With 10th Congressional District candidate Barbara Comstock calling for the National Labor Relations Board to be reined in during Wednesday’s debate, Northern Virginia Labor Federation President Dan Duncan urged area union activists and supporters to turn out tomorrow “to get out the union vote for labor-endorsed candidate John Foust!” NoVA Labor is hosting two staging areas each Saturday through Election Day, one at NoVA Labor’s offices in Annandale and the other at Machinists Lodge 1759 in Herndon (click here for details). Comstock’s characterization of the NLRB as “out of control” “promises to be the first of many attacks from her on the rights of workers over the next six weeks,” said Duncan, pointing out that Comstock scored “0” with the Virginia AFL-CIO during her tenure in the state House of Delegates. “It’s crunch time!” said Duncan, “Get a comfy pair of walking shoes; we need any and all feet this Saturday!”
Locked-out members and leaders of United Steelworkers Local 7-669 on Thursday visited Honeywell’s D.C. headquarters and the company’s lobbying firms as the lockout at the Metropolis, IL uranium conversion facility nears the end of the second month. The group of Steelworkers from Metropolis – joined by supporters from the AFL-CIO, Metro Washington Council, IBEW and DC CBTU – tried to meet with and deliver letters to the lobby firms, which Honeywell has hired along with their own in-house lobby team, and held a demonstration outside Honeywell’s D.C. headquarters. Honeywell has ramped up political spending over the last several years, spending nearly six million dollars in the current election cycle alone, and has a major lobbying presence in the nation’s capital. photo by Chris Garlock/Union City After everything he’s lost – job, house, wife, health insurance, hundreds of thousands of dollars in wages, even sleep – Tyrone Riggs still holds onto his “unshakable faith in justice.” Riggs was one of the 100 DC-area broadcast technicians who lost their jobs 10 years ago at CNN, where the National Labor Relations Board earlier this month found overwhelming evidence (CNN Workers Win Justice After 11-Year Legal Battle) that the news channel engaged in anti-union activity in what Communications Workers of America called a "phony reorganization scheme to get rid of unionized workers." The APWU has won a major victory on staffing in post offices affected by the “POStPlan” – a victory that will result in the creation of at least 9,000 new Clerk Craft jobs within 90 days. An arbitrator ruled earlier this month that jobs in four- and six-hour post offices must be assigned to clerks, not Part-Time Postmasters or Postmaster Reliefs. “This is a common sense victory for postal workers and the American public,” said Dena Briscoe, President of APWU’s Nation’s Capital and Southern Maryland Local. “This ruling will save taxpayers money and result in local post offices being run by qualified bargaining unit employees.” Click here for APWU’s complete report. In a related story, the NLRB recently ruled that the USPS must give the union documents dealing with their outsourcing of transportation services, so the union would have the data it needs to contend union workers can do the work more efficiently. The dispute over the outsourcing is part of what postal unions call the Postmaster General's creeping privatization of the Postal Service. - photo courtesy APWU |