Dayton Miami Valley AFL-CIO

The union movement is working to bring relief to workers in Haiti affected by the Jan. 12 earthquake and to build a long-term strategy to move the country away from a sweatshop economy to one that provides good jobs.

The first priority has been to respond to urgent needs for food, water, medical attention and dry shelter. If you haven’t yet had a chance to help, or wish to donate again to relief efforts, Union Plus has pledged to match up to $100,000 in individual donations to the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center’s Earthquake Relief Fund. Already, Union Plus has matched $80,000 and needs just $20,000 more to reach that goal. Click here to donate online now. Donations also can be made by sending a check with Earthquake Relief Fund for Haitian Workers in the memo line to:

Solidarity Center Education Fund
Attention: Joan Welsh
888 16th St., N.W., Suite 400
Washington, D.C. 20006

Goods are currently being delivered to the Association of University Graduates Motivated for a Haiti with Rights (AUMOHD), which is serving as the labor movement’s central distribution point and organizing center. Through donations, the Solidarity Center has helped AUMOHD obtain energy-generating solar panels for their building, allowing union members to charge cell phones, use computers and set up communications—a vital first step in the relief and recovery process.

Even as they distribute needed supplies, unions also are sending a message to those donors who want to invest in Haiti for the long term. Cathy Feingold, Solidarity Center representative for the Dominican Republic and Haiti, told In These Times magazine that an investment strategy “has to be for good jobs, not just jobs at the current minimum wage of $5 a day.”

Now aid organizations are providing cash for work, cleaning up after the earthquake at that minimum wage. That can’t be the model, hiring people at $5 a day without health care, pension, or a right to organize. If it’s just creating more sweatshops, Haiti does not need more of that.

Apparel sweatshops have expanded in Haiti. Before the earthquake, some 18 factories employed 25,000 workers with only one union factory.

Unions and our international allies also are fighting for workers’ right to form a union. Before the earthquake, most workers were employed in the public sector, and private-sector workers trying to form unions were typically fired or threatened with death, Feingold told In These Times. The government rarely enforced laws protecting workers, and the nation’s few factory owners insisted they could not flourish if workers organized unions, she said.

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Late last year, 57 leaders of the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers’ Union (GBGWU) were fired, without recourse, when miners at the Bauxite Company of Guyana (BCGI) exercised their right to strike after they declared the company bargained in bad faith. 

According to LabourStart, the global labor news service, the company gave 600 miners the choice of accepting one of three bargaining proposals. When the miners voted to accept the deal management wanted least, BCGI fired the union’s leaders.

LabourStart reports that BCGI has since coerced and intimidated workers to sign a petition to decertify the union. The Russian aluminum company RusAl owns 90 percent of BCGI and the government of Guyana owns the other 10 percent.

You can act now to help Guyanese workers. Click here to send a letter to Guyana’s government demanding that it honor the workers’ rights.

In a letter to Guyana’s labor minister, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka noted Guyana’s government has part ownership in the bauxite company, which he says makes it “directly responsible for the egregious infractions of fundamental worker trade union rights in this particular case.”

We respectfully demand that your government do everything to cease, desist and reverse these violations of basic worker rights, including rapid reinstatement of the fired trade union leaders with full compensation, as well as an immediate end to the union decertification effort.

 

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Susan Phillips of the Berger-Marks Foundation reports on a speech by AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler at a recent women’s organizing conference.

Young workers need a collective voice more than ever, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler told a group of women activists last week in New Orleans.

The youngest person ever elected to a top AFL-CIO office, Shuler keynoted a luncheon during a women-only summit sponsored by the Berger-Marks Foundation. The “Women Organizing Women: Social Networks, Social Justice, Social Change” summit is a ground-breaking gathering of women activists from across the United States and Canada to discuss inter-generational issues relating to their advocacy work. Participants ranged in age from 23 to 65. The organization will release a report later this year on the recommendations from this summit.

