers cleaning similar offices.
Four years ago, as part of a nationwide janitors' campaign, the SEIU set out to sign up the New Jersey workers. The union only had about 1,000 janitors in the Newark area and had done little to keep pace as corporate flight from Manhattan led to a boom of new offices in northern New Jersey. Stern knew he couldn't run a typical recruitment drive, one janitorial contracting company at a time: In this fragmented industry, any that agreed to higher pay would be quickly undercut by nonunion rivals.
So SEIU tackled whole markets at once. In 11 New Jersey counties, it told contractors that they wouldn't have to lift pay until the SEIU got 55% of those in their area to go along. The union then mounted strikes and rallies by would-be members and took other actions to try to force contractors to go along.
The first 55% trigger point was reached in 2001, and the union contracts took effect. By the end of this year, the SEIU will represent about 70% of northern New Jersey janitors, whose pay now ranges up to $11.75 an hour, plus benefits. While that's still far short of the Manhattan wage, the SEIU is realistic enough to know that lower-priced New Jersey can't support the same pay. Nonetheless, unionization ``has been beneficial to the industry because we're not undercutting each other, turnover is down, and workers are more dedicated and loyal,'' says Mark Blackburn, marketing vice-president at CSI International Inc., a privately held custodial-services company based in Red Bank, N.J., that employs 2,000 janitors in a dozen states and is the SEIU's largest New Jersey contractor.
The janitor campaign is helping low-wage immigrants reach the mainstream. Rita Cortes, who came to the U.S. from Honduras 17 years ago, had been cleaning New Jersey offices for the minimum wage since 1988. When the SEIU contract kicked in three years ago, she jumped immediately from $5.15 an hour to $8, plus some benefits. Today, Cortes, 54, earns $9.75 as a nighttime office cleaner in Secaucus and will go to $10.75 in October. ``Now my husband and I can eat better, and I get three weeks' vacation a year, which I never had before,'' says Cortes.
To Stern and his NUP colleagues, the lesson is elementary: Unions can't lift workers into the middle class unless they control a significant chunk of the labor market, either geographically or by industry. Hence their focus on membership density. It's not enough, they say, to simply increase their absolute numbers. Unions must think strategically, targeting whole areas and industries and coordinating their efforts against market forces that drive companies to undercut each other.
Few labor leaders disagree in principle, but only a handful have taken any such action. Many bristle at the notion that the AFL-CIO would force them to recruit in specific industries, as Stern and the others are suggesting. But last year, in a white paper called United We Win, Stern laid out labor's uncoordinated and overlapping structure and showed how multiple unions represent workers in the same industry. He found that there are 8 unions with a significant presence in nondurable goods such as clothing, 9 in heavy manufacturing such as autos, 13 representing government workers, and 15 each in construction and transportation. If Stern had his way, there would be one or two giant unions in each industry sector.
Clearly, in an economy dominated by corporate giants, Stern and his NUP colleagues argue, unions must gain scale, too. Today the smallest two-thirds of the AFL-CIO's 60 unions average less than 60,000 members apiece -- not nearly enough to wield market clout in most cases. Conversely, when SEIU merged the New Jersey janitors' local into the larger, richer New York union, it could suddenly afford to commit 50 organizers and $5 million a year to recruitment.
That local also illustrates the way many union recruitment successes occur nowadays. Rather than use a formal unionization election supervised by the federal government, the SEIU got a majority of each building's workers to sign union authorization cards -- a process known as card check. The goal is to circumvent management's power to influence an election.
A growing number of unions -- including the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the United Auto Workers, and to some degree the SEIU -- have turned to card checks in recent years. There's no official count, but unions enlist about 150,000 to 200,000 new members a year through card checks today, vs. just 70,000 through federal elections, according to the AFL-CIO. This is why the federation has launched a major drive for federal legislation requiring employers to recognize unions through card checks. (Currently employers can do so if they wish but don't have to.)
LEADERSHIP STYLE
The irony of Stern's frontal attack on the AFL-CIO is that Sweeney has been hitting many of the same notes ever since he took over. He came to office after frustrated labor leaders gave up on predecessor Lane Kirkland, whom they thought was moving too slowly against labor's long decline. Sweeney won a hotly contested election against Kirkland's No. 2, Thomas R. Donahue, and swept to power insisting that unions devote at least 30% of their resources to new-member recruitment.
Despite their clash, Stern and Sweeney differ more in leadership style than in substance. Sweeney is an unruffled, soft-spoken man given to consensus rather than rhetoric. But his low-key cajoling has done nothing to stem labor's membership slide, which has plunged by two percentage points under his tenure -- the same rate of decline that occurred under Kirkland.
Stern, by contrast, has an intense, driven personality that propelled him into leadership roles at an early age. The son of middle-class parents in suburban West Orange, N.J., he got an Ivy League education at the University of Pennsylvania, where he gravitated toward the student movement. He joined the SEIU at 21 as a state social worker and soon became head of the local. By 29, he had vaulted onto the international union's Executive Board, the youngest person to have made it there.
His zeal for left-leaning social causes dovetailed with the traditions of the SEIU. As a young SEIU official in the early 1980s, Stern joined other activists in the union to force through controversial resolutions opposing U.S. military intervention in Latin America. More recently he threw his union's weight behind Howard Dean's Presidential campaign, switching to the more mainstream Kerry only after Dean flamed out. He also has cultivated close relations with a wide range of social leaders. (His wife, Jane Perkins, from whom he is getting a divorce, headed the environmental network Friends of the Earth in the 1990s.)
Throughout, Stern honed his organizing skills and strategic thinking. In 1995 he directed Sweeney's effort to win the AFL-CIO presidency (thus clearing the way for his own succession). The team he put together to corral votes that year outmaneuvered the more staid Donahue forces, coordinating its efforts with bright yellow T-shirts sporting the Sweeney slogan and using radio headphones that let Stern's crew keep in constant contact as they counted noses on the convention floor.
Still, it will take a masterful hand to sell his message to the AFL-CIO's 54-member Executive Council. Already, Stern's outspokenness has riled a number of union presidents who perceive him as self-serving. Critics argue -- with some validity -- that much of his recruitment success has come among easy-to-organize public-sector workers in home health aid and child care -- not among the tough-as-nails private-sector employers that unions must prevail against to grow again. Twice in recent months at federation meetings, labor leaders such as International Association of Machinists President R. Thomas Buffenbarger blasted Stern for his attacks on the AFL-CIO.
BAD BLOOD
In response, Stern agreed not to speak out again until after the November Presidential elections. Although he discussed his ideas freely with BusinessWeek earlier this year, Stern refused even to be photographed for this article, apparently worried that a story focused on him would further inflame colleagues.
But the bad blood lingers. Buffenbarger says he's so ticked off at Stern's high-handedness that he may quit the AFL-CIO himself. Edward J. McElroy, the new head of the American Federation of Teachers, says he will listen but remains highly skeptical.
Meanwhile, Sweeney is maneuvering for a counterattack. He told an August AFL-CIO powwow that he would set up a process to discuss the NUP's ideas come November. Sweeney also will put forth his own platform, insiders say, incorporating many of those ideas. (Sweeney declined to comment.) ``There's going to be a showdown on all this next summer,'' predicts Joseph T. Hansen, president of the 1.4 million-member food-workers union, who says he is sympathetic to Stern's goals but has some reservations.
There's also the question of succession. When NUP emerged last year, Sweeney quickly announced he would run again, surprising many who had expected him to retire. Even some backers aren't sure he really will stand again, although insiders and AFL-CIO public affairs chief Denise Mitchell insist that he will.
Sweeney's retirement would open the door for 55-year-old AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard L. Trumka, a fiery former mineworkers union president who has been underutilized by Sweeney's team but retains strong support among industrial unions. One possible compromise: a unity ticket with Wilhelm and Trumka, who have been friends for years.
The tangled politics in this close-knit group -- Stern's wife has worked recently as a top Sweeney aide on environmental issues -- makes any leadership battle unpredictable. CWA President Morton Bahr, an elder statesman of the federation, opposed Sweeney in 1995, figuring a power struggle was bad for labor, even though he agreed with Sweeney's goals. He feels the same today and says he stands behind the incumbent but agrees that NUP raises urgent questions. ``I'll listen to what they propose, but I'm not ready to tear down the institution in order to remake it,'' he says.
If Stern and his NUP pals can't persuade enough union leaders that labor's near-extinction requires drastic action, the last resort may be to form a new labor movement a la John L. Lewis. Right now, the threat is mostly a way to provoke a sense of crisis. And so far it seems to be working: America's unions are poised for an internal debate more wide-ranging than any they have had in decades. Although it's still early, one possible outcome is a more militant, pumped-up labor movement. If that happens, employers could feel renewed pressure to share with workers more of the gains from the economy's healthy productivity growth. Either way, the U.S. labor movement is in for some turbulent times.

