– Philaposh, an organization whose mission since 1975, has been “the prevention of injury, disease and death on the job through information, education, technical assistance and political action”, is hosting it’s 29th annual awards banquet on Friday, November 22, 2013 by honoring the following area professionals for their commitment to job health and safety standards:

TONY MAZZOCCHI AWARD

JERRY ROSEMAN, President of Safety Research Inc. and Industrial Hygienist, has been a passionate
advocate for worker health and safety since the 80s. Most recently he’s worked with the PFT in assessing
asbestos and other health and safety hazards in the Philadelphia public schools, and with AFSCME DC 47
on workplace hazards for city workers. He’s consulted with many unions and training centers, conducted
workplace evaluations of chemical, physical and biological hazards, helped draft the Asbestos Control
Regulations for Philadelphia, developed programs for Penn State and Drexel University, and has led the
PhilaPOSH Health/Tech Committee.

KAREN SILKWOOD AWARD

DEBBIE YAKSCOE, USW Local 10-00086 Safety Representative, is the first full-time union safety rep at
the West Point Merck facility. She not only is knowledgeable about the hazards that exist there, but also
uses that knowledge to aggressively pursue the abatement or elimination of the hazards. With the active
support of her local’s leaders and members, she has also led the fight against behavior and discipline
based safety programs. She’s our own area Karen Silkwood!

CRYSTAL EASTMAN AWARD

NADIA HEWKA, Supervising Attorney, Community Legal Services Employment Unit,
represents someof the most vulnerable workers in Philadelphia who would be completely on their own if not for attorneys
like Nadia. She brings an urgency and passion to her work. Nadia connects community and immigrant
rights organizations together to use all the resources possible to win justice, whether for a worker who has
not been paid by a small contractor or restaurant owner, or a group of untrained and unprotected workers
who are dropped off at a building after dark to secretly remove asbestos.

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

PAT GILLESPIE, Business Manager of the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council,
has effectively led the Council since 1982 and has been a forceful proponent of safety and health. Pat’s
formation of the Council’s Safety and Health Committee made up of all the trades is unique within the
U.S. He has been outspoken in the press, at labor meetings, and at public functions about the connection
between well trained skilled trades union construction workers and jobsite safety. And he has supported
recent PhilaPOSH programs to reach the most vulnerable construction workers with health and safety
training and a pro-union message.

SAFETY IN THE TRADES AWARD

KEN BROWN, Trainer at the Operating Engineers Local 542 Training Facility, has been training
members of OE Local 542 since 1987 on operating heavy equipment. From 1988-1991 he worked with the
Jt Apprentice and Training Comm. as Director of Special Training Programs for minority groups and as
Health and Safety Director. He is an OSHA Outreach trainer for construction and general industry, and has
consulted and done training for PhilaPOSH for many years. Ken is known for his desire to keep increasing
his knowledge, and then passing it along.

LEADERSHIP IN HEALTH AND SAFETY AWARD

The TAXI WORKERS ALLIANCE OF PENNSYLVANIA (TWA), a multi-ethnic membership organization
formed by taxi drivers, has been fighting for rights and protections for taxi drivers in Philadelphia since
2005. They are seeking workers’ comp benefits for injured drivers, a drivers’ relief fund for families of
drivers killed on the job, safer and healthier working conditions, and health benefits for the 1,200 taxi driver
members and their families in Philadelphia. TWA continues to inspire us with their tenacity and activism
to achieve these goals.

Congratulations to all of the award winners for their support of working people and safety standards across the Delaware Valley and beyond!

PhillyLabor.com

Source: http://www.philaposh.org/pdf/2013PhilaPOSH_AwardsNightProgram.pdf

By the PA. AFL-CIO

– Harrisburg, PA – Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President Rick Bloomingdale and Secretary-Treasurer Frank Snyder today urged Governor Tom Corbett to reverse his decision to extend his bid to privatize the Pennsylvania lottery with foreign-based Camelot Global Services.

“It’s time to end his costly scheme that has already cost over $4.4 million in consultant fees hired by this administration. Every time he extends this contract, our seniors who depend on the programs funded by lottery proceeds get less in affordable prescription drugs, less in affordable transportation services, and less in property tax rebates. It’s time to end this costly bid and concentrate on improvements to this valuable public asset that serves our seniors,” Bloomingdale said.

