RegisterFriday, July 25, 2008  
   50,000 Members and Growing                                                       
 
 
 
For three great days in Milwaukee, the delegates to the most recent Joint Board Convention discussed and debated the important issues of the present and proposed a program that will shape our future. Together we drafted the platform presented here to guide our work in the coming year of such profound importance to our country and our Union. My thanks to everyone who worked so hard to draft this blueprint for building a strong, unified Joint Board. Noel Beasley, Executive Vice President & Manager - Click Read More to view our Platform.   read more...
In a few months will be the fourth anniversary of Our Region's website. It has taken different forms over the years. With tens of thousands of vistors and hundreds of thousands of hits each year, we must now adapt again to the growing needs of Our Members. We need your suggestions to take it to the next level. Please click on this article or the banner above and let us know what you think, need, and want out of the website. Changes will be made in fall after the Editorial Board has had time to review all of your comments and suggestions. Thanks for your support.   read more...
The policeman wearing Badge #7181 pulled Earl Handley out of a car marked with a Red Cross sign, a makeshift ambulance. The 37-year-old carpenter for Inland Steel was bleeding profusely, but the cop dragged him along like a drunk. Handley died because his wounds were not treated. Meyer Levin saw the police prevent Burnside Hospital ambulances from taking the wounded to the hospital. Patrolman Walter B. Oakes attacked Joseph Rothmund and then killed him, shooting Rothmund in the back as he fled. May 2008 marks the 71st anniversary of “the Memorial Day Massacre.” Ten people were killed and 90 wounded that day when the police attacked a peaceful march outside the Republic Steel plant in South Chicago. All the dead were shot in the back or the side.   read more...
United and ready to fight, workers fought back concessions and won decent wages increases as part of a new contract for close to a hundred workers at Aramark’s industrial laundry on Madison’s far east side. “Delicious” was how UNITE HERE Local 229’s president Rosie Reml described the gains in the new contract – a $1,250 bonus in the first year, wage increases of 3 percent in the second year, and 2.5 percent increases in third year of the three-year deal. In addition, Aramark will continue funding health care at current levels and begin contributing to a new pension plan. The company also agreed to write language guaranteeing “dignity and respect” for workers and their union into the contract. “We are all very excited! When this started, Aramark looked like they wanted to bust the union,” said Reml. “I can’t believe we didn’t have to give up a thing.” Part-time workers will also receive wage increases of twenty percent and earn vacaciton time for the first time, bringing them closer to parity with full-time workers.   
Local 17 members volunteered to help put together boxed lunches for the East Metro Homeless Connect that was held at RiverCentre on Tuesday, June 10. Members volunteering from Wildside Catering, began their day at 7:00 a.m. in the RCVA kitchen putting together 2,000 box lunches.   
Mattie Woodson tore off a piece of her dress and leaned down to wipe blood off the neck of Joe DeBlasio, desperately trying to save the life of the young demonstrator. It was too late. DeBlasio was dying. He lay in Miller Road in Dearborn, Michigan, just a few yards in front of the gigantic River Rouge complex of the Ford Motor Company. He had been shot when Dearborn police officers and thugs from Ford’s brutal “Service Department” opened fire on unarmed demonstrators. It was March 7, 1932. The protest which had originally been called “the Ford Hunger March” had just become a massacre.   read more...
They were some of the lowest-paid workers in the entire United States, but management claimed that they didn’t deserve more money. (Their employers said that the workers would just spend any raise on tequila and trinkets from the local dime stores.) No wonder the workers went on strike! February 2008 marks exactly 70 years since the official beginning of the pecan shellers’ strike in San Antonio, Texas in 1938. That confrontation changed the face of organized labor in the Southwest.   read more...
