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News and Updates
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April 12, 2013
UFCW President Hansen Statement on Latest Attack on NLRB
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Joe Hansen, International President of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), today released the following statement after the House passed H.R. 1120 which would effectively shut down the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
“Today House Republicans stooped to a new low by passing legislation to shut down the NLRB. This is part of a calculated and ongoing effort by big corporations and their allies in government to weaken the right to organize. Simply put, they want to make it harder for workers to join a union by taking the referee off the field and letting chaos ensue. If House Republicans are so interested in the NLRB having a working quorum, they should call their colleagues in the Senate and urge them to allow an up or down vote on President Obama’s nominees.”
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The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) represents more than 1.3 million workers, primarily in the retail and meatpacking, food processing and poultry industries. The UFCW protects the rights of workers and strengthens America’s middle class by fighting for health care reform, living wages, retirement security, safe working conditions and the right to unionize so that working men and women and their families can realize the American Dream. For more information about the UFCW’s effort to protect workers’ rights and strengthen America’s middle class, visit www.ufcw.org, or join our online community at www.facebook.com/UFCWinternational and www.twitter.com/ufcw.
April 11, 2013
Missouri Workers Speak Out Against Attacks
We Are Missouri, a diverse coalition of workers, students, seniors and their families, today launched a new online story collection project at WorkingVoices.Tumblr.com to showcase personal messages of Missouri workers speaking directly to their elected representatives about anti-worker attacks moving in Jefferson City.
The Tumblr site features workers from across the state, including teachers, electricians, municipal workers, grocery store employees, faith leaders and community leaders standing together against so-called ‘right to work’ bills, paycheck deception legislation, and efforts to undermine prevailing wage standards.
Paycheck deception, attacks on prevailing wage standards, and so-called “right to work” proposals are part of an organized national plan to eliminate the voice of middle class workers. But all over Missouri, working people are coming together to voice their frustration with politicians who do nothing to create jobs, strengthen our economy or improve our schools.
Tumblr: Missouri’s Working Voices
Video: UFCW Members Speak Out Part 1
Video: UFCW Members Speak Out Part 2
Video: UFCW Members Speak Out Part 3
April 10, 2013
UFCW Women’s Network Members Hold Lobby Day at U.S. Capitol
About a dozen members of UFCW Women’s Network traveled to Washington, D.C. today to lobby their Members of Congress on issues important to working families.
Members lobbied in support of comprehensive immigration reform, the Part-Time Worker Bill of Rights, and the Paycheck Fairness Act. They asked their elected officials to support the UFCW’s principles for immigration reform which include a path to citizenship for those already here. In addition, they asked Members of Congress to support the Part-Time Worker Bill of Rights which would end the incentive for employers to drop workers from their health coverage and the Paycheck Fairness Act which would help guarantee equal pay for equal work.
Members were also briefed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on the political landscape for 2014 and attended a reception with Emerge, an organization dedicated to electing more women to office. After their lobby visits, they joined tens of thousands of supporters on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol at a rally for comprehensive immigration reform.
“All in all, it was a great day,” said UFCW Women’s Network International Chair Rhonda Nelson. “Both economic and social issues are important to women and this last election showed just how big our impact can be.”
Nelson said the group plans on continuing to lobby in the future, adding: “When they don’t hear from us, that’s when bills pass that don’t reflect our needs and concerns.”
April 9, 2013
St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Union rally in St. Charles aims at influencing Missouri Senate leader, other GOP lawmakers
By Mark Schlinkmann 
ST. CHARLES • About 200 union members rallied here Monday to build some pressure on the Republican-run Missouri Legislature – and Senate leader Tom Dempsey of St. Charles in particular – to reject bills they consider anti-labor.
“Let me make this very clear to every elected official,” said Dave Cook, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 655. “We will not back down, we will not go away, we will not stop. We will door-knock your constituents.”
Lawmakers should “stop busting unions and start growing the economy,” Cook said.
The afternoon event, at Frontier Park, was partly aimed at a Senate-approved bill that would require many government employee unions to get annual written consent from a member before dues can be deducted from his or her paycheck.
Yearly consent also would be required before fees could be used for political purposes. The measure is now in a House committee.
