– Today, June 5, 2014, marks the first anniversary of the building collapse that killed six in Center City Philadelphia nears, efforts continue to construct a memorial park at the site where the Salvation Army thrift store stood.

The process of taking the former thrift store property and transforming it into a place for recreation and reflection is well under way, said John White of the 22nd and Market Memorial Committee.

“We’ve raised about 40 percent of the money we think will be necessary,” he said. “They city has taken possession of the land from the Salvation Army and made it available for this purpose, so it is under our control.

And the group has talked with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to select the artist who will do the memorial, White said.

A ceremony is planned for the site on Thursday, the one-year anniversary of the day a building undergoing demolition collapsed on the thrift store, killing six people and injuring 14.

“The mayor will make some remarks about the role the city has played in it, some of the families of the victims will be there and they will also speak,” he said. “We’ll have some songs of a religious nature … we’ll just recognize what happened and dedicate ourselves to being sure that something’s established on the site.”

Source: http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/homepage-feature/item/68604-almost-a-year-later-memorial-to-victims-of-philly-building-collapse-moving-forward?linktype=hp_impact

By David Shepardson and Karl Henkel

– The head of Volkswagen AG’s global works council said the union still wants a German-style works council for workers at VW’s assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., vowing to step up the fight despite a narrow loss in February.

Frank Patta, general secretary of the Volkswagen Global Group Works Council, told 1,100 delegates at the UAW Constitutional Convention on Monday that he believes organizing efforts will be successful eventually at the Chattanooga plant and all over the South.

VW has 105 union facilities with more than 600,000 around the world. The only major non-union facility is in Tennessee.

“Let me say this to our enemies: We will go on… We will not be beaten,” Patta told the delegates, invoking the Bruce Springsteen song: “Working on a Dream” in the long-running campaign to organize foreign plants in the United States.

One of the VW workers from Tennessee is in attendance at the convention, as are two workers from Nissan Motor Co.’s Canton, Mississippi, assembly plant — another factory the UAW has sought to organize.

“We want people to have a say in what happens at their workplace,” Patta said. “The rights of our brothers and sisters are trampled.”

Gary Casteel, a regional director for the UAW who helped oversee the VW organizing effort, blamed well-funded outside groups for the union’s loss. “That victory was stolen from us,” Casteel said. Workers voted 712-626 against joining the union in February.

Patta said U.S. companies and opponents of labor “were using the fear of losing their jobs” to discourage workers from exercising their rights. The move was aimed at ensuring cheaper labor costs, he said.

On Saturday, the Birmingham (Ala.) News reported that pro-union workers at the Daimler plant in Vance, Alabama, say they no longer want to work with the UAW to organize the plant.

“This has gone on for two-and-half years, and people are burnt out,” Kirk Garner, a 13-year employee and union supporter, told the newspaper. “It’s over.”

Several pro-union workers said they want to ask another union to organize the plant. Garner said he spoke to International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

Outgoing UAW President Bob King said he thinks the union will be successful. In April, the union decided to drop its appeal this week of the union election with the National Labor Relations Board.

King has said the union is considering a number of options, including a “private election” that could take place later.

“There’s many options under the law. We could wait a year for the NLRB. We could do a private election earlier than that,” King said in April. “There’s a number of different options and we’ll explore all of them to see what we think is best for providing the representation.”

King noted that worldwide VW says that “worker representation is a key part of their success.” The UAW would work with VW to “find the best way to achieve the common goal that we have.”

Source: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140602/AUTO01/306020077

Contact: Tony Montana at (412)562-2592, tmontana@usw.org

– The United Steelworkers (USW) International President Leo W. Gerard today issued the following statement after U.S. Steel announced plans to idle tube operations in Pennsylvania and Texas, which will lead to an indefinite furlough for 265 workers.

“For months, our union has warned the Department of Commerce, the U.S. Trade Representative, the public and others that a flood of illegally subsidized and unfairly traded oil country tubular goods (OCTG) poses a significant and immediate threat to American steel companies and the jobs of our members.