Shuler is leading the effort to engage youth organizations, online communities and young people about their needs, hopes and expectations in this tough economy.

The AFL-CIO is kicking off the initiative with the first-ever AFL-CIO Youth Summit in early June. Leading up to the summit, the AFL-CIO is sponsoring a series of forums with young union and community leaders over the next two months.

Young activists have sparked some of the nation’s most significant political and social movements, Shuler said. She pointed out that major change in our country has always been led by young people. She noted that Martin Luther King Jr. was 26 when he led the Montgomery bus boycott. At 25, César Chávez was registering Mexican Americans to vote. Walter Reuther headed strikes demanding General Motors recognize its workers’ rights when he was 30.

I’m deeply committed to and passionate about leading the AFL-CIO’s outreach to young workers. It’s not that young people don’t like unions—in fact, polls show they’re the age group most inclined to like unions. It’s just that they don’t know or think very much about us.

Shuler cited a recent AFL-CIO survey of workers between ages 18 and 34 that showed one in three worries about finding a full-time job with benefits. Only 31 percent make enough money to cover their bills and put some savings aside—and 31 percent have no health coverage. Less than half have retirement plans at work.

Today’s young people have no reason to assume that playing by the rules—getting a good education and working hard—will pay off for them, Shuler said. And young people who don’t make it to or through college have an even tougher road ahead.

It’s clear that “young people need a collective voice more than ever,” Shuler said.

And as much as young workers need unions on the job and in the political process to improve their lives and their prospects, it’s just as clear that the labor movement needs young people and young leaders.

Young activists and labor activists are working side by side on many campaigns right now, and we have opportunities to deepen and expand these connections. This is a moment we have to seize.

The Berger-Marks Foundation is dedicated to achieving a voice for working women through organization and union membership. It provides funds for women workers directly involved in organizing and assists groups that support working women who want to form a union.

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Our nation cannot afford to lose the productivity of thousands of undocumented immigrant students, a coalition of union, student and civil rights leaders said today. A day after a massive march in Washington, D.C., for comprehensive immigration reform, the leaders called on Congress to fix the nation’s broken immigration system by passing real reform legislation, including the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act.    

At a morning press conference, sponsored by the United States Student Association (USSA), student leaders were joined by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and other union and community leaders. More than 600 USSA members are in town for their legislative conference this week and will visit Capitol Hill to lobby for immigration reform. USSA President Gregory Cendana said:

The DREAM Act will provide some of the hardest working students with the life-changing opportunity to attend college and better their lives as well as their communities. We must now push forward to achieve comprehensive immigration reform and extend opportunity to the next generation of leaders.  

The DREAM Act would give conditional legal status and eventual citizenship to undocumented students who graduate from U.S. high schools, are of good moral character, arrived in the United States as minors and have been in the country continuously for at least five years prior to the bill’s enactment.

Tom Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), said the DREAM Act is about harnessing the brain power for the future growth of the country.

But it is as close to a no-brainer as you can get. The immigration system doesn’t follow our constitutional values or serve our national interest. The DREAM Act does both.

Fabiola is an example of the students who desperately need the DREAM Act. (We are not using her full name to prevent her from being identified and possibly deported.) She was only two years old when her father brought her to the United States 22 years ago seeking a better life. Fifteen years ago, her father became a U.S. citizen and all her younger siblings who were born here also are citizens. But Fabiola fell through the legal cracks and is now too old to become a citizen under current immigration law.

But that has not stopped her from working hard to live the American Dream. Last week, she graduated from the University of California Los Angeles with a degree in international development. But she cannot find a job in her field because she is undocumented. She says:

I am a product of a broken immigration system. Part of the American Dream is working hard. I don’t mind that part, but I would just like to see results like everybody else. 