"This was the first time I've ever been in trouble," she said in Spanish through a translator. "They try to intimidate me. And it's very intimidating for me because I love working there, and I've always been a good employee. "But we are people who are just trying to live. I'm young, but I don't feel good about the future, and it gets harder every day," she added. She was one of hundreds of hotel workers, community leaders, union advocates and others who marched Saturday from Monument Circle to the Statehouse to support about 400 hotel workers at the Westin Hotel and the Sheraton Hotel and Suites at Keystone Crossing who want to unionize. Stories of hotel workers unable to afford their employer's health-care plans or needing to take second jobs to pay their share of the health-care costs were numerous, along with other frustrations.   read more...
What does U.S. Congressman James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin have to do with a copper strike in Mexico? In Cananea, a small town about 50 miles south of the border, some 1,287 copper miners are battling one of Mexico’s largest corporations – Grupo Mexico. The chief financial officer of Grupo Mexico is J. Eduardo Gonzalez. Gonzalez was once an executive of the Mexican subsidiary of Kimberly Clark, the paper company founded by the Sensenbrenner family.   read more...
UNITE HERE announced last week that it will campaign across North America to save nearly 600 Canadian manufacturing jobs at a Montreal plant that Men’s Wearhouse announced it would close in July. Members of the CMRJB have leafleted hundreds of shoppers at MW stores across our region. CMRJB members have and will always fight for the jobs of our brothers and sisters in UNITE HERE. Solidarity works! Pictured from left: Jack Hawkinson, Steve Gallos, Lyle Frankie & Jerry Commeau Members of Local 17.   
Workers stepped up their fight for justice at Cintas, launching a new Coalition of Injured Cintas Workers and holding vigils across the country in commemoration of Eleazar Torres-Gomez’s death one year ago. The nationwide Coalition is comprised of former and current Cintas employees dedicated to cleaning up serious hazards—some potentially lethal—at the company’s 400 facilities.   read more...
National Interest Clinton vulnerable on NAFTA?
MSNBC's David Shuster takes a look at the influence of NAFTA in the Pennsylvania primary and the effect it might have on Sen. Hillary Clinton.   read more...
The fire began over Los Gatos Canyon. It started in the left engine-driven fuel pump. The plane crashed 20 miles west of Coalinga, California, on January 29, 1948. It came down into hills which, as one commentator noted, at that time of year are “a beautiful green, splendid with wildflowers … a place of breathtaking beauty.”   read more...
Just released a new 2 minute video to demonstrate the outrageous amount of money that is being spent daily on the Iraq war at the expense of meeting human needs. Check it Out!   read more...
The main headline proclaimed the news in large capital letters set in thick black type: “THE CONSUMMATION!” Below, only slightly smaller headlines continued: “Slavery Forever Dead in the United States. … No Human Bondage After Dec. 18, 1865.” The New York Times had good reason to use dramatic headlines in its Dec. 19, 1865 edition. Those headlines reported a momentous development: Slavery was now illegal throughout the whole of the United States. U.S. Secretary of State William Seward had signed a proclamation the previous day announcing the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.   read more...
UNITE HERE! Members of Local 17 Grace Runeburg (pictured), Ray Rice, Mike Berry, and Gilbert Towner leaflet the Target Center fot the Rights of Workers at Aramark. They, along with members across the Midwest, are fighting as part of a national campaign for the rights and dignity of Aramark workers and their communities.   
The Executive Committee of UNITE HERE has voted to endorse Senator Barack Obama for President. On behalf of nearly one million members and retirees, the union announced that it will be supporting the campaign in primaries and caucuses throughout the nation. Barack Obama began his career organizing working families who were trying to pick up their lives as their industries were leaving them behind. As he entered politics, we knew that he would understand our members and we supported him from the start, explained General President Bruce Raynor. Our organization and our members will do everything in our power to see that he reaches the White House this fall, because we know he will bring working Americans with him.   read more...
For immediate release: UNITE HERE Local 99 reached a settlement agreement with Wayzata Hospitality Group, LLC, which owns The Lodge at Giants Ridge, on December 26th, 2007, following a six month labor dispute.   read more...