“In addition, because of these imports and lax enforcement of existing trade laws, the domestic steel industry has yet to see the promised and expected benefits brought about by increased shale oil and gas energy production throughout America’s industrial heartland.

“The USW demands an immediate investigation into how a trade partner such as South Korea, which produces 100 percent of its steel tubular goods for export because it has no domestic market, has managed to conduct business here without regulation or any kind of fair tariff in place.

“For the workers and families in McKeesport, Pa. and Bellville, Texas, the USW pledges to continue fighting for a fair and level playing field so that American workers can get back to their rightful jobs as soon as possible.

“The USW will continue to be an outspoken advocate for workers who have paid and continue to pay the price for unfair ‘free’ trade, which remains the single most dangerous threat to the good, family-supporting, community-sustaining jobs the USW strives to create and protect.”

The USW represents 850,000 men and women employed in metals, mining, pulp and paper, rubber, chemicals, glass, auto supply and the energy-producing industries, along with a growing number of workers in public sector and service occupations.

Source: http://www.usw.org/news/media-center/releases/2014/usw-demands-action-on-unfair-trade-as-u-s-steel-announces-layoffs-in-pennsylvania-and-texas

By Nick Field, Managing Editor

– Democratic nominee Tom Wolf has gotten quite the post-primary bounce.

In the first poll released after the former Department of Revenue Secretary won the Democratic primary, Tom Wolf holds a twenty point lead over the Governor.

According to Rasmussen Reports, 51% of likely voters would support Wolf while 31% would vote for Governor Tom Corbett. Only 14% of respondents were undecided.

As expected, Wolf is supported by 83% of Democrats yet only 59% of Republicans favor Corbett. Wolf pulls away 25% of PA Republicans and holds a ten point lead among independents.

Meanwhile, among those surveyed Governor Corbett’s job approval is 36% with 59% of voters disapproving of his performance.

On the issues, Wolf leads across the board. On the question as to whom the voters trust more on handling social issues the Democrat has a 51-27 advantage. 46% trust Wolf more when it comes to his handling of government and corruption while 26% trust Corbett.

The Democrat even holds the lead on questions like taxes and government spending. Voters trust Wolf by a 47-30 margin on the former and by a 46-30 margin on the latter.

Suffice it to say this is not good news for the incumbent. Additionally, Rasmussen is generally considered a Republican-leaning, though thoroughly credible, polling organization.

The silver linings for Gov. Corbett are that Wolf is just coming off an impressive win in the Democratic primary which usually juices a candidate’s numbers. There is also the high probability that PA Republicans will come back home and get behind Corbett eventually. Finally, this is just the beginning of the general election race, so the Governor has all of summer and the fall to close the gap.

The survey of 750 Likely Voters in Pennsylvania was conducted on May 27-28, 2014 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.

Source: http://www.politicspa.com/pa-gov-rasmussen-poll-wolf-51-corbett-31/58432/

By Laura Clawson

– It’s Supreme Court decision season, and one case to watch for is Harris v. Quinn, in which the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is seeking essentially to overturn union rights for home care workers. The question, as is so often the case, is whether the Supreme Court will uphold the status quo or overturn years of precedent and undermine unions and worker organizing. Labor scholar John Logan sums up the key questions:

First, are home care aides correctly defined as public employees for the purposes of collective bargaining? […]

Second, can the union require non-members to pay “agency fees” to cover representation costs? […]

Third, is bargaining on behalf of home care aides inherently different? National Right to Work claims that bargaining on behalf of home care aides should be considered petitioning of government. […]

Finally, if the court were to side with NRTW’s extremist position and rule against the right to charge non-members agency fees, does that ruling apply only to home care aides or also to every public-sector worker in the country?

Unions and collective have improved working and living conditions for home care workers in many states, and in so doing have improved the level of service they’re able to offer. Home care workers only unionize after a vote, and those who do not want to support the union’s political activities can opt out of paying union dues, instead paying an agency or fair share fee that covers only the cost of representing them in the workplace. Whether this can continue, as courts have previously affirmed, is what the Supreme Court is now considering.

Source: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/05/29/1302824/-Home-care-workers-union-rights-at-stake-in-Supreme-Court-case