“All they want to do is eliminate your voice in politics so they can run rampant over us for years to come,” Cook said.
Many wore yellow T-shirts identifying themselves as members of Cook’s union. Other unions also were represented.
Also opposed by organized labor are House-approved measures to change the way the state figures prevailing wage requirements for public construction work and to allow outstate school districts to opt out of the requirements. Those measures are in Senate committees.
Then there is labor’s overriding concern in recent years: right-to-work legislation that would outlaw employment contracts that make union dues a condition of employment.
Cook commended Dempsey, a Republican and the Senate president pro tem, for opposing right-to-work but said the other measures should be stopped as well.
Unions usually support Democrats but last year endorsed Dempsey, who ran unopposed for re-election. Some other St. Louis area Republicans also have been on good terms.
Dempsey, reached by telephone in Jefferson City, said he voted for the public employee bill because he doesn’t think it overburdens a union doing a good job for its members to have to obtain annual consent for dues and fees.
He said, however, that he believes imposing such requirements on private-sector unions wouldn’t withstand a court challenge.
As for prevailing wage, he said revamping that law is a priority for Senate Republicans because in many areas of Missouri the wages required for government projects are above those paid in the private sector. He didn’t endorse a particular measure.
“The attempt is not to repeal prevailing wage but to make it more representative,” he said.
Dempsey added that he has supported several measures that would boost the economy, such as incentives for air cargo exports and a sales tax hike for highway work.
March 25, 2013
Have a Union-Made Passover
source: timeanddate.com
Tomorrow is the first day of Passover- what better way to celebrate your Passover seders than with union-made foods and ingredients? Check out the list of products below, all made by UFCW members, as well as our brothers and sisters at UFW, IAM, and IBT, brought to you by Labor 411 and the AFL-CIO:
Matzo Products, Crackers and Farfel
Manischewitz (UFCW)
Meats
Empire Kosher (UFCW)
Wine and Grape Juice
Arbor Mist (UFCW)
C.K. Mondavi (UFW, UFCW)
Chateau Ste. Michelle (UFW, IBT)
Gallo of Sonoma (UFW)
Turning Leaf (UFCW)
Minute Maid Grape Juice (UFCW)
Welch’s Grape Juice (UFCW)
Bonus:
Here’s an Empire Kosher’s recipe for glazed and spiced matzo stuffed chicken breasts. For this recipe, there are plenty of union-made ingredients to incorporate:
6 tablespoons Empire Kosher Rendered Chicken Fat, divided
4 cups Passover Matzo Farfel (Manischewitz)
Salt and pepper (Morton Salt [UFCW, IAM] and Durkee Pepper [UFCW])
6 Empire Kosher Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper (Durkee [UFCW])
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (Durkee [UFCW])
¾ cup white wine (see union-made options here).
Be sure to check out Labor 411 for all things union-made!
March 7, 2013
UFCW Joins Chicago Rally For Immigration Reform
CHICAGO, ILL.— Joe Hansen, International President of the UFCW, today delivered the following statement when joining the AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka, the Chicago Federation of Labor, students, Latino leaders and workers at a major Chicago rally for urgent federal action for comprehensive immigration reform.
President Hansen’s statement follows:
“Now is the time to pass comprehensive immigration reform – not next year or the year after but right now. We can no longer accept an immigration system that breaks up families, harasses workers, and deports people who are simply trying to achieve the American Dream. We can no longer be a nation that turns away aspiring citizens.
“For centuries, immigrants have come to America’s shores with the dream of making a better life for themselves and their families — from Ellis Island to the Florida Keys to the Rio Grande. But for today’s immigrants, this dream has become a nightmare. Young adults who were brought here as children and have grown up in America—the Dreamers—still do not have a clear path to citizenship. Workers face discrimination, abuse, retaliation, and sometimes worse. Families are unable to reunite.
“Our immigration system is obviously broken. But worse than that, it flies in the face of our values as a nation. So we must reform it. No one is better to lead that reform than the labor movement. It is the workers we represent who are most victimized by our current immigration system.
