Lawmakers seek answers to Wal-Mart straining public resources. State Rep. John Lesch, a prosecutor in St. Paul for 15 years, can recite the address from memory: 1450 University Avenue West. That’s Wal-Mart’s Midway location, a magnet for shoplifting and other petty crimes that, like several other Wal-Mart stores in Minnesota and across the country, absorbs a disproportionate amount of attention from police.
“They’re the problem child of Minnesota retailers, and they’re costing taxpayers,” Lesch told the St. Paul Union Advocate.
The worker-led group Making Change at Wal-Mart launched a campaign this winter to hold the nation’s largest retailer accountable for the strain its stores put on local resources. With support from the United Food and Commercial Workers, the organization started airing on local TV a public service advertisement (PSA) highlighting high crime rates at the store.
The PSA notes that two Twin Cities Wal-Mart locations – St. Paul and Brooklyn Park – average three calls for police service per day. “Our police should protect us and not your profits,” the PSA tells Wal-Mart.
UFCW Local 1189 represents workers at Cub, Rainbow Foods and other local retailers, many of which contract with private security firms. By relying instead on local police for security, Wal-Mart undercuts those competitors – and passes the cost on to taxpayers.
“Wal-Mart needs to step up,” Rep. Mike Nelson, DFL-Brooklyn Park, said. “They should not be sponging off the communities in which they do business.”
GOP bill could toss nursing home rules, standards for 9/11 aid. Standards to protect nursing home residents, paid sick leave for federal contractors’ employees, President Barack Obama’s Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order, even standards that ailing responders to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks must meet to get help are among the rules that could die if the Republican-run Senate follows through on – and incoming Republican President Donald Trump signs – GOP-passed legislation that cleared the GOP-run House Jan. 4.
The measure, HR21, passed on a 238-184 party-line vote, with only four Democrats voting for it. The non-partisan Congressional Research Service says HR21 covers 220 rules, and if it reaches Trump’s desk and he signs it, lawmakers would have to approve legislation rolling back those rules. The GOP is chomping at the bit to do so. The Chamber of Commerce, the right-wing Freedom Works group, and others all lobbied lawmakers for HR21.
Before Inauguration, Trump settles hotel disputes. Prior to his inauguration as president, Republican Donald Trump settled disputes with Unite Here at Trump’s hotels in Las Vegas and Washington, D.C.
The more-notable settlement is in Las Vegas, where after more than a year of bitter anti-union battles against Culinary Workers Local 226 and Bartenders Local 165, Trump’s managers finally bargained a first contract for the 525 workers there.
Terms were not disclosed, but Local 226 Communications Director Bethany Khan said the wages, working conditions, benefits and other contract terms will bring the Trump Las Vegas workers – housemaids, porters, waiters, cooks and bartenders — in line with colleagues at other unionized hotels in Las Vegas. Most of the Trump workers are minority-group members, women or both. The four-year pact, which started Jan. 1, also includes family health care provisions, a pension and job security language, Khan said.
In return, the hotel dropped its case at the National Labor Relations Board, which sought to enforce its bargaining order against Trump management. The contract also dismisses the NLRB’s Unfair Labor Practice charges accusing Trump of violating labor law.
The D.C. agreement opens the way for card-check recognition, if Unite Here Local 25 achieves the required and verified majority, at the new Trump hotel three blocks from the White House.
“The agreement speaks volumes about the hotel’s commitment to its employees and the value they place on their relationship with our organization,” Local 25 John Boardman said. “It satisfies the union’s goal to represent and ensure strong working conditions for hospitality workers.”
‘Unpredictability’ is biggest concern about Trump. J. David Cox, president of the largest union for federal workers, worries most about Donald Trump’s unpredictability, he says. Cox, whose American Federation of Government Employees has more than 309,000 members, added the uncertainty comes from the Manhattan mogul’s changing positions.
Trump takes office at the head of a party that has made federal workers a punching bag for decades, and whose 2016 platform does so, he said. The platform questions the value of unionization of the federal workforce. And it pledges to reverse Democratic President Barack Obama’s decision to let the nation’s 45,000 airport screeners, formally called Transportation Security Officers, vote on union representation.
“It’s no secret that Mr. Trump has had occasions where the world is perfect today, and tomorrow morning he’s diabolically opposed to where he was the day before,” said Cox, a retired Department of Veterans Affairs psychiatric nurse.
AFT to protect undocumented students, teachers, staff. You’ve heard of sanctuary cities, but the American Federation of Teachers may become the nation’s first “sanctuary union.”
In a recent statement, the union vowed to protect undocumented students, teachers and staff from deportation plans if and when the Trump administration puts them into effect.
If so, AFT would join a growing movement in major cities – including Chicago and New York, where it is the dominant teachers union – to resist the mass deportation plans Trump advocated during his campaign.
The issue is important to teachers, students and their families. The Pew Research Center calculates three million of the 11 million undocumented people in the U.S. nationwide are children and 65,000 undocumented students graduate from U.S. high schools every year.
Citing census data, Pew adds 59 percent of all undocumented people – students and adults – live in six states: Illinois, California, New York, Texas, New Jersey and Florida.
Union President Randi Weingarten said, AFT will “do everything in our power to stop any kind of action against our immigrant families, our Muslim families, our Latino families and especially our undocumented students.”
Robert Reich, former secretary of labor under Bill Clinton, analyzed lies at the Trump press conference Jan. 11. Reich wrote: “Trump claimed credit for Chrysler and Ford announcing more production in the U.S. Wrong. Sergio Marchionne, the Fiat Chrysler chief executive, said Chrysler’s plan had been in the works for more than a year and had nothing to do with Trump. Marchionne credited the decision to talks with the United Auto Workers.
Analysts say Ford’s decision to expand in Michigan rather than in Mexico had mostly to do with the company’s long-term plans to invest in electric vehicles. It’s easier for companies to find highly skilled workers to build new products, such as electric cars, in the United States than in Mexico.
News briefs courtesy of The Labor Paper