In contrast, Adey Fisseha became a citizen a week before graduating from Harvard. Now campaign coordinator for the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), Fisseha said her family fled Ethiopia because her father, a trade unionist, was being persecuted. The family braved the hot sun, attacks by the military and other hardships to finally reach a refugee camp in neighboring Sudan. They eventually made their way to the United States, where they sought a better life. Fisseha’s father now works at the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center.

The nation cannot afford to lose students like these, Trumka told the press conference.

Each year approximately 65,000 undocumented immigrant students graduate from U.S. high schools, often despite economic hardship and language barriers. Unless there is a change in immigration law, these capable and hard-working young people will be relegated to a life in the shadows, unable to achieve their full potential—and that’s an outcome our nation can no longer afford.

AFT Secretary-Treasurer Antonia Cortese agreed, telling reporters:

the students have done everything we ask students to do. They studied hard and worked hard and they deserve a chance to succeed.

National Education Association (NEA) Vice President Lily Eskelsen said:

Do you know what it means to me and to teachers all over the country to see these amazing students here today, telling us they get it? They’re saying: We’re not a charity. We’re working hard. But tell us that diploma will take us somewhere.

Trumka emphasized that the DREAM Act is a part of a broader immigration reform. The union movement’s unity framework for comprehensive immigration reform includes five interconnected initiatives. The plan calls for:

• Adjustment of status for currently undocumented immigrants;
• An independent commission to assess and manage future flows, based on labor market shortages that are determined on the basis of actual need;
• A secure and effective worker authorization mechanism;
• Rational operational control of the border;
• Improvement, not expansion, of temporary worker programs, limited to temporary or seasonal, not permanent jobs.  

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On Monday, in Cleveland, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler told a crowd of union activists outside a Morgan Stanley office:

“We’re here at Morgan Stanley to make one thing clear. We need good jobs now. And we are going to make Wall Street pay.”

Meanwhile, in another of the AFL-CIO’s 200 “Good Jobs Now, Make Wall Street Pay” actions taking place through the end of this week, top-hatted “bankers” panhandled for even more bonus bonanzas on a sidewalk in front of a Washington, D.C., Bank of America branch.

The rallies and marches are demanding the Big Six Wall Street banks—Bank of America, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wachovia-Wells Fargo—take the following actions:

• Pay their fair share to restore the jobs their actions destroyed.
• Stop their multimillion-dollar lobbying blitz to kill financial reform.
• Start lending to communities, small businesses and others starved for credit.

At the Morgan Stanley action, organized by the North Shore Federation of Labor, Shuler said it was the banks’risky practices, “Peddling meaningless junk—derivatives, credit default swaps, overpriced mortgages—none of it real,” that ravaged the economy and left us with an 11 million jobs deficit.

She also pointed out the $3 million Morgan Stanley has spent to kill financial reform. Overall in 2009, the Big Six spent more than $24 million to lobby Congress.

These corporations are willing to spend millions to block reform and keep the status quo. They’re counting on their lobbyists to keep Congress from doing anything.

And that’s where you come in. We’re here to make sure Congress is listening to working families, creating jobs and making Wall Street pay! And we’re not going to stop until we rebuild the middle class.

In Washington, the begging bankers weren’t as lucky shaking down money from passers-by as they were shaking down Congress for billions in bailout cash. But most of the noontime strollers who walked by took leaflets from the Metropolitan Washington [D.C.] Council activists who accompanied the bankers on the sidewalk theater. The “bankers” were not disturbed by the lack of donations. As one said:

That’s OK, we’ll just go get the money from Congress, as usual.

Not if working families have anything to say about it.

Union members today also staged Good Jobs Now! Make Wall Street Pay in Hartford, Conn., Paducah, Ky. and York, Pa.

Find out about events in your area here. If you take part in an event, be sure to send us your photo or video here.

You also can tell Wall Street executives to pony up and create good jobs by sending a letter urging them to do the right thing. Just click here.