“Any privatization scheme, whether it would be with a foreign-based or domestic company, will result in billions being siphoned off to pay the fees, bonuses, and profits of CEO’s and corporations, instead of being spent to provide services to Pennsylvania seniors. Governor Corbett’s plan is not only more costly, it is unconstitutional, according to our Attorney General, and is very unpopular with the voters. He needs to stop gambling with our seniors’ futures!” Snyder said.

Source: http://www.paaflcio.org/?p=3003

By Randy LoBasso

– When City Council failed to override Philadelphia Mayor Nutter’s veto of last spring’s bill that sought to mandate a minimum of 56 hours of paid sick leave for all employees at workplaces in Philadelphia, Councilman Bill Greenlee—the bill’s prime sponsor—first apologized to the 180,000 local workers who would’ve welcomed that benefit. He then promised that the Mayor’s veto meant merely a delay. “Philadelphia will have paid sick days in the future,” Greenlee declared. “It’s just a shame we won’t be at the forefront [nationwide].”

The overwhelmingly popular legislation would have required businesses with six or more employees to provide full-time workers with some earned paid time off. Philly wasn’t alone in liking the idea, which has, according to polls, gained the admiration of most Americans—garnering 74 percent approval in a June 2013 Huffington Post/YouGov poll. This time off can typically be used for doctor’s appointments, during illness or to care for sick family members.

As it turns out, though, Greenlee’s fightin’ words after the veto may have been premature. See, there’s a nationwide effort underway to make it impossible for cities like Philadelphia to pass local mandates like the one Nutter vetoed, and it’s on its way to Pennsylvania.

Last week, state Rep. Seth Grove (R-York) introduced the State Preemption for Local Mandated Leave Ordinances Act, a bill banning local municipalities, like Philadelphia, from passing paid sick-leave legislation without state government approval first. Such local actions, he said in the legislation, are a matter of “statewide concern.”

“Over the past few years, local governments across the nation have passed legislation which dictate leave requirements to businesses of all sizes,” writes Grove in a legislative memo dated September 16. “Most recently, the City of Philadelphia attempted to pass a bill that would require businesses with more than five employees to provide up to 56 hours of paid time off a year, regardless of the type of business and any current policy that is in place. The 56 hours could be used for nearly any reason. Not all businesses are the same, and a blanket policy that does not recognize these differences only hurts small businesses struggling in this current economy.”

Rep. Grove did not respond to PW’s request for comment, and was, therefore, unable to tell us whether his bill draws upon the work of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative organization of businesses and foundations that produces prepackaged legislation for state legislators. In either case, Grove’s concern isn’t original: In 2011, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed a similar bill banning paid sick days in that state, overriding widely popular sick-leave legislation passed by 70 percent of voters in Milwaukee.

Keystone Progress, a liberal statewide advocacy organization, released a report on ALEC a couple years back, and KP says Grove’s new legislation is “no surprise at all.”

“This is what we’ve been trying to warn people about,” says KP executive director Michael Morrill. “This legislation doesn’t come from constituents. These are laws that are written by big corporations, given to legislators, then they bring them back to their home states and use them. That’s exactly what happened here, because we know there are similar bills all over the country.”

ALEC’s output doesn’t just focus on business issues, either. The recent influx of “stand your ground” gun legislation introduced and passed in several states over the last decade, as well as numerous anti-abortion laws (abortion-clinic standards, vaginal-probe standards), seems to take leads from ALEC, as do Voter ID bills. And according to the Center for Media and Democracy, a left-leaning nonprofit, Rep. Grove is a member of ALEC’s Telecommunications and Information Technology Task Force.

Toward the end of the sick-leave battle in Philadelphia this spring, a rare citywide Public Policy Polling survey found 77 percent of all Philadelphians supported a paid sick days policy similar to the one initially proposed by Councilman Bill Greenlee. Part of the reason for the idea’s widespread support has to do with who’s most affected by a lack of sick days: restaurant workers.

A study put together by the Restaurant Opportunities Center, along with economist Stephen Herzenberg of the liberal think tank Keystone Research Center, found that 95 percent of Philly restaurant workers lack paid sick days—and contrary to accepted conservative wisdom, providing it to them might actually help businesses retain employees and create better employee-employer relationships, potentially saving on otherwise costly benefits like health care.

“Our view is that the evidence is pretty clear that earned sick days doesn’t really have a cost,” says Herzenberg. “The benefits that some employers may not necessarily anticipate in advance balance the cost. This is not something that employers need to be concerned about having a big impact on their bottom line.”

