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WIN Week In Review November 30 – Dec. 2, 2007

By Doug Cunningham

United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard says a USW safety survey shows serious hazards - like those that killed 15 BP workers in Texas City in 2005 - are pervasive at U.S. refineries. And he says the oil industry’s response so far is inadequate.

[Gerard]: “It's a wake-up call to the industry and as the United Steel Workers we're prepared to work hand in hand with them to improve the safety conditions and the standards in every refinery, whether it's represented by us or not."

The night before the USW released its safety survey a fire at an oil pipeline in Minnesota killed two USW workers. Gerard says in addition to companies improving their process safety standards, the government's Occupational Safety and Health Administration needs to step up enforcement.

[Gerard2]: "There's really been almost a walking away by OSHA's senior managers of the process safety standards that should have been followed."

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The Broadway strike is over. The union representing stagehands says the tentative agreement is equitable for everyone involved. The union hasn't yet released details of the deal. The strike hit producer’s where they felt it, cutting box office revenue for Thanksgiving week shows from $23.3 million last year to just $4.29 million this year. Stagehands will vote on the new five-year deal over the next ten days.

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With the possibility of a railway strike looming in February, a Presidential Emergency Board has been created to handle disputes between Amtrak and union representing railway workers. More than 6000 workers are represented by at least seven unions under the banner of the Railway Labor Bargaining Coalition. The dispute between Amtrak and the employees has been ongoing for eight years and with the negotiations out of steam the board was created to help resolve ongoing issues within 30 days.

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The United Steelworkers has teamed with the Sierra Club and other groups to form a coalition that’s suing the state of California to enforce the state’s protections against cancer-causing chemicals. USW’s Shawn Gilchrest says the coalition also wants Dupont’s Teflon chemical – PFOA – treated as a carcinogen.

[Gilchrest]: “The agencies are just not reacting to the hazardous chemicals the way that the law is intended. And so what we really want to do is hold the agencies accountable. We depend on our agencies and on our federal regulators to be watchdogs for us and its a shame when we actually have to take them to court to hold them accountable for doing what they should be doing."

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For four years a handful of workers with the help of UNITE-HERE have fought to organize a union at the Monterey Travel Lodge in California. UNITE-HERE 483’s Mark Weller:

[Weller]: “We need to lift these hospitality jobs into the middle class, not drag them into poverty. And so, this is a three-year boycott, it's a four-year fight, and it's thirteen workers. But these thirteen workers are as important as any others in the United States, so we're going to continue to fight for them."

Weller says that a boycott of the Monterey Travel Lodge will continue until the owner signs a fair contract with the workers.