By Doug Cunningham

Despite efforts by employers to stop it, longshore union workers in California are going ahead with their planned work stoppage Thursday to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Jack Heyman of ILWU Local 10 expects the ports to be shut down during the day shift May 1st.

[Heyman]: "This action on May Day is a culmination of our internationalist perspective, and we’re really proud that we’re actually going to be doing this."

By Doug Cunningham

The California Labor Federation is releasing a new study today that it says shows paid sick days benefit employers as well as workers. Nearly six million California workers – one in six –have no paid sick days. The California Labor Federation says the new study from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research shows tremendous benefits for employers when paid sick days are provided to workers. The study uses U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistic numbers to evaluate the impact on California employers if paid sick days are guaranteed by law to all the state’s workers. The Healthy Families, Healthy Workplaces act before the state legislature there would do just that.

By Doug Cuningham

A construction trades policy about to be adopted in Los Angeles will hire more low-income and local residents in projects worth $15 billion over five years. The Los Angeles and Orange County, California Building and Construction Trades Council is leading a coalition of labor, community, and business groups to get it done. Kevin Norton is Organizing Director and Political Coordinator for IBEW Local 11.

[Norton]: "By having an opportunity for people to get into the building trades apprenticeship program, it really gives a ladder up into the middle class for a lot of kids that haven’t had opportunities in life."

By Doug Cunningham

The California Labor Federation and ACORN are backing a bill that would guarantee paid sick leave to all workers in the state. Jeremy Smith is a legislative advocate for the federation.

[Smith]: "This has already been passed in San Francisco, so we know that it can work, that it does work and that our studies have shown that this is supported by a great many people in California."

About six million California workers, roughly 40 percent of the state’s workforce, have no paid sick days. Maine, Ohio and Washington, D.C. are also considering guaranteeing paid sick days.

By Doug Cunningham

The New Year has brought new nurse-patient ratios in California to help insure safe patient care. After years of advocacy by the California Nurses Association, the state’s safe hospital staffing law is on the books and completes its phase-in period in 2008. The law requires minimum nurse to patient staffing levels in several different hospital units in California. It’s a national issue as well, with nurses’ unions around the country advocating that other states adopt minimum nurse-patient ratios for safe and quality care. The CNA says the nurse staffing law is working to save lives, allowing nurses to be strong advocates for patients and is bringing more nurses into the profession in California. The CNA has proposed similar laws in Texas, Illinois, Ohio, Maine, and Arizona.

Blue Shield is under fire in California for allegedly violating laws that knocked more than 200 people off of medical coverage. Jesse Russell takes a look:

California’s Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner is seeking $12.6 million in fines against Blue Shield. He is accusing the insurance company of violating claims-handling laws 1,262 times. The result of those violations, according to Poizner, has been more than 200 individuals losing medical coverage. This is the first time in California history that the Department of Insurance has taken legal action over cancellation policies. Blue Shield issued a strongly worded statement on Wednesday saying the company is “outraged by the excessive penalties for nonsubstansive issues” and that the company is being fined for practices that have been “approved” for years by the department. Blue Shield of California Life and Health covers 167,000 individuals in the state.

By Doug Cunningham

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. They’re rallying today to protest the continuing anti-union actions of the lodge’s owner. UNITE-HERE 43’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."

Nearly 5,000 nurses in Northern California have begun a two-day strike against 15 Hospitals. Kellia Ramares has more from Oakland, California.

By Kellia Ramares

Nurses represented by the California Nurses Association have struck hospitals belonging to the Sutter chain in the San Francisco Bay Area. They are also striking two hospitals belonging to the Freemont Rideout chain in the Sacramento area, where nurses are seeking their first contracts. CNA spokesperson, Chuck Idelson speaking from a picket line, outlined the main issues:

[Idelson] "Make sure the patients get what they need when they need it. There is also concerns about Sutter proposals to reduce healthcare coverage for registered nurses, we’re also concerned about continuing hospital care in underserved communities."

By Doug Cunningham

As teachers and students prepare to return to the nation’s classrooms a California teacher’s rock band called the Angry Tired Teachers will be taking their “Stick It To The Man” attitude with them. The ten-year-old band played live on the Hayward, California teacher’s strike picket lines and at protest rallies before the strike. Band member Andy Knight.

[Knight1]: “The union got this idea of getting the band a flat bed truck to go around and play at the different schools to boost morale and get teachers fired up on the strike line. So we did a little tour. We called it the Stick It To The Man Tour."

By Doug Cunningham

California workers have legally mandated lunch and rest breaks - but Gov. Schwarzenegger has tried to take them away. The California Labor Federation's Caitlin Vega says those rights are being threatened again in a series of forums conducted by the state's labor commissioner. Vega says organized labor wants to be sure that workers without unions can continue take lunch and rest breaks without fear in California.

[Vega]: "Our members get lunch breaks, it's in their contracts. What we're concerned about is workers who don't have unions, who don't have the ability to demand their rights at work, who fear getting fired - and who often are fired - when they assert themselves and when they say that they feel they have rights and their rights have to be respected. And so we really are trying to protect the most vulnerable workers in California."

