Labor Roundup

Building Trades’ McGarvey: ‘Politics is not a marriage. It’s a business.’ AFL-CIO Building Trades Department President Sean McGarvey told the 56th annual Michigan Building and Construction Trades legislative conference last month “the strength of the labor movement is at stake” in states such as Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana and Kentucky, where bargaining rights or pro-union laws like prevailing wage hang in the balance of recent elections.

“The economic security of our members can’t be hanging in the balance every time we lose a governor’s mansion, or every time a state legislative body flips,” he said.

Unions must reach out to Republican lawmakers with a business case for rejecting Right To Work, Prevailing Wage repeal and similar anti-worker initiatives, McGarvey said.

“We have to take a business perspective on how we engage,” he said. “We can wish for how things used to be, but we cannot continue to follow the program we have followed for the last 30 years. Politics is not a marriage. It’s a business.”

Women’s rights group hails Supreme Court ruling in pregnancy discrimination case. A top women’s rights group is hailing the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling for former UPS worker Peggy Young in a pregnancy discrimination case. But the ruling was not a total win for Young, as the case was sent to lower courts for retrial, where UPS has a chance to prove it did not discriminate.

Young filed her discrimination complaint against UPS, with support from her union, the Teamsters, in 2008. When she became pregnant, Young, a UPS driver, got a doctor’s note saying she could not lift more than 20 pounds. UPS replied that it requires drivers to lift 70 pounds and put her on unpaid leave.

“An individual pregnant worker who seeks to show disparate treatment may make out a case by showing that she belongs to the protected class, that she sought accommodation, that the employer did not accommodate her, and that the employer did accommodate others ‘similar in their ability or inability to work’,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the majority.

That would help create “the material fact” of pregnancy discrimination under the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act, banning such a practice, Breyer said.

“This is good news for Peggy Young and for all pregnant workers, and it should prompt employers to take a hard look at their policies and practices when it comes to accommodating pregnant women,” said Judith Lichtman of the National Partnership for Women and Families. “Any ruling that will mean fewer pregnant women face discrimination in the workplace is good for women, families, our economy and our country. The decision also issues a clear and welcome message to employers that accommodating most non-pregnant workers with injuries or disabilities while refusing to accommodate most pregnant workers is against the law.”

Steelworkers’ Gerard rules out GOP presidential hopefuls. Steelworkers president Leo Gerard says as far as his union is concerned, every one of the raft of Republican presidential hopefuls for next year’s election is out of the running.

“I don’t see a Republican that’s worth talking to,” he said, “but I’m just talking about the presidential candidates.”

Gerard declined to comment on current former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or any potential Democratic hopeful. Other possible Democratic candidates are Vice President Joe Biden, former Govs. Martin O’Malley (Md.) and Lincoln Chafee (R.I.), and former Sen. Jim Webb (Va.). Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind.-Vt.) will run in the Democratic primaries if he gets in.

Teamsters: Train derailments occur because railroads don’t maintain tracks. The Teamsters represent 35,000 freight railroad track maintenance workers and say that more train derailments – including oil tank car derailments like a recent accident near Galena, Ill. – occur because U.S. railroads won’t spend enough money to maintain tracks.

U.S. railroads now transport 400,000 tank-car loads of oil yearly, says Freddie Simpson, president of the union’s Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees division, who adds that federal data shows that freight trains derailed 1,220 times last year, causing at least $200 million in damage to tracks and rail beds alone, besides other damage.

Lousy track conditions caused 39 percent of all derailments, Simpson says. The percentage was even higher (47 percent of 329 accidents) on main lines.

“Main line tracks crisscross the nation passing through thousands of cities and communities where we live,” he says. “We can significantly improve railroad safety by improving the quality of the track. The technology, the skilled workers, and the higher track standards already exist; this is not rocket science.”

Greens join union campaign against fast-track, Pacific trade pact. Citing job losses and danger to the environment under every so-called “free trade” pact with or without presidential “fast-track” Trade Promotion Authority, environmentalists in April joined unionists lobbying against fast-track and its trade pacts.

Backed by the BlueGreen Alliance – a coalition of unions and environmental groups – some 1,200 people in mid-April lobbied lawmakers on fast-track and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. Supported by President Barack Obama, TPP also would establish secret trade courts that corporations could use to overturn federal, state and local laws they claim interfere with profits.

News briefs courtesy of The Labor Paper in Peoria