“For the UFCW, this issue hits close to home. We remember the ICE raids in 2006 where our members were treated like criminals. We remember hearing the stories of workers terrorized just for doing their jobs.
“Other unions have suffered similar experiences, as Wild West immigration enforcement has become the rule instead of the exception. So as a movement, we are as united as ever to make comprehensive immigration reform the law of the land.
“The UFCW is joining our allies in the labor movement and in our communities to mobilize our members in support immigration reform that includes:
- A road map to citizenship for those already here
- An effective mechanism for determining employment eligibility
- Smart and humane border enforcement
- Streamlined family reunification
- A fair process for allocating employment based visas
“But most of all, we want an immigration system that gives immigrants hope, not fear. We want to be a nation that builds dreams, not border fences. We want the families of immigrants to be united, not divided. We want immigrant workers to have rights, not wrongs.
“America has always prided itself on being a country where anyone who is willing to work hard and pursue their dreams can find success. We must live up to that ideal. We must pass comprehensive immigration reform.”
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The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) represents more than 1.3 million workers, primarily in the retail and meatpacking, food processing and poultry industries. The UFCW protects the rights of workers and strengthens America’s middle class by fighting for health care reform, living wages, retirement security, safe working conditions and the right to unionize so that working men and women and their families can realize the American Dream. For more information about the UFCW’s effort to protect workers’ rights and strengthen America’s middle class, http://www.ufcw.org/, or join our online community at http://www.facebook.com/ufcwinternational and www.twitter.com/UFCW
February 20, 2013
The Minimum Wage Debate
In last week’s State of the Union Address, President Obama made it clear that raising our country’s federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour was one of his top priorities. Many agree with President Obama that raising the minimum wage from the current rate of $7.25 is a necessary step to rebuilding our middle class and strengthening our economy, including members of labor unions. Take a look at this chart:
The Center for Economic and Policy Research poses this question:
“Suppose the minimum wage had kept in step with productivity growth over the last 44 years. In other words, rather than just keeping purchasing power constant at the 1969 level, suppose that our lowest paid workers shared evenly in the economic growth over the intervening years.”
As the graph displays, in the past, when minimum wage was tied to productivity, workers benefited:
“This should not seem like a far-fetched idea. In the years from 1947 to 1969 the minimum wage actually did keep pace with productivity growth. (This is probably also true for the decade from when the federal minimum wage was first established in 1937 to 1947, but we don’t have good data on productivity for this period.)
As the graph shows, the minimum wage generally was increased in step with productivity over these years. This led to 170 percent increase in the real value of the minimum wage over the years from 1948 to 1968. If this pattern of wage increases for those at the bottom was supposed to stifle growth, the economy didn’t get the message. Growth averaged 4.0 percent annually from 1947 to 1969 and the unemployment rate for the year 1969 averaged less than 4.0 percent.
This changed in the 1970’s, when the real value of minimum wage declined sharply and only kept up with inflation. This major shift in policy change happened without any public debate it would seem. The Center for Economic and Policy Research notes that if “the minimum wage had kept pace with productivity growth it would be $16.54 in 2012 dollars”.
A Business Insider piece also quotes Op-Ed columnist Ezra Klein, who notes that:
“a minimum wage is like a proxy labor union; sure it may have some employment effects, but it effectively raises the wage bargaining power of those workers who do manage to find employment. In the absence of such bargaining power, we can’t expect any meaningful increase in wages at the low end of the income spectrum.”
The article also cites a study in which found that minimum wage increases had no adverse effects on employment, and actually lead to increased employment rates among single women with children. Some date also backs the idea that reasonable wage increases affect wage hikes further up the pay scale (and also decreases the wage gap), and also provide workers with motivation to be more productive.
The fact is, raising the minimum wage would raise living standards for millions of workers who are currently living at or just above the poverty line.
As for the second argument, that $9.00 an hour still is not enough to provide a decent living for millions of working class Americans, we agree for the most part. However, not only is $9/hour a step in the right direction, it is also good for union members, who stand to seek even greater wage increases in their contracts, if they make more than the current minimum wage of $7.25.
In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “unionized food service employees have median weekly salaries that are $100 higher than non-union workers.”
