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News Briefs

Date Posted: October 3 2008

Solidarity march slated for Oct. 18
Building trades union members and their families are invited to a "solidarity march" to protest anti-worker National Labor Relations Board rulings, and to support the Employee Free Choice Act.

The event will take place in Detroit on Saturday, Oct. 18. Staging will take place at 8 a.m., the march will start at 9 a.m. Participants will gather at the IBEW Local 58 union hall, 1358 Abbott St., Detroit, 48226. The march will proceed along Michigan Ave. to the McNamara Federal Building, which houses NLRB offices.

The NLRB - with a majority of board members appointed by President Bush - has earned widespread derision from the labor movement for its inexorable succession of anti-union and anti-worker rulings.

And the Employee Free Choice Act is seen as the single most important legislation affecting organized labor since the Republican Congress adopted the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act over the veto of President Truman in 1947.

The EFCA would simplify union organizing by allowing simple "card check" voting among employees, rather than the use of a formal ballot elections. Labor unions argue that employers are free to coerce and threaten employees to vote against union organizing before the elections are held.


Unions seek to protect pensions
With pension funds battered by the nation's financial crisis, organized labor leaders sought to get union pension protections written into any bailout plan approved by Congress.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the $75 billion Teamsters pension fund has racked up billions of dollars in losses this year, and union President James Hoffa sent a Sept. 23 letter to Congress asking that pension plans be given more time to make up funding shortfalls during the recent market turmoil.

Hoffa wrote in a letter to members, "As I stated in the letter, the failure and weakening of major financial institutions in the last weeks and months has the potential to destroy the foundation of many pension funds."

The 900-page Pension Protection Act of 2006 was intended to shore up the finances of faltering funds. Over time, it was hoped that an improving stock market would improve the plans' funding percentages.
The act imposed new accounting rules, changed funding requirements for plans, and established benchmarks for plans to show they are staying solvent. The act also imposed severe penalties for noncompliance.

"It's really a perfect storm," said John Tesija, a funds attorney for a dozen Michigan-based pension plans. "Construction work is down, so hourly contributions are down. The stock market is down, and we have this meltdown. Plans are really hurting. It would help a lot if they change the rules, and give the plans time to work through this."

The Journal said business groups are pushing to keep pension funding a separate issue.