A crane lifted the last of a 408-foot tall spire on top of One World Trade Center on Friday, a capstone to an emotional 12-year effort to replace the twin towers destroyed by terrorists.

The 18-piece silver spire will top out the tower at a symbolic 1,776 feet, a nod to the year America signed the Declaration of Independence. The new building, proudly erected with union labor, is just north of the original towers, now the hallowed ground known as Ground Zero.

For More on the story and video, Go To – http://www.today.com/news/cheers-erupt-spire-tops-one-world-trade-center-1C9870947

It has been reported that Sprinklerfitters local #692 has reached a tentative contract deal with their contractors association effectively putting an end to their strike of over one week!

PhillyLabor congratulates the leadership and membership of Local #692 on a job well done!

A Phillylabor.com Story Worth Remembering and Re-Posting

– In a perfect world there would be no need for unions.

– People would treat each other with respect, fairness and dignity in the work place.

– Businesses would offer employees fair wages, benefits and working conditions in exchange for a fair day’s work. 8 for 8 we call it.

– Corporate greed would not exist

– CEO’s would not be taking multimillion dollar bonuses while laying off hundreds and some times thousands of employees

and so on…..

After all, there are labor laws, attorneys and the US Dept of Labor to protect people from unfair labor practices and in a perfect world, if ever a person’s rights were violated at their job, that person could just call their attorney who could file a grievance with the Department of Labor and a representative from the department would contact the employer and resolve the issue within a day or so right? Voila, problem solved correct? So why in the world do we need unions to do the job that attorneys do and that we have laws to regulate that the U.S. Department of Labor enforces? Oh if life were only that perfect!

There ‘s an old saying that my brother sometimes refers to that goes something like this….the cleanliness of theory is no match for the mess of reality. What does that have to do with unions, worker’s right’s and the topic at hand? Well let’s think about it for a second, As a member of a union, you have union representatives that communicate daily with union members and employer(s). If there’s a problem on the job, there’s a process to follow. Typically, the member informs the shop steward, the shop steward calls the union rep (some are business agents, others presidents and/or business managers) and within a day or two in most cases, there is a resolution to the situation. It’s not always that cut and dry but basically you get the picture.

On the other hand, let’s look at a real scenario that actually occurred in a non-union work place not long ago. A dedicated, hard working woman from Philadelphia Pa. (with standard monthly/weekly living expenses including a car payment, utilities, food, a rent etc) gets in an auto accident on her way to work. After being taken to the hospital ER by ambulance, her boss via cell phone in the emergency room informs her to please take as much time as she needs to get better because her health is the most important thing and her job will be waiting for her when she recovers. Wow, the injured women really appreciated the support from her employer. In her time of extreme pain and anxiety, her car may have been totaled and she may be in physical pain, but at least she’s alive and still has a job right. All’s well that ends well right? Fast forward approximately 10 days later, the day after the female employee was released from her doctor’s care for treatment of a severe concussion and facial lacerations, upon returning to work with a doctor’s note, this employee was notified by the same boss who told her to “get well” that she was terminated for missing work. Keeping in mind that the woman got in the auto accident on her way to work and it was the same boss that instructed her to take as much time as she needed to recover and that her job would be waiting when she got back, what recourse did the woman have to get her job back?

First, she asked the boss why she was mislead and told to take the necessary time needed to get better before coming back to work? Her boss told her that it was an upper management decision and there was nothing could be done. Then she approached the human resources department and then ownership but still no help. Finally, after unsuccessfully exhausting all avenues to resolve the situation at her work, she packed her things and left the office alone and devastated. Literally no-one at her former place of work would help her.

What were her options?

Ultimately, in her case, over the next week or so, after contacting several attorneys about her situation, finally one took the case. They then contacted the Dept of Labor and filed a law suit against the employer and started the legal process to both get her job back all the while she was unemployed and falling farther and farther behind on her bills.

In the long run, it’s been over a year since the incident and this woman still has yet to receive justice from the Dept of Labor and the lawsuit is still pending, she’s lost her apartment and her ability to pay her bills, not to mention her dignity and self esteem.

The Bottom line is that although there are laws, attorneys and government agencies that are suppose to represent people who are unjustly treated by their employers, these solutions often take time and by the time the person ends up filing a lawsuit and/or complaint, going through the investigation and litigation, and obtaining justice if they are lucky, the person could be adversely effected both financially and emotionally in the process.

In the end, if you are not a member of a union, you may very well be at the mercy of a ruthless employer and be forced to do whatever necessary to keep your job or lose it. Without representation or collective bargaining, as an employee, you have very little immediate recourse! It is like the old Bruce Springsteen song says, when your alone, your alone, when your alone, you ain’t nothing but alone.

In closing folks, if you want to understand more about the need for the Labor Movement in America and around the world and the reason they are worth fighting for now more than ever, all you have to do is open your eyes and go to http://www.labourstart.org/ and look around the world at places who either don’t have them, are trying to organize them or are fighting to keep them. Don’t kid your self for one minute that in this day and age extreme work place violations don’t still happen everyday and it can’t happen to you, that only happens in a perfect world and god knows nothing in this world is perfect!