By Doug Cunningham

The Kroger, Safeway and Super-Valu giant national grocery chains are playing hardball as contract talks resume with the United Food And Commercial Workers union in southern California. The hugely profitable companies are balking at providing fair wages and good health insurance benefits to 65,000 workers. The UFCW's Mike Shimpock represents southern California grocery workers.

[Shimpock]: "Combined they had $8.3 billion in profits last year. They paid their three CEO's $27 million combined in salaries and bonuses. These are huge corporations that could very easily afford to give their employees a fair wage increase and adequate health care."

Is a strike coming for Southern California grocery workers? Jesse Russell reports.

With negotiations breaking down between Southern California grocery workers and major grocery chains workers will cast votes Sunday to determine if they should go on strike. A strike vote would authorize United Food and Commercial Worker leadership to call a strike if the impasse continues. The union is upset with proposals from the companies concerning healthcare and wages. 65,000 grocery workers went on strike in 2003 resulting in the longest grocery strike in history.

By Doug Cunningham

The United Food and Commercial Workers union says its membership in California could begin voting as soon as Sunday on whether to authorize a strike against two southern California grocery chains. A strike has already been authorized if needed at a third chain. Very little progress has been made in contract talks. Roughly 65,000 UFCW workers are employed at Ralph’s, Von’s and Albertson’s. How to utilize a jointly held union-company health care fund to cover increasing health care costs and wages for new hires are among the unresolved issues. A lockout and strike that lasted 141 days happened three and a half years ago when negotiations broke down.

An invitation to an American Indian forum in California is causing some Democratic Presidential candidates to make some tough decisions. Jesse Russell reports.

Presidential contender Hillary Clinton has turned down an invitation to speak at a forum at the Morongo Casino Resort and Spa in California. The former first wife cited a on going labor dispute between the Morongo Band of Mission Indians who run the casino and Unite-HERE. That union represents service workers who oppose a deal that would expand the number of casinos in California because it would make it more difficult to organize workers and the casino owners are already against unionization. Currently only New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel have accepted the invitation that would bring tribal leaders from across the country to California. Event organizers say that who attends and who doesn’t will determine who receives the support of the deep pocketed casino tribes.

By Doug Cunningham

Fifteen people were arrested at UC-Davis this week in a protest against outsourcing of food service jobs on campus. Activists, including the public employee union AFSCME, are demanding that UC-Davis end the outsourcing and make food service workers university employees. To support them in this effort to end outsourcing at UC-Davis, you can call Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef at (530) 752-2065. That’s area code (530) 752-2065.

By Doug Cunningham

It took nearly two years and a wide-ranging campaign of civil disobedience and boycotts, but AFSCME Local 3299 in California this week won pay equity for custodians at the University of California. AFSCME’s Debra Grabelle.

[Grabelle 1]: “In this struggle we had three different civil disobedience actions. Over ninety-one people have gotten arrested during it. Danny Glover, Senator John Edwards, Bill Clinton, Congresswoman Barbara Lee all honored and actively supported a boycott of the university."

The custodians involved in the pay equity fight will get a pay raise of $1.75 an hour and the university has agreed to an additional fifty cents an hour for custodians statewide.

By Doug Cunningham

Single payer health care is the issue that inspired the California Nurses Association to take its 75,000 nurses into the AFL-CIO this week. CNA President Rose Ann Demoro says it was the AFL-CIO’s commitment to establishing a universal national single payer health care plan that cemented her union’s long-considered affiliation with the AFL-CIO rather than with SEIU or Change To Win. SEIU is willing to consider any health care reform that covers the uninsured, but has not endorsed single payer universal coverage.

By Doug Cunningham

At UC Davis Wednesday, WIN spoke with American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees Local 3299’s William Schlitz during the occupation of a building there protesting outsourcing of university food service jobs.

[William Schlitz]: “I'm in UC-Davis' campus in Mrak Hall, which is the main administration building. And students and community supporters have taken over a room in Mrak to demand that UC end their practice of outsourcing on campus jobs and make those persons that are performing those food service jobs university employees."

California campus labor activism is heating up this week. Eleven students at Stanford University were arrested as they sat in at the university president’s office to demand that Stanford end the use of sweatshop labor to make university branded clothing.

Eleven students were taking part in the protest that occupied President John Hennessey’s office for roughly five hours on Tuesday. Students have been protesting for nearly three months to pressure the Stanford into making sure all University sanctioned clothing is produced sweat-shop free. As the students held their sit-in, more students gathered outside – some fully clothed, others topless, and a handful fully nude. Hennessy’s assistant Jeff Wechtel said the President had plans to meet with the students on May 29. The students were charged with trespassing which holds a $500 fine or three months in jail.

By Doug Cunningham

Patrick Kelly is Secretary Treasurer of Teamsters 952 in California - representing 1100 coach operators working for one of the richest counties in America. They're in a struggle to defend their living standards from high living costs and Orange County Transpo is offering just a 2.75 percent raise.

[Kelly 1]: “When your membership has lost six percent of their purchasing power, obviously 2.75 doesn't make it. To rent an apartment around here is about fifteen hundred bucks a month. And gasoline, regular gas, is about $3.55 a gallon."

Orange County Transpo is also refusing to allow voluntary automatic payroll checkoffs for Teamsters political action.