How Stern Wants To Remake The House Of Labor

Service Employees President Andy Stern and four other union leaders want sweeping changes in the way the AFL-CIO and its member unions are run. While they're still formalizing their plans, they have been discussing ideas such as:

CENTRALIZED AFL-CIO
Alter the AFL-CIO's constitution to allow for a more powerful executive body, so it can force unions to change more rapidly

A FEW MEGA-UNIONS
Prod dozens of small unions to merge to create 15 or 20 powerful million-plus-member ones, down from more than 60 today

INDUSTRYWIDE BARGAINING
Get unions to focus on specific industries to boost their bargaining clout so they can lift wages and benefits across the board

MASTER LABOR CONTRACTS
Create industrywide labor pacts to maintain uniform wage levels across companies

JOINT MEMBERSHIP DRIVES
Multiply labor's strength by mounting multi-union recruitment drives against giant employers such as Wal-Mart

Data: BusinessWeek

Labor's Free Fall
Labor's share of the workforce continues to slide...
Union members as a share of the U.S. workforce

1973
24%
1983
20%
1993
16%
2003
13%


Data: Barry T. Hirsch and David A. Macpherson

...and labor leaders have failed to aggressively recruit new members.


Union representation elections

1970
7,773
1980
7,296
1990
3,623
2003
2,516


Data: National Labor Relations Board

Although millions of Americans want to join a union...

Share of 84 million nonunion workers* who say they would vote for a union at their company


1984
30%
1993
39%
2003
47%


* Private-sector nonsupervisory workforce in 2003

Data: Peter D. Hart
Associates

...they often are intimidated by illegal firings of union supporters...

Share of representation elections in which a union supporter is illegally fired


1964-69
8%
1980-84
20%
1998-99
25%


Data: Robert J. LaLonde and Bernard D. Meltzer, Kate Bronfenbrenner,

Cornell University


...and other union-resistance tactics.



% of employers that used union-avoidance tactics in representation elections

in 1998-99



TACTIC
% OF EMPLOYERS


Hold mandatory antiunion meetings for employees
92%


Have supervisors meet individually with

employees to disparage the union
78%


Hire antiunion management consultants
75%


Distribute antiunion leaflets to employees
70%


Mail antiunion letters to employees' homes
70%


Show antiunion videos to employees
55%
Data: Kate Bronfenbrenner, Cornell University

Bio: Andy Stern

BORN
1950, West Orange, N.J.

EDUCATION
B.A. in education and urban planning, University of Pennsylvania.

CAREER
A left-wing student activist, he took a job at 21 as a social worker in New Jersey and promptly joined the SEIU, which represents many health-care workers, janitors, and other low-wage workers.

SEIU
At 29, he became his union's youngest-ever Executive Board member. At 45, he became its youngest-ever president.

FAMILY
Married fellow Pennsylvania SEIU activist Jane Perkins, president of Friends of the Earth in the 1990s; they are now divorcing. They have one teenage son and lost a daughter following surgery in 2002.

Los Angeles Times, September 13, 2004, Monday

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times
All Rights Reserved
Los Angeles Times

September 13, 2004 Monday
Home Edition

SECTION: BUSINESS; Business Desk; Part C; Pg. 1

HEADLINE: Labor Board May Rule on Union Tactic;
Use of 'card check recognition' has been a boon to organizing workers. Critics say the process is open to abuse.

