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The Gangbox - Assorted News and Notes

Date Posted: July 9 2004

Kerry: jobs exporting is wrong. “I’ve met steelworkers and mine workers and autoworkers who are now ex-workers. They’ve watched their jobs and equipment unbolted before their eyes and shipped overseas – and some have even had to train their foreign
replacements. That’s wrong. That’s dead wrong, and I’m going to change it,” presidential candidate John Kerry told a cheering crowd at the New Jersey State AFL-CIO convention June 15.

Kerry outlined his plans to stop corporations from shipping jobs overseas, revive the nation’s economy to benefit working families, provide affordable, quality health care and improve educational opportunities. He also told delegates at the Atlantic City
convention, “It’s time once and for all we change the laws so workers can organize when a majority of them wants to, without intimidation and interference from management.”

Go Krogering – United Food and Commercial Workers Local 876 (Hazel Park) reached a three-year agreement on June 15 with Kroger Co. that breaks the pattern the grocery chain had sought to establish nationwide of requiring employee co-payments for health benefits. The proposed contract preserves the workers’ current free health care coverage, maintains existing time-off benefits and guarantees an increase in the number of full-time jobs.

“We are very pleased with the outcome of these negotiations,” said Andy Johnson, Local 876’s president and chief union negotiator for the talks. “To come away from the table with a contract that preserves quality health insurance with no co-pays, raises top wage rates, and protects members’ job security at a time when the economy is weak, health insurance rates are rapidly increasing, and grocers with lower labor costs are expanding their Michigan operations is a tribute to the strength of the bargaining committee and the Kroger membership.”

Kerry doesn’t cross the line. “I don’t cross picket lines. I never have.” With these words last month, Sen. John Kerry illustrated the stark difference between himself and George W. Bush on workers’ rights, including workers’ freedom to form and join unions.

Kerry cancelled a speech at a major meeting of U.S. mayors rather than cross a picket line of firefighters and police who have been working in Boston without a contract – some as long as two years.

Uniforms across the border. The Bush Administration, which invented the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is allowing $30 million worth of uniforms for its U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents to be outsourced to Mexico, according to the National Border Patrol Council, a union of federal government employees.

Unlike the Defense Department, which under law must ensure its uniforms and other clothing items are made in the U.S., DHS has no such restrictions. The Border Patrol uniform contract was awarded to a Nashville, Tenn., company that is outsourcing the manufacturing to Mexico and that means “American taxpayers’ money may be supporting sweatshops,” says Needletrades Union President Bruce Raynor.

Jobs, jobs, jobs. A new American jobs plan by House Democrats would attempt to boost job growth in the U.S. while slowing the corporate export of American jobs overseas, U.S. House Democratic leaders said June 16.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) said the new jobs plan would counter “the inaction of the Bush administration.” The legislation will call for a new business tax credit for newly created U.S. manufacturing jobs and jobs in other industries harmed by outsourcing, the elimination of tax incentives for businesses to operate overseas, reviving the federal extended unemployment insurance program for jobless workers who exhaust their benefits, and increased funding for job training and math and science education.

Also, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) introduced legislation (S. 2531) that would eliminate tax deductions and other tax breaks for companies that ship U.S. jobs offshore. Legislatures in 38 states are considering bills to address job exporting. In May, Tennessee passed a law to allow the state to give preferences to companies that do not send work overseas.

Uninsured. One of every three people in the U.S. younger than 65 – 81.8 million people – lacked health care coverage for all or part of 2002 and 2003, according to a new study by Families USA.

One-quarter of middle-income families went without coverage. The report, One in Three:
Non-Elderly Americans Without Health Insurance, 2002-2003, found more than half of the 81.8 million were uninsured for at least nine months – an increase of 7 million over 2001-2002.