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Michigan public employees save the state nearly $16 million, and more news from the “Bargaining Digest Weekly.” The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily, bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 1,200 subscribers. Union leaders can register for this service through our website, Bargaining@Work.

SETTLEMENTS
UAW, State of Michigan: Michigan state workers have ratified a new contract designed to save the state nearly $16 million. Members of UAW Local 6000 will forgo 26 hours of pay during this fiscal year and will instead receive that time as banked leave, which can be used as vacation or cashed out at retirement.

Multiple, Public Service Enterprise Group: More than 5,000 workers at New Jersey’s largest utility company, Public Service Enterprise Group, agreed to forgo contracted wage increases to avoid layoffs. The members of five unions, including Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 94 and Plumbers and Pipe Fitters (UA) Local 855, had 18 months left on their current contract but extended it for two more years through 2013.

GMP, Owens Corning: After rejecting a contract offer earlier last week, workers at Owens Corning approved a revised three-year agreement on Thursday. The 560 members of Glass, Molders, Pottery, Plastics and Allied Workers (GMP) Local 244 had rejected the earlier proposal mainly due to changes in the company’s seniority policies.

WORK STOPPAGES & LEGAL ACTION
OPEIU, La Clinica: A Washington State health center has reached a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) stemming from charges filed by Office and Professional Employees (OPEIU) Local 8. During negotiations, La Clinica allegedly threatened to lay off workers unless they agreed to reduce or eliminate benefits, refused to negotiate personnel policies and failed to provide the union with relevant information.

AFM, Honolulu Symphony Society: The Musicians’ Association of Hawaii/AFM is petitioning a bankruptcy court to alter, appoint a trustee to, or throw out the Honolulu Symphony Society’s bankruptcy case. The union contends management’s decision to end fundraising and file for bankruptcy undermined donor confidence and created a self-fulfilling prophecy.

MNA-NNU, Borgess Medical Center: The Michigan Nurses Association-National Nurses United (MNA-NNU) last week filed an unfair labor practice charge against Borgess Medical Center in Kalamazoo, Mich. In its press release, MNA-NNU alleges that, among other things, the hospital has refused to bargain in good faith, harassed and intimidated nurses and removed all patient and employee protections from the collective bargaining process. The current contract was due to expire Friday.

UFCW, Shaw’s Supermarket: Shaw’s Supermarket warehouse and distribution workers have entered their third week on strike. The 310 members of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 791 have set up picket lines at 16 stores in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The union says it has not yet heard from Shaw’s about returning to the bargaining table.

NEGOTIATIONS
UNITEHERE!, Westin Hotel: UNITEHERE! Local 217 members and supporters picketed in Providence, R.I., Thursday, after the Westin Hotel forced significant wage cuts and increases to workers’ health care contributions. The contract covering 200 hotel workers expired in October.

IBEW, City of Redding: IBEW Local 1245 is exploring its legal options after California’s Redding City Council voted to impose a one-year contract on workers at Redding  Electric Utility. Local 1245 members will receive a 3 percent wage increase but will have their health and retirement benefits cut. Negotiations had been ongoing since July 2008.

CWA, ACS/Xerox: Fourteen EZ Pass workers fired March 8, allegedly for their union activity, were rehired by ACS/Xerox after the Communications Workers of America (CWA) launched a public campaign on the workers’ behalf. The workers joined CWA in August, but Xerox has refused to bargain.

USW, Appalachian Regional Healthcare: The United Steelworkers (USW) has reached a tentative agreement with Appalachian Regional Healthcare, covering workers in West Virginia and Kentucky. If ratified, the agreement will cover 2,300 workers in jobs ranging from clerical to nursing.

Disclaimer: This information is being provided for your information only.  As it is compiled from published news reports, not from individual unions, we cannot vouch for either its completeness or accuracy; readers who desire further information should directly contact the union involved.

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	AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker told the crowd Sunday that the broken immigration systems allows employers to exploit workers.