BYLINE: Nancy Cleeland, Times Staff Writer

BODY:
Organized labor's hopes of rebuilding itself as an economic force may ride on changes being contemplated by a federal board that oversees union elections.
The five-member National Labor Relations Board, dominated by Bush administration appointees, has indicated that it may rule on two cases in ways that would hamper union organizing efforts. Labor leaders hope the board will hold off until after the November presidential election, when one seat on the board will become vacant. It is unclear when the board will issue its decision.
"The right to organize totally depends on who wins this election," said Stewart Acuff, organizing director for the AFL-CIO. He said unions were "breaking our backs to make sure" that Democrat John F. Kerry "is in the White House next year."
What's at issue is "card check recognition," used in the Justice for Janitors campaign in Los Angeles and to unionize tens of thousands of communication workers, hotel workers, people who make auto parts and others around the country.
In the card check process, an employer agrees to recognize a union if a majority of employees sign pledge cards; they don't cast ballots, as in a federally supervised vote. Often, the agreement comes with a promise by the employer to remain neutral throughout the recognition campaign. Under those conditions, unions rarely lose.
Card check recognition bypasses the traditional NLRB election process, with its highly litigated system of complaints and appeals. Under that process, about half the elections are won by unions, but many campaigns are abandoned before they ever make it to a vote.
Union leaders and labor experts claim that the NLRB elections are routinely manipulated by employers. Workers are often threatened or fired for supporting a union even though such actions by employers are illegal, according to extensive reviews of NLRB cases by Cornell University labor researcher Kate Bronfenbrenner. The penalties for such behavior are slight, the review found, and can be years in coming.
"The representation election looks democratic," said David Brody, a UC Davis emeritus professor of history and an authority on union organizing. "The reality is, it's a platform for coercion."
For their part, card check opponents say the informal and unregulated process opens the door to abuse by unions. Some organizers intimidate or bribe workers into signing cards, critics contend, noting that employers have no redress if they think the process was rigged.
"We feel very strongly that the best way to limit coercion is to let people, at the moment of decision, be out of the scrutiny of the union or the employer," said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.
The nonprofit group brought the two cases before the NLRB. In its 3-2 decision agreeing to review the cases, announced in mid-June, the board cited the growing use and success of card check campaigns as cause to reconsider them -- and noted "the superiority of board-supervised secret ballot elections."
Both cases are against the United Auto Workers, a union crippled by the massive outsourcing of jobs. The UAW recently has been organizing U.S. auto parts manufacturers, many of which have agreed to the card check process partly to ensure labor peace. In late 2003, several plants recognized the union, including one in Ohio owned by Dana Corp. and another in Pennsylvania owned by Metaldyne Corp.
Within weeks, dissident employees at the two plants, backed by the National Right to Work group, demanded elections to decertify the union. Regional NLRB officials dismissed their petitions, saying the union and employer needed a reasonable amount of time to negotiate a contract before dealing with an anti-union campaign.
Case law generally bars a decertification election for a year after a union is recognized. The Right to Work foundation argued that the ban shouldn't apply to card check recognition. In those cases, it said, a decertification election should be held right away if at least 30% of workers ask for one.
The focus of the NLRB ruling would be on that narrow point -- whether card check recognition is subject to an immediate decertification vote.
But experts say the ruling's effect will be far greater if the board signals that the card check approach is flawed or less deserving of protection than a secret ballot election.
Brody, the historian, said such a ruling would inevitably set off a series of employer challenges that would gradually make the card check approach unworkable.
"If the law moves toward saying the only way [to organize workers] is to have a representation election, the labor movement is doomed," he said.
The card check question could ultimately be decided in Congress, where two competing bills are in play. A labor-backed Democratic version, known as the Employee Free Choice Act, would sanctify card check as the NLRB's preferred method for gauging union support. Among the hundreds of cosponsors are Kerry and running mate Sen. John Edwards.
The Republican-sponsored Secret Ballot Protection Act, on the other hand, would essentially outlaw the card check approach and force unions into NLRB elections.
Unions contend that the card check approach has always been an option under federal labor law. In fact, it was the preferred way of measuring union support in the frenzy of organizing that followed the creation of the NLRB in 1935. In those years, employers weren't allowed to interfere in a campaign, even to express an opinion. Labor flourished, and gained political and economic power.
In 1947, the Taft-Hartley Act clipped labor's wings. Among other things, it made secret ballot elections the only way to gain NLRB certification, which forces employers to recognize a union and bargain with it -- though employers can still choose to recognize a union without certification, as they do in the card check process. The act also permitted employers to actively campaign against the union.
Employer resistance grew more intense and sophisticated over the years, spawning an industry of anti-union consultants. Unions lost elections time and again, often after spending huge sums of money on organizing campaigns.
Among private-sector workers, 8.2% are union members today, about half the rate of two decades ago. That severely limits the ability of unions to push for higher wages and benefits, making them less relevant as an economic force.
Attempts to reverse the trend have foundered except in unions that have focused on card check neutrality, such as the fast-growing Service Employees International Union. The SEIU's Justice for Janitors campaign, which had brought thousands of Los Angeles janitors under union contract in the last decade and raised their wages and benefits, relied exclusively on card check agreements. The SEIU has since mounted a similar effort for Los Angeles security guards.
Card check is "probably the most innovative tactic the unions have come up with in decades," said Mark Theodore, a law partner at Proskauer Rose in Los Angeles who represents employers in labor disputes.
"It arouses a great deal of passion," Theodore said. "Unions know that in virtually every case, they'll get an almost 100% success rate if they secure this type of arrangement. And so they go to extremes to get them, talking to customers, talking to banks, shareholders, holding demonstrations. Employers get pummeled and they don't like it. Nobody likes to be bullied into signing anything."
Business interest in the NLRB cases has been high, evidenced by the dozen friend-of-the-court briefs filed on behalf of the anti-union workers. Those supporting card check restrictions include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, two security companies targeted by the SEIU and the Associated Industries of Kentucky, a trade group that represents 3,000 manufacturers.
In their brief, the Kentucky group accuses union organizers of harassing employers into signing neutrality agreements against their will.
"The employer can either hold fast to its principles and allow the union to destroy its business and the jobs the business provides, or the employer can capitulate and give the union what it wants -- the 'neutrality/card check agreement,' " the brief says. "This has been a gut-wrenching choice for many companies."
Some employers filed on behalf of the union. Among them: Liz Claiborne Inc., Levi Strauss & Co. and Lear Corp., an auto parts maker with 50 union plants in the United States.
According to the Lear brief, 35 of those factories were organized through card check agreements, without any disruption or ill will."Lear is a living example," the brief says, "of how the process should and does work effectively."

Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, September 6, 2004, Monday

Copyright 2004 Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
All Rights Reserved
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

September 6, 2004 Monday Metro Edition

SECTION: NATIONAL; Pg. 1A

HEADLINE: (CORRECTION)