Also, although the President is pushing for a $9 minimum wage, several state governments are pushing for $10 or more, as in Maryland.
$9 an hour is not a perfect solution. It will not raise all of America out of poverty. However, it is certainly a great stride towards providing more Americans a platform to the middle class- something that all of America should agree we need to rebuild in order to restore our economy. As President Obama noted in his SOTU address, no American working a full-time job should be living under the poverty line and nor should, if we can help it, anyone else.
January 7, 2013
The Real Reason Your Paycheck is Lower
Last Friday, #WhyMyPaycheckIsLessThisWeek began trending on Twitter. Tweeters were quick to blame President Obama, free birth control, immigrants, and a number of other things for the deductions they saw in their paychecks last week, following the “fiscal cliff”.
Rush Limbaugh ranted that paychecks declined in order to pay for “another Obama vacation,” and similar (outrageous) complaints have been made by other conservatives with large followings as well.
None of these are true. In reality, the decrease in paychecks is due to the expiration of the payroll tax holiday, which went into affect on January 1st. According to Working America, the payroll tax cut expiration was, among other things, the result of “the lack of attention to job-creating policies that help workers pay their bills, and devotion of Republicans and some Democrats to ‘cutting spending’ while protecting the interests of their wealthy and corporate sponsors.”
Here’s a bit more background, based on actual facts, not accusations:
-The payroll tax cut lowered payroll taxes from 6.2% to 4.2%, and went into effect in 2010. It was set to expire in December 2011, but after a vote was extended until January 1st, 2013.
-As the new year approached, the “Fiscal Cliff” was created in order to set a deadline about how to offset the national debt.
-President Obama, in his initial offer to Boehner, wanted to extend the payroll tax holiday, however he was rejected because the offer did not extend Bush tax cuts to the wealthiest 2% of Americans. During the series of concessions and offers that took place during the fiscal cliff negotiations, the payroll tax holiday extension was dropped, as a concession by President Obama to House Republicans.
-Regardless, experts predicted the concession of the payroll tax holiday extension as early as September 2012, before the country knew who our next President would be.
source: Wonkblog
December 18, 2012
Have Yourself a Merry, Union-Made Holiday
Support union workers this holiday by buying union-made and made-in-America products this year! There are plenty of sources out there to help you stick to union made stocking stuffers, gifts, and yummy holiday treats to serve at whatever celebration you are hosting or attending. Here are just a few:
Made in America Holiday Gift and Stocking Stuffer Guide from the AFL-CIO (features products from the UFCW as well as Unite Here, USW, IAM, UAW, RWDSU, and many more)
Union-Made Holiday Sweet Treats from BCTGM
Make it a union-made holiday from the UAW is a guide to union-made toys and electronics, plus other lists of union-made products
The Union-made Holiday Shopping List from Labor 411 features a variety of products from multiple unions, and even has price listings.
Also, check out our UFCW Pinterest board of union-made products for more ideas! The AFL-CIO has one too.
image source: http://www.homesteadcards.com/ , where you can buy union-made holiday cards!
November 14, 2012
UFCW Members Roll-Up Their Sleeves to Help Hurricane Sandy Victims
UFCW members help with Hurricane Sandy relief
A few weeks after Hurricane Sandy, families continue to struggle in communities where people have lost their homes and are still without power in the face of winter weather.
Sonia Tirado has family who lost everything in Hurricane Sandy. Born and raised in Coney Island, Tirado was eager to help her community get back on its feet. Tirado is a home health aide at Americare and is a member of UFCW Local 348-S in Brooklyn. When her fellow UFCW members contacted Tirado asking if she would be interested in volunteering to help victims of Hurricane Sandy, she jumped at the chance to help.
“It’s just the right thing to do, to help other people,” Tirado said.
Along with nearly 20 staff and members from UFCW Local 348-S, Tirado spent a day last week distributing supplies, assisting with storm clean up, and helping almost 1,000 Coney Island residents take care of basic needs. UFCW members also coordinated with New York Communities for Change to bring donations of blankets, diapers, and food for the areas devastated by the storm.
Sonia’s work in her community is a great example of the ways UFCW members across the country give back every day. To learn more about UFCW’s community partnerships, click here.