Some 200,000 people turned out in Washington, D.C., Sunday for a massive rally in support of immigration reform. Among the speakers, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker thanked the organizers of the rally, saying:

NOTHING in this country is more powerful than people united for change. And do we ever need change. We are here, as a united labor movement to tell Congress that we MUST pass comprehensive immigration reform.

The broken system is benefiting the very same corporate giants who destroyed our economy. It is allowing those corporations to exploit workers by underpaying them, or not paying them at all, simply because of their immigration status. As long as employers have a pool of workers who are too scared to complain, those corporations will continue to profit and workplace standards will continue to go down.

	Some 200,000 supporters of immigration reform gathered in Washington, D.C., yesterday.

The AFL-CIO calls for immigration reform include:

• Legalization for the undocumented.
• An independent commission to assess and manage future immigration based on real needs and real labor market shortages.
• A secure, effective—and fair—worker authorization mechanism.
• Rational control of U.S. borders.
• Improvement, not expansion, of temporary worker programs, limited to temporary, not permanent, jobs.

These are the principles of the labor movement—we are united in support.

Immigration reform is one of many changes that are desperately needed if we are going to give all working families a fair shot at the American Dream. Working together, we have to change this system.

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In a historic vote more than 60 years in the making, the U.S. House of Representatives late Sunday night voted to approve (220-211) what AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka calls a ”momentous step toward comprehensive health care.”

The bill survived a $100 million lie-and-distortion campaign by Big Insurance to kill it—the same kind of tactics these groups have aimed at health care proposals for six decades. Trumka says the bill is not “a baby step or half measure,” but a solid step forward to set our country on a path to health care that actually works for working families.

After personally calling dozens of House members on Friday, Trumka spent the weekend meeting with House members to firm up votes in favor of the bill. On Capitol Hill today, Trumka joined two workers—among the millions in this nation—for whom passage of this health care bill means the difference between food and health care.

One of the workers, Liz Stender, lost her job in August while four months pregnant and described how she cannot afford to pay for COBRA, which extends her health coverage. Now working part-time, Stender, a member of Working America, the AFL-CIO community affiliate, won’t be able to afford health coverage for herself or her small daughter—and today’s passage of the health care bill literally means the difference between groceries and insurance. Judy Cato, a member of the Alliance for Retired Americans, who also joined Trumka, described how the legislation will allow her and other Medicare beneficiaries to get mammograms and other preventive screenings without co-payments.

In a letter Friday to House members urging passage of the bill, Trumka wrote, “the bill is not perfect.”

But we are realistic enough to know it’s time for the deliberations to stop and for progress to begin. And we are idealistic enough to believe this is an opportunity to change history we can’t afford to miss.

Union Members Made the Difference

Throughout the health care battle, mobilized union members provided a strong and visible counterpoint to the insurance giants’ television and lobbying blitz. Union members made more than 4 million phone calls and sent more than 1 million e-mail messages to lawmakers. Leaders flew to Washington, D.C., and visited members of Congress in their districts, making more than 10,000 contacts.

In addition, canvassers from Working America talked to more than 210,000 people about health care at their front doors, generating 30,000 health care petition signatures, 31,000 phone calls to Congress, 40,000 e-mail messages and 75,000 hand-written letters urging lawmakers to pass health care reform.

The contacts not only helped win approval of health care reform, they improved the bill and ensured that its financing would be fairer. Pressure from working families and visits and phone calls from union leaders to lawmakers eliminated 85 percent of a tax on health care benefits that would have slammed working families—union and nonunion. That same activism helped strengthen the bill’s employer responsibility provisions by requiring employers to shoulder more of their fair share.

In the days leading up to the vote, union members (see video) and leaders were on Capitol Hill and at representatives’ home district offices urging wavering lawmakers to back the health care bill.

