NURSES WIN A VOICE WITH UAN—The 310 registered nurses at Mercy Medical Center in Roseburg, Ore., voted Jan. 11 to join the Oregon Nurses Association/United American Nurses. The nurses were forced to attend captive-audience meetings and endured name-calling from management but said they are looking forward to addressing staffing concerns at the hospital as full partners with management.

WESTERN WINS—Nearly 100 nurses, maintenance and service workers at Knife River Care Center in Beulah, N.D., a community-run elder care facility, voted to join the Electrical Workers recently. Also 20 workers at N.E.W. Electric in Gillette, Wyo., and four workers at Saunders Electrical Construction in Cleveland chose IBEW.

KING DAY CELEBRATION FOCUSES ON KATRINA VICTIMS—Hundreds of union members celebrated the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., by focusing on the needs of the poorest victims of Hurricane Katrina. Meeting in Baton Rouge, La., Jan. 12–16 for the annual AFL-CIO national King Day celebration, union members participated in the city’s holiday parade, conducted voter registration drives in one of that city’s most economically depressed areas and helped repair several hurricane-damaged homes and other buildings. “Our great responsibility, our great privilege, our great joy is to build on what Martin Luther King Jr. and countless heroes and heroines from Louisiana gave us, to go a few steps farther, to heal our land where it is wounded, to make it more equal and just, to help build a better life for working people and women and minorities,” AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson said in her keynote address. Union members also discussed the role race and class played in the government’s failure to provide speedy and adequate help to those hit by the storm. Renowned author and scholar Michael Eric Dyson led a forum on race and class and signed copies of his new book Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster. The workers also honored Mary Finger, former vice president of the unaffiliated United Food and Commercial Workers, for outstanding service in following King’s example. Read an excerpt from Dyson’s new book at www.aflcio.org/pov.

RIGHT TO WORK FOR LESS BATTLES LOOM—Kentucky working families are mobilizing to defeat right to work for less legislation for the fourth time in four legislative sessions. The proposed legislation (H.B. 38) is backed by Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R), anti-worker state legislators and Big Business. They claim the legislation prevents workers who don’t want to join a union from being forced to do so. But under federal law, no one can be required to join a union. The bill would ban employers and employees from agreeing that nonmembers should pay their share of the costs of representing them and negotiating on their behalf. Workers in states with so-called right to work laws have a consistently lower quality of life than those in other states—lower wages, higher poverty, less access to health care—according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Census Bureau. Working families and their unions also are gearing up to fight right to work for less battles in Indiana, Missouri and New Hampshire. For more information, visit www.aflcio.org/issues/legislativealert/stateissues/ns01122006.cfm.

MINE DISASTER PROBES UNDER WAY—Federal and state investigations are under way and congressional hearings are scheduled into the Jan. 3 explosion that killed 12 coal miners at Sago Mine in Upshur County, W.Va. The probes will seek the cause of the deadly blast at the mine owned by the International Coal Group and look at how the mine’s owners and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) responded to the mine’s record of safety violations. In 2005, MSHA issued 208 safety citations but collected only some $24,000 in fines from the company. “What is going to be most important for the public and for coal miners to know as a result of this investigation is that mine safety and health regulations will be enforced at every mine in the United States. MSHA and the state mine safety agencies must view these regulations as requirements, not mere suggestions,” said Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts.

SENATE NEARS ALITO VOTE—The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote Jan. 24 on President George W. Bush’s nominee, Judge Samuel Alito, for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. A confirmation vote by the full Senate is expected shortly after the committee vote. Alito has a record of decisions and dissents as a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit that take an extremely narrow view of workers’ rights, an AFL-CIO analysis revealed. Alito has consistently sided against America’s workers, according to the analysis, including denying overtime pay to newspaper reporters, thwarting Congress’ efforts to guarantee all employees unpaid time off from their jobs for serious illnesses and putting roadblocks in the way of workers trying to remedy job discrimination. The AFL-CIO is opposed to the nomination. Visit www.aflcio.org/mediacenter/prsptm/upload/alito_review.pdf to examine Alito’s record in workers’ rights, civil rights and other important cases.

BAUCUS CLARIFIES OUTSOURCING STANCE—Last week, the Associated Press reported that Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said outsourcing U.S. white-collar jobs to low-wage nations such as India was a global fact of life that U.S. workers simply had to learn to live with. The remarks, made on a trip to India, drew immediate fire. “Outsourcing is not an inevitable fact of globalization. It is the result of intentional policy choices on the part of business and political leaders who have decided that boosting corporate profits is more important than protecting living standards of working people in the United States and abroad,” said UAW President Ron Gettelfinger. After his comments were reported Jan. 13, Baucus said his remarks were “grossly misrepresented.” He said, “Any job lost to outsourcing is too many, but we can’t kid ourselves or stick our head in the sand. Some jobs are going to move around in the global market place....Our challenge is to learn why these jobs are moving overseas and work to keep them at home by boosting America’s competitiveness through such things as training, education and tax incentives.”

‘FRIENDS WITH LOW WAGES’—Check out a great new video about how Wal-Mart treats its workers, “Friends with Low Wages.” The Flash video on the American Rights at Work website parodies Garth Brooks’ popular song, “Friends in Low Places.” Brooks recently signed an exclusive distribution deal with Wal-Mart and was featured in the retail giant’s holiday ad campaigns.