BYLINE: Joy Davia, Staff, JDAVIA@DemocratandChronicle.com

BODY:
Farmworkers in New York are eligible for workers' compensation benefits. This information was incorrect in a story on Page 1A Monday. (DC 9/9/04, 2A)
State's farmworkers remain on the fringe
Controversial movement to unionize takes on urgency.
Joy Davia
Staff Writer
Most union fights these days center on higher pay requests, preservation of benefits or stability of workplaces.
But one sector is still fighting for the rights most workers take for granted. New York farmworkers - even those who work year-round for the same employer - do not qualify for disability payments or overtime pay and receive no health insurance or workers' compensation benefits.
They also do not have the right to form a union to collectively bargain for these benefits.
"Why do I want a union? Everybody gets treated better," said Maria Brown, who lives in a two-bedroom mobile home on a farm labor camp outside Brockport with her husband, Charles, and children Stephanie, 5, and Charlie, 8 months. "I don't understand why in New York they want to make it so very hard. I don't have enough money to buy diapers and all my other stuff. How can I save? I want a better life to do something in this world and I'm not going to do that making $5.15 an hour."
The issue is complicated. Agriculture, in upstate New York and nationwide, is a huge contributor to the health of the economy. Farmers, already struggling to survive, would have more costs at a time when they are unable to raise prices much because of competitive forces.
The movement to improve farm workers' benefits have had small successes along the way, advocates say.
Since 1999, New York farm workers have gained the right to a minimum wage, drinking water and restrooms in the fields for farms with 11 or more workers, said Bill Abom, western New York coordinator for Rural & Migrant Ministry.
But the need for reforms has grown stronger, advocates say, because the traditional migratory patterns - although still a staple of farm life - are diminishing.
In New York now, 46 percent of the estimated 87,000 farm workers are year-round workers.
Farmers' burden
But in an industry in which farm owners themselves are finding it tough to afford their own health insurance and other necessities, adding on costs is a burden that could put some out of business, they say.
Nationally, one-third of farmers are uninsured, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Besides, most farmers are good to their workers, abiding by laws and working alongside them in the fields, said Maureen Torrey, co-owner of Torrey Farms in Elba, Genesee County. If this is not the case, farm workers can easily work elsewhere because there are not enough farm workers to cover the need, said Torrey, whose farm grows vegetables such as cucumbers and onions and employs about 400 workers during the harvest.
"A farmer was telling me the other day that he needs 10 more people and he can't find them," she said.
"These are the kind of jobs where workers will leave you over a quarter."
Farm lobbyists also say that giving farm workers the right to unionize could put the U.S. agriculture industry at the disadvantage at a time when foreign competition is growing.
"Agriculture is different than any other industry," said Chris LaRoe, spokesman for the New York Farm Bureau, a farm lobby organization.
"If farm workers strike for a week or two at a bad time, it could decimate an entire farmer's crop.
"Especially at harvest time," he added. "The fruit has to be picked. The apples and cabbage don't wait. It's not like manufacturing where you go on strike and come back and the raw materials are still at the plant."
Some New York farms are also struggling with their largest competitor: Canadian farms. The Canadian minimum wage is a dollar lower. "They're just killing me in this marketplace," Torrey said.
Others, such as apple farms, are worried about changes that could add competition from countries such as China.
That's why anything that inflates labor costs, such overtime for farm workers, could put area farms at a larger disadvantage, Torrey said.
Protections elsewhere
A handful of states offer varying forms of collective bargaining protection, including Arizona, Ohio and California. Based on experiences in those states, the national labor movement has taken on issues important to farmworkers such as a bill that would grant citizenship to some illegal aliens. In North Carolina, workers have unemployment benefits.
But progress has been slow in New York, advocates say, even with support from major unions.
A farm worker Fair Labor Practices Act, which includes such protections, has passed the New York state Assembly, although the state Senate has yet to take action on it, Abom said.
It's doubtful that such an act will become law here. "But at least it's on the agenda in New York state," said Lance Compa, who teaches labor law at Cornell University. "I'm not aware that it's on the agenda of many other states."
But it is debatable whether unionizing will reap all the desired benefits.
It was Cesar Chavez in the 1960s who led the effort in California to organize farm workers into unions, eventually creating the United Farm Workers union. Farm worker wages and union membership surged in its early days, although it has lagged of late.
A vast majority of farm workers in California, for example, are not in a union, according to Promise Unfulfilled, a report by the Center for Immigration Studies.
The problem?
There was a growth in illegal immigration and labor contractors who found non-union workers for farmers, among other reasons.
Still, other successes came out of the farm worker unions, such as unemployment insurance and minimum wage coverage, added Philip Martin, professor at the University of California at Davis and author of the immigration studies report.
"The unions were saying, 'We want to make this labor market like other labor markets' and that is what they did," he said.
The consequences of a strike by unionized farm workers concerns New York state Assemblyman William D. Reilich, R-Greece.
"A farm is not like a factory that produces parts," Reilich said.
"You can shut down the factory for two weeks and pick up production again. A farm season is limited. If you miss the opportunity, the crops are lost, which is devastating for the farm owner and it could be devastating for the food supply."
A union also could limit the ability of farmworkers to make money by working additional hours or by blocking piecework pay, Reilich said.
Employment benefits for farmworkers legally in the United States should be "explored," he said.
Speaking out for rights
Bill Abom's group, Rural & Migrant Ministry, which has offices in Brockport and Poughkeepsie, and others are now trying to get more farm workers to speak out on behalf of their rights.
"Many do not speak up because of fear," he said. "They're living on so little and are very vulnerable if anything happens to them."
This is one reason why Brown and other farm workers gathered at St. Luke's Episcopal Church on a recent evening.
They're learning leadership skills, such as legislative processes and how to tell their stories to the media, through groups such as the Rural and Migrant Ministry Inc. and Centro Independiente Trabajadores Agricolas (CITA), also known as The Independent Farmworkers Center.
Brown, who left her native Mexico in 1996, said it's not just about the money, even though she and her husband make $15,000 a year and a third of her paycheck goes back to her parents in Mexico, who are caring for her other daughter, Andrienna Leone.
One wish? Dignified housing. The workers often can't afford to pay rent, so they take the free housing provided by their employer. Workers such as Brown - who did not want to name her employer out of fear that she would lose her job - live on these camps all year. In the summer, she works in fields of cucumbers, cabbage, peaches, apples and tomatoes. Brown spends her winters trimming and cleaning cabbage.
Brown's two-bedroom mobile home has water spots on some ceilings. There are boarded-up windows and doors that don't close. Her husband, Charles, had to fix, or they had to replace, some of the flooring and appliances.
"My camp isn't too nice," Brown said earlier that evening, while at a meeting at a Brockport church for farm workers fighting for improved living and working conditions.
Still, Brown's home is in better shape than others in the farm labor camp. During harvest season, about 40 laborers cram into mobile homes or cement-block living quarters. Rust, exposed wires and pipes cover the walls, as doors hang off hinges and appliances remain broken. The quarters smell and feel like bug-infested locker rooms.
Other workers who gathered at the church told of injustices. Jorge Luiz Salazar remembered working 36 hours straight without overtime on one farm.
Yet it's the basic rights that are state-mandated for other industries - and state-subsidized in some cases - that have most farm workers fighting for changes in the law.
Conchitta Solis, who earns about $230 a week and has three children younger than 10, wished she got disability pay. This is a huge issue for her family right now because she is nine months pregnant and cannot work. This, coupled with what she says was substandard treatment by some farmer owners, has her distressed.
"I want to be treated with respect," she said.
Includes reporting by staff writer Michael Wentzel.
What's at stake
Farmworkers argue that they deserve the same benefits as workers in other industries such as the right to collective bargaining, unemployment insurance and disability pay. Many farmers worry that if workers organize and strike, it could ruin a crop and that an increase in labor costs could cost them their businesses.The industry is significant to both the state and area economies: Statewide, farms generate more than $3.1 billion a year in revenue. In 1992, farmers in the six-county Rochester region reported income of $522.7 million.BrownSays that he once worked 36 hours straight without overtime pay on one farm.Inside Map traces route of Labor Day Parade.

Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, September 5, 2004, Sunday

Copyright 2004 Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
All Rights Reserved
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

September 5, 2004 Sunday Metro Edition

SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. 1E

HEADLINE: COMPANY TIME

BYLINE: Joy Davia, Staff, jdavia@DemocratandChronicle.com

BODY:
Better growth for unions may rely on card signings
Joy Davia
Staff writer
Unions have long bemoaned the problems of organizing workplaces.
Sure, a majority of workers might at first support the organizing effort. But union support typically drops in the weeks preceding a secret ballot election, as the employer begins to oppose the union.
Some anti-union campaigns are legit. Others are not. Some companies have fired pro-union workers or intimidated employees with threats of job losses, unions allege.
Another problem for unions is the shift from a manufacturing to a more service economy, because the latter is not as heavily organized, said Jerry M. Hunter, former general council for the National Labor Relations Board.
So unions in the private sector are entering the Labor Day weekend at a crossroads. How do they build up membership? About 12 percent of the private sector work force is in a union, down from 37 percent in the 1950s and 1960s, Hunter said. To rejuvenate membership, unions have turned to some seldom-used organizing tactics.
Unions are increasingly asking employers whether they can just ask workers to sign cards saying they definitely want a union, officials said. When a majority of workers sign cards - and the process is validated by a third party - a union comes to the plant. These "card checks" replace the government-regulated secret ballot.
"The problem with the (secret-ballot) election system is that it's so perverted it frustrates the right to organize as opposed to honoring it," said Lance Compa, who teaches labor law at Cornell University. "Card checks get a more rapid result and take place in a climate without the intensive threatening and intimidation and name-calling and bitter campaigns that characterize the (secret ballot) system."
But a recent study suggested that workers might prefer the privacy of a secret ballot, said the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a conservative think tank. Why? "Your signature is on a card somewhere," said Joseph Lehman, executive vice president.Plus, unions might intimidate workers into signing cards, he added.
Card checks are not new to Rochester.
Several years ago, Margarita Peters, who was a licensed practical nurse, signed a card in favor of a union at the Jordan Health Center, which is now represented by Service Employees International Union Local 1199 Upstate Division.
"I just thought it was a lot easier," said Peters, who is now an organizer at SEIU 1199. "At the time, I heard what happened at other places that organized without card checks. And I later saw some of it first hand."
Peters was the organizer at the Episcopal Church Home of Rochester, which in June 2003 in a secret ballot election voted against a union. The election ended with allegations of intimidation against the church home that were settled with the National Labor Relations Board.
The Episcopal home admitted no guilt, but it did agree to address the allegations, including giving back pay to a fired employee and posting pledges not to threaten or punish anyone who supports a union.
The success of the card check hinges on employers letting unions use such a method to gauge union support. Cintas Corp., for example, has rebuffed union attempts to use card checks at its plants here and nationwide.
The company's reason? Officials don't want to take away their workers' right to a democratic, government-run election. They fear that the card checks are not regulated and could be vulnerable to abuses.
Company Time by Joy Davia is about issues that workers face on the job and in their careers. Write or e-mail her with story suggestions.

FDCH Congressional Testimony, September 8, 2004, Wednesday

Copyright 2004 FDCH e-Media, Inc.
(f/k/a Federal Document Clearing House, Inc.)
Federal Document Clearing House Congressional Testimony

September 8, 2004 Wednesday

SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY

COMMITTEE: HOUSE GOVERNMENT REFORM

SUBCOMMITTEE: NATIONAL SECURITY, EMERGING THREATS, AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

HEADLINE: 9/11 HEALTH CARE EFFECTS

TESTIMONY-BY: DR. MICHAEL LONSKI, DIRECTOR

AFFILIATION: TRAINING AND PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT, LIFE MATTERS