In Fresno, Calif., union members rallied outside Rep. Jim Costa’s (D) office on Friday. Later, Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation, flew to Washington to meet with fence-sitting California lawmakers. Yesterday, Costa announced he would vote in favor of health care reform.

AFL-CIO President Emeritus John Sweeney was on the phones, too. Several Democratic lawmakers expressed concern about the bill’s language on abortions. Sweeney, a devout Catholic, talked to the representatives about the Catholic Church’s long history of fighting for social and economic justice and how providing health care for 32 million additional people follows that teaching.

While union members attempted to persuade the undecided, they also warned lawmakers they would be held accountable if they turned their backs on working families and voted against health care reform.

On Friday in Pennsylvania, Rep. Jason Altmire (D), who courted and won union support for his election, announced he was voting against the bill. Yesterday, several dozen United Steelworkers (USW) members and retirees staged a sit-in at his Aliquippa office. Said Rick Galiano, president of USW Local 9305 in Beaver Falls, Pa.:

We busted our humps working for Jason Altmire and many other politicians who time and time again promise us that they’ll work for us and working families across America. We are tired of the broken promises. We helped Congressman Altmire win this seat because he vowed he would vote for health insurance reform. We’re here today urging him to keep that promise.

Rep. Michael Arcuri (D-N.Y), who narrowly won his last election—union family votes put him over the top—announced Thursday he would vote against the bill. On Friday, New York State AFL-CIO President Denis Hughes and 20 other New York labor leaders sent Arcuri a letter saying his health care vote will have consequences.

Our members look for elected officials who have the courage to stand up to lies, distortions and political scare tactics. Your vote this Sunday will tell them what kind of elected official you are. Please do not disappoint them or us.

Yesterday, Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Robert Haynes and more than two dozen Bay State union leaders urged Rep. Stephen Lynch (D) to reconsider his announced “No” vote. They wrote:

If Congress passes this legislation, together, we can continue to strengthen consumer protections, increase market competition, and ensure that insurance companies no longer have a stranglehold on consumers. If Congress doesn’t pass the bill, none of this is possible. All we are left with is the status quo.

Congressman, we will not be able to explain to the working women and men of our union why you voted against their interests. 

What Does the Bill Do?

In a video message to working families, Trumka says that at its core, the bill

means long-term health security—and that’s the most important thing for your future, and your children and their children.

Among other benefits, the health care reform bill bans coverage denials or higher rates due to pre-existing conditions and outlaws the practice of insurers dropping coverage when someone files a claim or is diagnosed with a condition requiring expensive treatment. It covers an additional 32 million people, or 95 percent of the population.

The bill ends gender discrimination in setting insurance rates and establishes a procedure to review insurance premium increases and take action against unreasonable rate hikes.

It also makes improvements in the original Senate-passed version, such as not placing the cost of the bill on the backs of working families.

• It eliminates 85 percent of the tax on benefits that would have penalized working families.
• It substitutes in its place a progressive tax on the wealthy that requires Medicare contributions be paid on unearned income for the first time.
• It increases subsidies to purchase health insurance for low- and moderate-income people.

On the benefits tax, Trumka says:

We continue to think the excise tax is the wrong way to contain costs, but the changes included in the corrections bill cut the tax back deeply, so that it now eliminates 85 percent of the tax for all working families—both nonunion and union—whose health benefits cost more due to factors beyond their control.

The bill also cuts brand-name drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries by 50 percent in 2011 and closes the Medicare prescription drug “donut hole” completely by 2020. Stella Johnson, a retired school teacher and member of the Alliance for Retired Americans, is one of 3 million seniors who each year falls in the donut hole.

At a press conference with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week, Johnson said her prescriptions become even more costly when she is forced to pay full price as a result of the donut hole.

It is very hard for me to make ends meet. I have to choose between taking the medicines I need and paying my monthly bills. Because my prescriptions cost so much, I fall behind on some of my bills. When I get hit with late penalties, things get even worse.