ARNOLD BACKS OFF LUNCH REGS—Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) retreated from a proposed regulation that would have weakened the right of California workers to take a lunch break. The proposed regulation would have made it easier for employers to coerce workers out of their meal breaks. It also would have lessened the penalties on employers found to deny meal breaks by reducing from three years to one year the period in which businesses could be fined for denying meal breaks. “Thanks to the many union members who opposed the lunch break take-away, we have won a tremendous victory,” said Art Pulaski, California Labor Federation executive secretary-treasurer.     

PUBLIC SCHOOLS WIN IN VOUCHER CASE—Florida’s statewide school voucher program was ruled unconstitutional Jan. 7 by the Florida Supreme Court. The court ruled that taking public school money to pay for private school education violates the state constitution’s requirement to provide “a uniform system of free public schools.” AFT President Edward J. McElroy said, “This decision is a victory for Florida’s taxpayers and public school students, and a setback for the anti-public school efforts of Gov. Jeb Bush (R). The decision reinforces a core American value—public funds should be used to fund public schools.”

UNIONS SEEK FLU PROTECTION FOR FIRST RESPONDERS—Five unions, led by AFSCME and the AFL-CIO, are working to ensure that 15 million health care workers and first responders will be protected if there is a pandemic flu outbreak. In a Dec. 21 letter to Labor Secretary Elaine Chao (www.afscme.org/press/pr060103.htm), the unions asked for an emergency temporary standard that would require employers to provide comprehensive protections for the frontline workers who will be called on to protect the public if such an outbreak occurs. AFT, the Communications Workers of America, UAN and USW International Union also are joining with AFSCME and the AFL-CIO.

COURT OVERTURNS ANTI-STRIKEBREAKER LAW—An Illinois law that barred employers from using day labor and temporary employment agencies to supply strikebreakers was overturned Jan. 10 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for 7th Circuit. The ban on the use of workers from such agencies was signed into law in 2003 by Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) as an amendment to a broader state law that forbids the use of professional strikebreakers. A Chicago hotel where workers struck filed suit challenging the law, but the suit was dismissed by a U.S. District judge in April and the hotel appealed the decision to the 7th Circuit.

IRS FREEZES TAX REFUNDS FOR WORKING POOR—The Bush administration’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has withheld the tax refunds of more than 1.6 million low-income U.S. taxpayers in the past five years, according to a report by the IRS’s Taxpayer Advocate Service. Most of the refunds were withheld from taxpayers eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The EITC is a special tax benefit for America’s working poor. The IRS criminal division froze the refunds for suspected fraud but did not notify taxpayers to give them the opportunity to provide documentation for their claims. The report found that at most one in five of the withheld tax returns was questionable. The median adjusted gross income of taxpayers whose refunds were withheld but were found to have committed no fraud was $13,330, and the median income of those who claimed the EITC was $11,956. The median refund owed was $3,685, a significant amount for working poor taxpayers.

BLS FORCED TO REVIVE WOMEN’S DATA—After a huge outcry from women’s and other groups and congressional action, the Bush administration will resume collecting and reporting employment data about women workers in its monthly payroll survey. The Bush administration’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) stopped collecting the data on women workers’ employment, hours, earnings and other job facts in July 2005. The BLS received more than 5,000 comments about the action and more than 90 percent were opposed. An amendment to the fiscal year (FY) 2006 Labor, Health and Human Services spending bill required BLS to resume reporting the women’s data for FY 2006, but the agency announced last week it would permanently reinstate the women’s data.

FOREIGN AIRLINE OWNERSHIP PLAN FLAWED—The Bush administration’s proposal to allow foreign interests to control U.S. airlines is “a flawed change in aviation policy and a snub to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle,” said Ed Wytkind, president of the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department, in comments submitted to the U.S. Department of Transportation. He cited bipartisan legislation in Congress to prevent the Bush administration’s proposed new ownership rule from being finalized. “Clearly the White House is trying to circumvent the role of Congress,” he said. The new rule would harm national security and jeopardize collective bargaining as airlines seek out the lowest wage and benefit workforce to fill critical positions, he said. Also it could accelerate the outsourcing of U.S. aircraft repair to poorly supervised overseas facilities and encourage more airlines to contract out flight attendant positions to workers overseas, as some U.S. carriers have explored.

MARYLAND COMPANIES MUST PAY FAIR SHARE—Maryland became the first state to require large corporations to provide health care for their employees. The Maryland Legislature on Jan. 12 overrode Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich’s veto of a Fair Share Health Care bill. The bill requires any private employer with more than 10,000 employees in Maryland to spend at least 8 percent of its payroll for workers’ health care. Wal-Mart, despite its $10 billion in national profits, does not meet the standard. In May 2005, Ehrlich—with a top Wal-Mart executive by his side—vetoed the bill. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said (www.aflcio.org/mediacenter/prsptm/pr01132006.cfm), “What the Maryland victory shows is that the tide is turning because working people are not just fed up—they are ready to get active to set our country in a different direction, one state at a time. Maryland’s working families have sent a clear message to local governments across the country and corporate America by demanding health care fairness—and winning.” Maryland is among 33 states in which working families, their unions and community allies are joining the AFL-CIO in Fair Share Health Care (www.aflcio.org/issues/legislativealert/stateissues/healthcare) campaigns to ensure the largest corporations stop shifting health insurance costs onto workers, taxpayers and other businesses. Fair Share Health Care legislation will reduce the bill taxpayers pay to cover profitable corporations’ employee expenses, ease the financial strain states face in growing Medicaid costs and help level the playing field between companies that provide good jobs and benefits and those that don’t. Hearings on Washington State’s Fair Share Health Care bills begin Jan. 19.