BODY:
Statement of f Dr. Michael Lonski Director of Training and Program Development, Life Matters
Committee on House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations
September 8, 2004
MY NAME IS DR. MICHAEL LONSKI, AND I AM A CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST AND CO-FOUNDER OF LIFE MATTERS. WITH ME TODAY ARE DR. EVELYN LLEWELLYN, A CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST, CO-FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF LIFE MATTERS. STEPHEN CAREAGA, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF FIREFIGHTERS NATIONAL TRUST, WHO SO GENEROUSLY UNDERWRITES MUCH OF OUR FIRE UNION-ENDORSED WORK WITH ACTIVE AND RETIRED FIRST RESPONDERS AND FAMILIES IN THE FIRE DEPARTMENT OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. AND BOARD MEMBER LOU CHINAL, A 9/11 SURVIVOR WHO RETIRED FROM THE FDNY AFTER 29 YEARS AND WHO GUIDES AND SERVES US.
LIFE MATTERS IS A NOT-FOR-PROFIT ORGANIZATION CREATED TO MEET THE URGENT NEED FOR COUNSELING-OUTREACH AND CRISIS-INTERVENTION FOLLOWING 9/11. WE TEACH PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND, COPE AND ULTIMATELY HEAL THEIR TRAUMA. WE HAVE "EMBEDDED"CLINICIANS, TRUSTED PEERS AND SUPPORT PERSONNEL IN FIREHOUSES AND SOCIAL NETWORKS -- GIVING US THE UNIQUE ABILITY TO QUICKLY FIND AND HELP PEOPLE BEFORE THEY TAKE ACTIONS THAT HARM THEMSELVES OR OTHERS. WE HAVE HELPED MORE THAN 30,000 PERSONS REMAIN HEALTHY, PRODUCTIVE AND INVOLVED ON THE JOB AND IN THEIR LIVES SINCE THE TERROR ATTACKS. WE CONTINUE TO SERVE AN ESTIMATED 15,000 NEW YORKERS A YEAR.
LET US PUT THOSE NUMBERS IN PERSPECTIVE FOR YOU. THE RED CROSS AND NYS PSYCHIATRIC INSTITUTE ESTIMATE THAT THERE ARE BETWEEN 125,000 AND 150,000 MANHATTAN RESIDENTS WHO HAVE FULLY DIAGNOSABLE POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER, OR PTSD. MT. SINAI RESEARCHERS WORKING WITH GROUND ZERO WORKERS SAY MORE THAN 40 PERCENT ARE SUFFERING FROM MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES. A RECENT STUDY BY THE SMITHERS INSTITUTE AT CORNELL'S SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR RELATIONS FOUND SIGNIFICANT EVIDENCE OF CONTINUED DEPRESSION, STRESS, ANXIETY AND GRIEF - AND AN INCREASED RISK FOR DRINKING PROBLEMS -- AMONG ACTIVE FDNY MEMBERS POST- 9/11. SO IN THREE YEARS WE'VE REACHED BARELY 20 PERCENT OF THOSE WHO NEED OUR HELP.
LET ME EXPLAIN WHAT SOMEONE SUFFERING FROM POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS GOES THROUGH, AND WHY THIS IS A PROBLEM FOR US ALL. PTSD SUFFERERS MOVE ON A VERY PREDICTABLE COURSE FROM SHOCK TO UPSET TO DYSFUNCTIONALITY. KEY TO THEIR TRAUMA IS THE PERCEPTION THAT THE WORLD IS NOT A SAFE PLACE, AND THAT THOSE IN CHARGE OF PROTECTING US HAVE FAILED TO DO SO. THEY ARE CONTINUALLY FLOODED WITH UNINVITED THOUGHTS, FLASHBACKS, DAYDREAMS AND REVERIE, NIGHTMARES AND NIGHT TERRORS. EVERYTHING BEGINS TO LOOK LIKE A THREAT. TO PROTECT THEMSELVES, THEY WITHDRAW EMOTIONALLY, BUFFER OR MEDICATE THEMSELVES OR ACT OUT. THEY ENGAGE IN NEGATIVE BEHAVIORS TO FEEL GOOD, TO FEEL ALIVE -- OR SIMPLY TO FEEL ANYTHING AT ALL.
THEY BECOME SO PREOCCUPIED WITH WARDING OFF REMINDERS THAT THEY LOSE THEIR PERSPECTIVE OF RIGHT AND WRONG. THEY FAIL TO DISCRIMINATE BETWEEN EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL TRIGGERS. THEIR JUDGMENT BECOMES IMPAIRED. ANYONE SUFFERING FROM PTSD CAN BECOME A TIMEBOMB. THEIR EXPLOSIONS AND IMPLOSIONS ROCK US ALL. SUICIDE. DOMESTIC VIOLENCE. MURDER. DIVORCE. CRIMINAL ACTIVITY. INAPPROPRIATE SEXUAL ACTIVITY. FEARED AND ACTUAL DEBILITATING DISEASE AND PREMATURE DEATH.
THE LOSS OF THE TALENTS AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF PEOPLE WHO WERE OTHERWISE VITAL AND VALUED MEMBERS OF OUR SOCIETY. THAT TRAGEDY ENVELOPS SPOUSES, CHILDREN, FAMILY AND FRIENDS. AND THE CYCLE OF TRAUMA, GRIEF AND LOSS IS THEN RENEWED. WE LOSE ANOTHER GENERATION AND TERROR WINS; NO FURTHER ATTACKS, JUST COLLATERAL DAMAGE FROM THE ORIGINAL IMPACT.
THOSE IN NEED MUST UNDERSTAND THAT HELP IS AVAILABLE AND SELF- HELP IS POSSIBLE. THOSE IN POWER MUST COMMIT THE RESOURCES REQUIRED TO PREVENT WHAT UNIFORMED FIRST-RESPONDERS CALL A "BLEVE"(BOILING LIQUID EXPANDING VAPOR EXPLOSION) -- OR BE PREPARED TO SUFFER IN THE FALLOUT. WE MUST REBUILD VICTIMS' TRUST. HELP THEM RE-CONNECT WITH THE WORLD.
IN OUR WORK WE CONTINUE TO FIND WAYS TO RESPECT PEOPLE'S PRIVACY AND INTEGRITY WHILE REACHING THROUGH THEIR SELF-PROTECTIVE ISOLATION. THROUGH FLEXIBLE, TESTED AND TRUE, THEORETICALLY BASED PRO-ACTIVE OUTREACH, EDUCATION AND SUPPORT WE WALK WITH THEM TO PATHS OF HEALTH, RESILIENCY AND HOPE. AT ISSUE IS NOT JUST ONE MAN'S UNEASE, BUT A FAMILY'S ABILITY TO FUNCTION AND ULTIMATELY, SECURITY FOR US ALL.

University Wire, September 7, 2004, Tuesday

Copyright 2004 Cornell Daily Sun via U-Wire
University Wire

September 7, 2004 Tuesday

HEADLINE: Cornell U. students protest, volunteer at Republican convention

BYLINE: By Annie Ceccarini, Cornell Daily Sun; SOURCE: Cornell U.

DATELINE: ITHACA, N.Y.

BODY:
Just two days into the fall semester, a number of Cornell University students skipped class in favor of making their presence known at the 2004 Republican National Convention last week in New York City. These students are active members in the Cornell political community and attended the RNC to promote their organizations' ideologies as protestors or supporters.
Political views aside, student participants agreed that both protestors and supporters were nonviolent and well organized. "It's irresponsible to promise someone they're not going to get arrested at an event of this magnitude, but if you keep your head up and follow the directions of police, chances are you're going to be safe," said Patrick Young, President of Cornell Organization for Labor Action (COLA).
Approximately 35 Cornell students and 75 Tompkins County, N.Y., residents marched alongside tens of thousands of protestors on August 29 in New York City. Those protesting represented several Cornell student groups, among them Students for John Kerry, COLA and Turn Left.
"We are always convinced there are two types of people, conservative and liberal, and to witness all these types of people working together, it allows you to see, to understand and embrace alternative ideologies," said Young.
Transportation to the event was provided for a nominal fee through No RNC Ithaca, a local anti-Bush organization. Student organizations such as Bush Must Go and Cornell for Peace and Justice agreed to underwrite transportation costs if too few tickets were sold, but by departure date an increase in sales required the acquisition of an additional bus.
While protestors concerned themselves with voicing their grievances with the current Republican administration, a number of other Cornell students made the trip to New York in support of President Bush and the conservative platform.
Senior Victoria Sears, a member of Cornell College Republicans, volunteered throughout the convention with the Committee on Arrangements of Volunteer Programs (COAVP). Her responsibilities included seating the disabled, checking the credentials of attendees and working the VIP congressional entrance.
"Cornell is such a liberal atmosphere that it was refreshing to see so many people truly enthusiastic about our president," said Sears.
Courtney Demartini, also a member of CCR, worked in Gov. Pataki's press office throughout the week. Demartini, along with others, felt the convention was extremely well run and the speeches by President George W. Bush, Rudy Giuliani, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R-Calif., and Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga., were effective.
Members of CCR who wanted to attend the RNC but were unable to do so because of class, employment and other obligations, gathered Thursday evening at a local hotel to watch the presidential speech.
"Bush's speech was a great balance of concrete policy proposals for the second term, full of self-deprecating humor. The 9-11 references were very touching, and his comments about John Kerry were right on," said Michael Lepage, president of CCR.
"It was probably the best speech he's ever given in office," he added.
Democrats disagree.
"The President's speech, in my opinion, was very ambiguous," said Tim Lim, president of Cornell Democrats. "There was no detail about agenda for the second term, just fluff. Basically he's doing what we've been saying all along. He's relying on 9-11 and the war in Iraq to distract from the real issues like healthcare, wages and employment."
Despite the fact that the opposing parties do not see eye to eye on a number of issues, all Cornell students involved in the convention expressed gratitude for the privilege of being involved in such a significant event.
(C) 2003 Cornell Daily Sun via U-WIRE