The National Conference of Mayors Meeting is in Philadelphia on May 22nd and 23rd

AFSCME District Councils #33 and #47 along with the Philadelphia AFL-CIO, the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council and other unions as well as community allies will be holding TWO DAYS OF ACTION Against Mayor 1% Nutter

Location – Both Rallies will be held at the Westin Hotel Philadelphia

Time(s) – Wednesday May 22 at 2pm, Thursday May 23 at 8am

MARCH TO CITY HALL – After the Rally on Thursday morning, there will be a march to City Hall for the final vote by City Council on the Philadelphia City Budget

ATTIRE AND GUESTS – Union Members are encouraged to “Wear Your Union Colors and Bring Your Family, Friends and Neighbors!”

PURPOSE: Make Your Voice Heard!

MESSAGE – It is time for Mayor 1% Nutter to Settle Fair Contracts with AFSCME DC #33 and #47 and honor the arbitration award for Firefighter Local #22

Go to – https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151349129016367&set=a.470571811366.254290.87479501366&type=1&theater

The GOP wants to force ‘flexibility’ on employees, not bosses.

BY Leo Gerard, United Steelworkers President

A century ago, workers were a lot more “flexible” than they are now. Veritable Gumbies in the mills and mines and factories they were, distorting their lives to slog 10 or 12 hours a day, for six—even seven—days a week.

Then came the 40-hour week. And weekends. And eventually sick days. And paid vacation days. Now, bosses at mills and mines and factories regard these rules as coddling and believe the workers accustomed to them are resisting corporate demands.

The GOP has an app for that. It’s called the Working Families Flexibility Act. This legislation that the Republican majority in the U.S. House is expected to pass this week would force some old-time flexibility into 21st-century workers. The forced flexibility act would award bosses the power to “offer” compensatory time off instead of overtime pay. Bosses, not workers, would determine when the comp time could be taken. The proposal puts control in corporate hands, obliging wage earners to bend over backward for bosses exactly like their Gumby ancestors were compelled to.

Trade unionists and labor rights activists died to achieve the goal of eight-hour days and 40-hour weeks. They were shot and beaten in the streets during demonstrations organized by the eight-hour movement. Their slogan was: “Eight hours for work; eight hours for rest; eight hours for what we will.”

Finally, in 1938, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) as part of the New Deal, which gave workers and families rights and security that previously had been exclusive to the wealthy.

FLSA enforces the 40-hour week with a simple measure. It requires employers to pay time and a half to wage earners for each hour worked beyond 40 in a week. That creates a financial disincentive for bosses to order work beyond 40 hours. That also creates a financial incentive for companies to avoid overtime pay by hiring more workers. That was a significant bonus during the Great Depression.

Employers still could require overtime when they needed it, but it cost them, the way it costs workers who must pay extra for child care or miss coaching a Little League game or forego Sunday dinner with parents.

Now, Republicans want to relieve corporations of their share of the cost. In fact, the GOP scheme enables corporations to profit on overtime at the expense of workers. It would reduce the financial disincentive of requiring work beyond 40 hours, which means it would also reduce the financial incentive to hire more workers. That would be a tragedy during the Great Recession.

The forced flexibility act would enable employers to give workers comp time off instead of overtime pay. Republicans contend it would be the worker’s choice, but in reality bosses foreclose options when they make it extremely clear they want comp time selected.

And they’ll want workers to “choose” comp time. That’s because workers won’t be able to specify when they’ll take the compensatory time off. Bosses will have veto power on those requests. And as workers accrue more and more hours of overtime—up to 160 a year—to be compensated later as time off, the corporation retains an increasing share of the value of their labor.

With overtime pay, the worker gets the money in the next paycheck and spends or saves it as he pleases, earning interest if he banks it. Under the GOP forced flexibility proposal, the boss can deny time off requests for as long as a year, after which the company must pay the wage earner for the extra time worked. By then, the corporation has kept the workers’ earnings, and the interest on them, for 12 months.

And if the company goes bankrupt before paying for the accumulated overtime, the GOP provides no protection for workers. Workers would lose the earnings that they would have received immediately if they had been paid time-and-a-half in the next check.

The GOP is hyping their forced flexibility bill as a measure to help women. On websites and blogs popular among women, the GOP bought ads asking Democrats if they will “stand up for” working moms by forcing women to contort themselves to employers’ whims. The same party that defeated equity measures for women like the Equal Rights Amendment and the Paycheck Fairness Act now wants the women who voted against them big time in the last election to believe the GOP forced flexibility act is good for them.

Republicans are right that women need flexibility it their work lives. The flexibility to earn 100 percent of what men do in the same jobs, instead of 23 percent less, would be great. But not so great would be a federal law giving bosses the flexibility to force women to work extra hours with a vague promise of compensatory time off some day in the future if the boss feels like granting it.

The GOP forced flexibility act is part of a list of proposals House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, calls “Making Life Work.” That’s right, Republicans intend to make life nothing but work. No eight hours for sleep. No eight hours for anything you will. Just work, Gumby, just work.
Go To – http://inthesetimes.com/article/14957/gop_forcibly_making_working_families_flexible/