Another concern: Once state Republicans begin taking local control of policy away from local governments, where does that end?

“This bill is something that would honestly take away local control from a number of municipalities, which is not something anyone wants to see happen,” says Marianne Bellasorte, of Pathways PA, a local women’s health advocacy organization. “This bill certainly could affect the health and safety of workers, and I think those are things we need to look at in the sense of: If cities are going to lose this ability across the state, what would come after that? What is the next thing to be taken away?”

Pathways lobbied hard for the paid-sick-leave bill in Philadelphia the last time around, often citing the protection it could give women—not just for female-specific health problems, but, just for instance, something similar to Washington, D.C.’s sick-leave legislation. There, the paid-sick-leave bill included “safe” days for victims of stalking, sexual assault or domestic violence.

Historically, it’s been local communities, and then states, that have driven improvements in economic, labor and social standards before such ideas caught on nationally. Grove’s bill, and others, look like attempts to quash that progressive trend.

Statewide bans on paid sick days have been introduced in at least 15 states across the country and enacted in eight. Most recently, Florida passed a near-identical law to Grove’s proposal, signed later by Republican Gov. Rick Scott, who was elected during the 2010 Tea Party takeover. Scott, of course, became governor the same time as Gov. Walker of Wisconsin and Gov. Tom Corbett here in Pennsylvania.

“This is a standard conservative bill, it’s an ALEC bill,” continues Herzrnberg. “It’s the folks nationally that want to take our country back to the 19th century. They’re making exactly the same arguments that they made against child labor laws, against first health and safety laws, against first minimum wage.”

Source – http://blogs.philadelphiaweekly.com/phillynow/2013/10/29/paidsickdays-alec/

By: Brad Quick

– The 820-foot Liberty Bay sits dry-docked in Philadelphia’s Aker Shipyard. A massive supertanker destined for the West Coast, the ship is set to launch next week when it will undergo its final outfitting before being delivered to SeaRiver Maritime in April. It’s taken more than 1,000 workers a year to build the Liberty Bay, and construction has already begun on her sister ship in the same yard.

And while it might not be surprising that the City of Brotherly Love is home to a thriving shipbuilding economy, the reason for the boom might be: domestic oil production.

Thanks to the century-old Jones Act, which requires all goods moved between U.S. ports to be carried by U.S.-flagged and U.S.-built vessels, shipbuilders across the country are working overtime to keep up with demand for tankers that can transport the bounty of newly drilled shale oil and gas now being produced in the United States.

33 million gallons per journey

When it launches, the Liberty Bay will be able to deliver 33 million gallons of oil from Alaska’s North Slope to refineries on the West Coast in a single trip. SeaRiver Maritime, Exxon Mobil’s marine affiliate, has commissioned the two ships. At a cost of $200 million each, the tankers represent a significant investment that will help boost Philadelphia’s economy.

According to the Department of Transportation, 15 tankers are on order or under construction at shipyards across the country, with options for many more. It’s the biggest boom the industry has seen in 20 years.

When Aker finishes with the two ships for Exxon, it will begin construction on four more for another client, with the option to deliver another four after that. In all, the company has won orders for $1.1 billion, and has tripled in size since 2011.

And it’s not just ship builders that are benefiting from the country’s massive energy boom. Railroads and tank-car makers have also seen huge upticks in business. BNSF Railway, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, is investing $220 million to improve rail capacity in North Dakota—home of the massive Bakken oil and gas field.

Railroads get in on the action

Last week, crude shipments by domestic rail surpassed 600,000 barrels per day. Rail-car manufacturers are having a hard time keeping up with demand for new cars. The Railway Supply Institute, an industry group, expects the backorder on new rail cars to stretch into 2015.

Back at Aker, workers are pulling extra shifts to make sure the Liberty Bay is delivered on time. And with energy production in Texas and North Dakota at record highs, it looks like the ship builders in Philadelphia will be busy for quite a while.

Source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101143677#

By PhillyLabor.com

As per recent news articles, as he preps for his re-election bid, word is out that Governor Corbett is attempting to craft a new public image in hopes that we will forget the disastrous record he has established in his first term which has led to his historically low public approval rating stemming from his countless “anti- people” verbal blunders, his support for anti-voter legislation, his attempts to privatize multiple industries and lay off thousands of workers with families without a plan for their well being, the disgraceful way he’s handled the Philadelphia School Funding crises, his support for anti-worker legislation etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc…..

Hey Governor, just 5 words , “We Won’t Get Fooled Again”