Boston Globe, September 6, 2004, Monday

Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company
The Boston Globe

September 6, 2004, Monday THIRD EDITION

SECTION: NATIONAL/FOREIGN; Pg. A7


HEADLINE: WORRIES ABOUT NLRB FUEL CAMPAIGN BY UNIONS
LEADERS SAY PANEL FAVORS EMPLOYERS, SEEK TO OUST BUSH

BYLINE: By Diane E. Lewis, Globe Staff

BODY:
The AFL-CIO's $45 million effort to unseat President Bush is driven by an issue that unions care passionately about, but many voters have never heard of: the makeup of the National Labor Relations Board.
Labor leaders say that in recent months the current board has made hard-hitting decisions that favor employers. And a Bush appointment last December increased to three the number of Republicans on the five-member NLRB, a change unions say could profoundly hurt organized workers for years. Since then, two major board decisions, on graduate students and nonunion workers' rights, have been the focus of criticism from labor organizers.

"The question of presidential appointments to the National Labor Relations Board is as important to labor as abortion rights are to women and civil rights are to minorities," said sociologist Robert J. S. Ross, director of International Studies Stream at Clark University in Worcester.
Their concern is prompting a massive get-out-the-vote campaign in a tight presidential race that is entering its final post-Labor Day phase. In addition to the AFL-CIO's push, the 1.5-million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is earmarking $48 million to urge union members to vote Democrat, particularly since more than 30 percent of union households vote Republican. The Service Employees International Union is putting $65 million into a similar effort.
So far, 35,000 volunteers backed by the AFL-CIO have knocked on doors, passed out 1.5 million get-out-the-vote fliers, and made 5 million telephone calls to the nation's union households to rally members.
The NLRB chairman, Robert J. Battista, a Bush appointee, bristled at union contentions of probusiness bias.
"This type of election-year hyperbole unfairly undermines public confidence in the nation's basic labor law and its institutions that have worked so well since 1935," Battista said in a statement. The cases "were correctly decided, soundly reasoned, and speak for themselves," he said. The board, established under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, supervises union elections and remedies unfair labor practices at work.
But labor leaders say these recent NLRB decisions came after Bush appointed Ronald E. Meisburg to the board in December, a move that tipped the board to a GOP majority. Meisburg's appointment expires when Congress recesses in November, but unions fear he will become permanent if Bush is reelected.
That could change if Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry of Massachusetts wins the election.
"Unions are very concerned," said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University. She said unions fear corporations will be emboldened to work with the administration to dismantle labor rights if Kerry loses and the board is still controlled by Republicans.
"This election is critical for unions and for worker rights in general," she said.
Already upset over the Bush administration's decision to eliminate overtime for some workers, unions became alarmed when the NLRB announced in June that it would hear a case challenging the use of "card check recognition." The organizing technique lets unions form bargaining units at workplaces after a majority of workers sign union cards. The employer must agree to recognize the cards and unit.
Card check recognition has been around for some time, but unions have relied on it more in recent years because of increased employer hostility to organizing in the workplace, said Bronfenbrenner.
Card checks have become a formidable organizing tool in the labor movement's arsenal, especially today when just 12.5 percent of the US workforce is unionized, down from 35 percent in 1945. In Las Vegas, for example, thousands of hotel and casino workers have been organized over the past five years using the tactic.
Although union members tend to back Democrats, labor organizers are especially pleased with Kerry because he came out in favor of a bill that would prevent employers from prohibiting card checks in the workplace.
The bill, the Employee Free Choice Act, is sponsored by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and would allow a new union to be certified after the board finds that a majority of workers have signed union cards.
"Kerry is strongly in favor of card check," said Steve Elmendorf, Kerry's deputy campaign manager. "He has made no bones about supporting it."
Republicans maintain that without secret-ballot elections, workers could be forced into joining a union. The US Chamber of Commerce, which represents more than 3 million businesses, agrees.
"There is no question that these so-called card checks are subject to coercion and sometimes, frankly, workers don't even know what they are signing," said Randy Johnson, vice president of labor, immigration, and employee benefits at the chamber in Washington, D.C.
He said unions want to eliminate union elections because "their numbers are dwindling, and they are trying to figure out how to reverse that trend."
Card checks are not the labor movement's only concern.
In July, the NLRB ruled that graduate students at private colleges and universities are not workers. That means they no longer have the right to form unions like other workers. The decision reversed an earlier 2000 finding that opened the door to unionization for the students.
In a separate June decision, the NLRB barred nonunion workers from bringing a union representative to meetings where the workers could be disciplined. That ruling overturned a four-year-old NLRB finding.
Labor unions argue that such workers should have representation when the outcome of a meeting with the boss could affect their livelihood.

Diane E. Lewis can be reached at dlewis@globe.com.

New York Times, September 5, 2004, Sunday

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

September 5, 2004 Sunday
Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section 4; Column 6; Editorial Desk; Pg. 8

HEADLINE: Police Officers' Salaries

BODY:
To the Editor:
Mitchell L. Moss's claim (''Finest, Bravest, Greediest?,'' Op-Ed, Aug. 24) that ''New York City pays its police and firefighters fairly'' is contradicted by our research showing that New York cops are paid on average 30 percent less than officers in other local and national municipalities.
For example, in Manhattan, a typical fifth-year officer assigned to protect the Stock Exchange and Citigroup facilities earns $47,367 a year. A Newark officer with the same experience, assigned to protect the Prudential building, typically earns $74,959 a year (58 percent more).
We also disagree with Professor Moss's claim that the Police Department ''has an abundance of qualified applicants.'' New Yorkers need to ponder whether the costs associated with a reasonable increase in police pay won't, in the long run, be lower than the costs associated with the steady erosion of the city's public safety.

Harry C. Katz
David B. Lipsky
Ithaca, N.Y., Sept. 2, 2004

The writers are professors of, respectively, collective bargaining and industrial and labor relations at Cornell University, and are consultants to the New York City Patrolmen's Benevolent Association.