A casino project under development between the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority and a Wisconsin tribe most likely will use organized labor in its construction and operation thanks to a series of agreements between local unions and the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin.   read more...
“Tie the town up!” was the workers’ battle cry – and for several days, they did. The strike hit just as the commercial season began. The delivery of food and beverages ceased. Street cars stopped running. Street cleaning and fire-fighting ground to a halt. Electrical and gas workers walked out, plunging the city into darkness at night. Manufacturing stopped.   read more...
Paul Robeson’s upbringing in the small towns of New Jersey, surrounded by tightly bound communities of working-class African Americans, provided him with role models of brave families struggling for happiness against the two-headed monster of economic deprivation and racial prejudice.   read more...
The Second Constitutional Convention of the Chicago and Midwest Regional Joint Board of UNITE HERE will be held September 7th through September 8th, 2007 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. The Convention is a meeting of elected delegates from around the region. The theme of the meeting is “UNITE HERE: We’ve Got Issues!” The Convention will discuss the serious issues facing this country, including the war, health care, immigration, the right to organize, and the crisis in the economy – and what UNITE HERE members can do to respond to those issues.   
“Labor, the creator of wealth, is entitled to all it creates. … “Affirming this, we avow ourselves willing to accept … the overthrow of the whole profit-making system, the extinction of all monopolies, the abolition of privileged classes, universal education … and … best and grandest of all, the final obliteration of that foul stigma upon our so-called Christian civilization, the poverty of the masses.”   read more...
The crowd of thousands of men, women, and even children along the riverbank commandeered a raft. They loaded it with oil-soaked lumber, set fire to it, and sent it floating down the river toward the barges. The fire burned out before the raft collided with the two barges filled with private detectives hired by the company.   read more...
We are deeply saddened to report the passing of our beloved union sister Ellen Morrow. She died earlier this month of a long standing health problems. Ellen was active in the union for many years, first as an officer and activist in her own local, #2484 – Kenro in Fredonia, WI., as an officer of the Midwest Region of UNITE and lastly as a Service Representative in WI.”   read more...
If you have seen "Sicko" and wondered how America can solve its health care crisis while it is stuck in a morass of corporate greed, political corruption and institutional indifference to the fate of individuals, this story reveals the callousness of government The plight of workers who served food to the powerful and the connected for years until suddenly losing their jobs and health care is a small example of what's wrong with the country.   read more...
Every seat in the galleries of the U.S. Senate chamber was filled that afternoon, with hundreds of other people standing. Arthur H. Vandenberg of Michigan, president pro tempore of the Senate, warned the spectators that no demonstration would be tolerated. In the back of the Senate chamber, dozens of members of the House of Representatives stood watching. Everyone sensed that history was about to be made.   read more...
MINNEAPOLIS - A federal judge is expected to rule this week on a landmark injunction to reinstate the "Rochester 19," union workers fired by a Rochester hotel. At a hearing on the injunction Monday, the attorney for the National Labor Relations Board was only three minutes into her allotted 10-minute presentation when U.S. District Court judge Michael Davis asked her to stop.   read more...
BIWABIK, MINN. - U.S. and Canadian unions that gathered last weekend at the Iron Range's Lodge at Giants Ridge got a jolt: All the unionized kitchen and housekeeping crews there were about to be fired. The unexpected development led to a last-minute agenda change for the International Labour Council's annual meeting: Saturday evening about 50 union leaders from Minnesota, the Dakotas and several Canadian provinces fanned out to hand out leaflets in this union-friendly corner of the state, hoping to stir some protest.   read more...
Over an intensive three and a half day series of classes members from across the region participated in Spanish Leadership Training run by the region's Education and Mobilization Department . Organizing for power, recent politics, immigration issues at the worksite and a host of other topics were discusssed in depth. Future plans for activism in their locals and state councils were made.   
