Asbestos manufacturers try to evade liability. Taking advantage of the new Republican rule over Congress, the remaining firms that manufactured items containing asbestos – the cancer-causing substance that sickened thousands of shipyard workers, factory workers, construction workers and others, and that still kills 10,000 people yearly – are pushing legislation to limit if not remove their remaining legal liability to pay workers or their heirs for their illnesses and suffering.
Their bill, HR526, drew opposition from the AFL-CIO and victims’ advocates, and protests from one pro-victim attorney who testified last month.
Business representatives denied that avoiding payment was their aim.
AFL-CIO Legislative Director Bill Samuel said, “This legislation would invade the privacy of asbestos victims by posting personal exposure and medical information online and create new barriers to victims receiving compensation for their asbestos diseases.”
Longshore workers locked out. West Coast port operators, through their lobby, the Pacific Maritime Association, in mid-February locked out 20,000 longshore workers represented by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, at 29 Pacific Coast ports, the second such move in two consecutive weekends.
PMA imposed the lockout to force ILWU to cave in to its demands and settle a contract, union President Robert McEllrath says. The workers have had no pact since summer.
“This is an effort by the employers to put economic pressure on our members and to gain leverage in contract talks,” McEllrath said. “It seems to us the employers are trying to sabotage negotiations. They are not just hurting workers, families and communities. What our employers are doing is bad for the industry and the U.S. economy.”
Trumka to Dems: party leaders have no message. AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka this winter told a meeting of Washington Democrats that the party needs a “coherent economic message.”
“Democratic leaders have a problem, a big problem,” he said. “Our polling shows a lot of union voters — about one-third — don’t see much of a difference between the two parties on issue after issue after issue.
“Eighty percent of Democratic and Republican union members alike say politicians of both parties do far too much to support Wall Street’s financial interests, and not nearly enough to help average folks,” said Trumka, who challenged the party to “show who you clearly are” and “draw a sharp distinction, a clear and bright line, between you and the party on the other side of the aisle.”
Oil industry forces Steelworkers strike. Oil industry obstinacy, especially its refusal to even discuss worker safety, forced tens of thousands of Steelworkers to strike at midnight on Feb. 1.
Workers walked out of refineries in Indiana, Ohio, Texas, Washington and California; Houston, Texas City and Deer Park, Texas; Anacortes, Wash., and Martinez and Carson, Calif. The United Steelworkers represents approximately 64 percent of U.S. refinery workers.
“This work stoppage is about onerous overtime, unsafe staffing levels, dangerous conditions the industry continues to ignore, the daily fires, emissions, leaks and explosions that threaten local communities without the industry doing much about it,” commented Steelworkers Vice President Gary Beevers..
The previous contract expired on Jan. 25.
Teachers, unions concerned with new education reform. With the key Senate committee on education issues off to a fast start in the latest attempt to rewrite the nation’s federal education-aid law, teachers and their two unions are weighing in on the federal role and the key issue of “teaching to the test.”
Key issues include how many tests kids should take as they progress through grades K-12, the weighty role of the tests in evaluating, hiring and firing teachers, which public schools “flunk” and why – and whether federal dollars should be yanked from those schools and channeled elsewhere, such as to charter schools or religious schools.
News briefs courtesy of The Labor Paper in Peoria