The health care bill will help seniors like me who struggle every day to afford the prescriptions they must have.

Trumka says the bill is a “solid foundation” and the union movement will “continue our efforts to improve our health care system.”

We need to do more to bring employers into the system. We need to do more to bring down costs—and one of the best ways to do that is with a public health insurance option. And it will be critical to build on the reforms in the bill designed to change the way health care is delivered, so that we reward value rather than volume.

The House last night actually voted on two health care reform bills. The first was the reform bill passed by the Senate late last year. That bill passed 219-212. Then the House passed a series of fixes to the Senate bill, known as reconciliation. That bill passed 220-211.

The reconciliation bill now goes to the Senate, but this time Republican obstructionists will not be able to filibuster the bill because it will only require a simply majority to pass.

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Several hundred Los Angeles-area union members recently came together to lend support and solidarity to the nearly 600 members of International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 30 locked out at Rio Tinto’s Borax mine in Boron, Calif. Now, you can get a firsthand look at this union solidarity in action with this slide show set to the word and music of Bruce Springsteen’s “This Hard Land.”

A caravan, organized by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, delivered more than $30,000 in food and other supplies to support the miners fighting the international mining conglomerate’s move to outsource jobs, convert full-time jobs to part-time temporary work, slash retirement benefits and gut grievance protections and other workplace rules.

John Kawakami, the federation’s communication specialist, put together this stirring slide show covering the day’s events—an early morning rally at a Dodger Stadium parking lot; the drive to Boron, 90 miles northeast of Los Angeles; and the delivery of the much-needed supplies to the workers and their families.

The workers were locked out Jan. 31, after they voted down the giveback-packed contract from Rio Tinto. According to the ILWU, Rio Tinto in 2009 made nearly $5 billion in profits, despite a worldwide recession.

The London-based company operates mines on five continents and has a long record of union-busting actions, according to the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions (ICEM).

For more information, visit Local 30’s website here.

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With the Easter holiday approaching, many U.S. children and their parents will celebrate with chocolate bunnies and other chocolate-covered treats. But for children in West Africa, Easter will simply be another desolate day of harvesting cocoa, the main ingredient in chocolate, under inexcusable conditions.

AFT has launched a campaign to stop the importation of child-harvested cocoa beans or chocolate made from them. You can take action. Click here to send a message to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack urging him to ensure chocolate products Americans eat are not spoiled by the bitterness of child labor.

More than half of the world’s supply of cocoa is harvested in the two West African nations of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast). Growing and harvesting the crop depends upon the labor of 3.6 million children caught in the worst forms of child labor, according to the International Cocoa Verification Board (ICVB). Children must climb trees with machetes to cut down cocoa pods. They handle and apply dangerous pesticides, burn brush and carry back-breaking loads, ICVB says. ICVB is non-profit, multi-stakeholder organization that monitors child and forced labor in cocoa production.

Their hazardous work in the cocoa trees also prevents these children from attending school. Nearly a quarter of the working children in Côte d’Ivoire have never been to school, AFT says. Among those who have attended school, 7.6 percent stop going after they go to work on the cocoa farms. Overall, just 14.8 percent of the child cocoa laborers are literate.

In a letter last month to Vilsack, AFT President Randi Weingarten said “urgent action is needed if we are to realize the International Labor Organization goal of eliminating the worst forms of child labor by 2016.” Cocoa beans from Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire already are on the U.S. Department of Labor’s list of goods produced by child labor. Read the letter here.

Researchers at American University report that slave traders are trafficking boys, between ages 12 and 16, taking them from their home countries and selling them to cocoa farmers in Cote d’Ivoire. Most of the boys come from neighboring Mali, where agents hang around bus stations looking for children that are alone or are begging for food. They lure the kids to travel to Cote d’Ivoire with them, and then the traffickers sell the children to farmers in need of cheap labor.

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