Newhouse News Service, September 2, 2004, Thursday

Copyright 2004 Newhouse News Service
All Rights Reserved
Newhouse News Service

September 2, 2004 Thursday

SECTION: FINANCIAL

HEADLINE: Elite Schools May Not Be Worth the Price for You

BYLINE: By CHRISTOPHER MONTGOMERY; Christopher Montgomery is a reporter for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. He can be contacted at cmontgomery(at)plaind.com.

BODY:
After nearly two years of test-taking, soul-searching, college visits and prayers, your daughter just opened her acceptance letter from Dartmouth College.
It's fantastic news, but tempering your excitement is that Dartmouth information packet sitting on your desk. Or more to the point, the numbers it has inside. Tuition plus room and board comes to nearly $38,000 a year, and the aid package is pretty slim. For four years, you're facing at least $150,000.
Gulp.
For many families, regardless of their fears, the college-selection process would end right there. With an Ivy League acceptance in hand, they would suck it up and do everything necessary, short of selling the family farm, to send the kid to Dartmouth. How in your right mind could you turn it down?
But let's say, for argument's sake, that she was also accepted at a large state university and offered a financial aid package that's just short of a full ride. There's also an offer from a small private school, It's still pricey, but its financial aid office said it's eager to come up with a package that works for you.
With a set of options like that, you might want to hold off on a decision. There's no denying that Dartmouth and its elite ilk are venerable institutions, but economists can't agree on whether degrees from such schools are worth the price of admission. When it comes to finding the best college fit for your child and your finances, there's plenty more to consider than a school's brand name.
Alan Krueger, a Princeton University economist, and Stacy Dale, a researcher at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, raised a few eyebrows in 2000 when they published a study concluding that degrees from prestigious, highly selective schools aren't necessarily passports to higher earnings.
Their findings, predictably, showed that graduates of such schools do earn more over the course of their careers. But the problem with that data, they said, is that students at highly selective schools as measured by the average SAT score of enrollees would earn more regardless of where they chose to attend for the same reasons they were admitted by the elite school.
Princeton students, in other words, have high earnings potential not because they're at Princeton, but because they're bright, ambitious and self-confident.
To correct this so-called "selection bias," Krueger and Dale examined students who were accepted by comparable colleges. A student who turned down a highly selective school to attend a moderately selective school, they found, wouldn't suffer any hit to her earnings.
In the final analysis, they found that where students apply is a better predictor of future income. (They called this the Steven Spielberg Effect, referring to the Hollywood giant who was rejected by both the USC and UCLA film schools.)
Krueger and Dale found that the only students who clearly benefited from attending highly selective schools were those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
The point of all this is that there isn't a "one-size-fits-all model" for choosing a college, Krueger said in an e-mail.
"Parents and students should find the college that is best suited for them," Krueger wrote, "given the child's interests, talents, etc., the school's strengths, and the family's resources."
Ronald Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute at Cornell University, agreed that choosing a college should include more than just shooting for top-ranked schools. Some students want to go to large public universities, where they can enjoy big-time athletics; some are more comfortable at smaller schools in rural areas.
"There is no right choice," Ehrenberg said.
But he said that most studies, including his own, have found a positive correlation between a school's selectivity and future earnings.
For one, there are the powerful alumni networks at elite schools that help students land their first jobs. There are also the students themselves. Fraternizing with similarly talented and motivated classmates, the thinking goes, enhances your marketability.
"I joke with my students," Ehrenberg said, "that it's not me providing you with this great education, it's your contacts with other students."
There are situations in which elite schools clearly aren't a smart choice. Syracuse University economist Dan Black said that for students intent on pursuing careers with modest income potential, say education or social work, higher tuition costs simply aren't worth it.
That underscores the importance of factoring majors and potential careers into the decision process. If it's a choice between a well-respected program at a major state university that's tailored to your child's interests, Black said, and a high-priced private school that doesn't have a similar program, the state university is probably your best bet.
The bottom line, Black said, is that if "you get a motivated student and send him to a place that's maybe not Princeton, he's going to take advantage of everything that place has to offer and do just fine."
Loren Pope, a former education editor for The New York Times, is a major advocate of looking beyond the typical short list of prestigious colleges. One of his books, "Colleges That Change Lives," profiles 40 small, private, liberal arts schools that emphasize teaching (over research) and character development.
Pope said those kinds of schools help students to become better critical thinkers and promote value systems that are absent at more selective institutions. Beyond that, he said, a degree from a Yale or a Stanford simply doesn't have the heft it used to.
"Sixty or 70 years ago, we had an establishment society, an old-boy network where you got everything through connections," Pope said. "But now competence trumps connections. The old-boy network is becoming obsolete."
After you graduate, Pope said, "it's your own center of gravity that matters, not where you went to school."
Most economists agree that the pedigree of the graduate school you attend is much more important than where you spent your undergraduate years. Students who know they want to pursue a post-graduate degree are smart to consider less-expensive undergraduate options.
"If your ultimate goal is bigger than a four-year plan, then it might be worthwhile to bank some money," said counselor Gene Thomas at Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, Ohio. "You've got to do what's best for your long-term interests."

Inclusive Education Programs, Vol. 11, No. 9, September 1, 2004,

Copyright 2004 LRP Publications
Inclusive Education Programs

September 01, 2004


SECTION: Vol. 11, No. 9

HEADLINE: Establish a new standard for inclusion in the classroom

BYLINE: By Carol Blessing*

BODY:
The principle of the least restrictive environment contributes significantly to the perpetuation of special education being thought of as an entity or a process.

In its day, the principle of the least restrictive environment seemed a progressive approach to creating alternatives to individuals with disabilities. At its heart, the LRE principle was intended to facilitate the inclusion of students with disabilities in the general classroom. Unfortunately, it has had the reverse effect and has created a vehicle for holding students with disabilities away from an academic and social mainstreamed life.

The principle of the LRE carries a built-in assumption that there are circumstances under which a segregated environment is appropriate, thereby, perpetuating a belief that certain disabilities create the criteria for placing people in restrictive or segregated environments.

But research has shown inclusion is academically and socially stronger for all students than are other educational responses to disability.

Diversity when celebrated and embedded within the classroom curriculum across all subject areas creates an ideal environment in which inclusive classrooms thrive. The elements of inclusive classroom communities include:
n Peer tutoring.
n Focus areas of interest.
n Complementary group composition, meaningful content.
n A focus on student abilities and talents.

Good teaching methods incorporate all of these elements into the exchange of information and experiential learning to maximize the opportunity for student success while simultaneously weaving the content of the lesson into the fabric of the academic learning standards the lesson reinforces.

*Carol Blessing works with the Program on Employment and Disability at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Contact her at (518) 283-4408 or cjb39@cornell.edu.