UNITE HERE! members from all across the state came together to march for Immigrant Rights in Columbus, OH. It has been a year since May 1, 2006 when over a thousand immigrants and our supporters marched in downtown Cincinnati, along with millions of others across the United States, to promote a just and comprehensive immigration reform. UNITE HERE! Members in every state in the Region participated in local marches and demonstrations.   
Over an intensive three and a half day series of classes Ohio & Michigan members participated in Leadership Training run by the region's Education and Mobilization Department . Organizing for power, recent politics, immigration issues at the worksite and a host of other topics were discusssed in depth. Future plans for activism in their locals and state councils were made.   
On May 19, 1920, a shoot-out took place in a small town next to the river which divides West Virginia from Kentucky. On that day, gun thugs working for the coal operators were confronted by the town’s pro-union police chief. The confrontation and its aftermath show how much sacrifice it took to win union recognition in this country.   read more...
It began with the bombing of a building. The explosion led to a hunt for terrorists. Men were seized without warrants, transported long distances, and placed in solitary confinement. Those judicial kidnappings were defended by the Supreme Court. But the events did not originate from the mountains of Afghanistan (or anywhere in the Middle East); they sprang from the Rocky Mountains of the American West.   read more...
End Chicago’s contract with Lechner and Sons. That’s what more than 100 members of the Chicago & Midwest Regional Joint Board of UNITE HERE urged the city to do when they attended a hearing at City Hall here on February 15. The UNITE HERE members were from Local 969 and other parts of the Joint Board. They came to City Hall in Chicago’s Loop to attend a hearing of the City Council’s Human Relations Committee. The committee was considering a resolution calling for an investigation into whether Chicago should terminate its $400,000 contract with Lechner and Sons. (The company has a contract to clean dust mats for the city.)   read more...
It required many years of struggle, but the United States now officially recognizes March as Women’s History Month. The commemoration was born out of a terrible workplace tragedy – a fire in a Manhattan skyscraper in 1911 which killed 146 garment workers, most of them women. Originally observed on March 8 each year and known as International Working Women’s Day, the holiday eventually grew to become an entire month of observances. But while March contains the anniversary of some of the saddest moments in the history of women workers in the United States, the month also includes the anniversaries of some of the most hard-fought victories won by women workers. One such triumph occurred in March 1879 – in a very uphill battle.   read more...
Friday evening, January 26, Chicago & Midwest members joined other union members and community activists for a bus trip to Washington DC to participate in a massive march to protest the war in Iraq. Members Daisy Sewell, Donald Binford, Barbara Johnson, Dee and Sarah Jones, Leticia Garduno, Alicia Posada, David Hale, Oliva Alvarez and retiree Willie Mae Brown made the trip to represent our Joint Board.   read more...
"Only a low-life lickskillet would do such a thing. … I would live on wild plants that grow in the hills before I would sign.” That’s how one African-American worker responded in 1912 to the demand from the South’s lumber owners that he sign a “yellow dog” contract – a promise not to join the Brotherhood of Timber Workers.   read more...
Activists, Yolanda Jones and Vernetta King, met with the Leadership of the Hip Hop Congress (HHC) in January. The HHC did an eight day tour through Ohio to work with UNITE HERE! members on Health Care for All. They also met members in Toledo and Cincinnati. It was a great trip, and the HHC is coming back to Ohio in June of '07.   
It was a little like staging the Boston Tea Party inside a factory. Exactly 71 years ago this month, bold trade unionists introduced a dramatic new tactic to this country: the sit-down strike. This innovative method of fighting made its first major appearance in Akron, Ohio in January 1936. For several weeks, Firestone Tire & Rubber Company had been trying to speed up production in the truck tire department at its Plant One facility in Akron, a move the tirebuilders vehemently opposed. In response, the plant manager sent a company spy into the department to figure out ways to speed up the line. The company agent tried to provoke a fight with Clayton Dicks, a union committeeman in the department. The company accused Dicks of punching the company spy and knocking him out, and suspended Dicks without pay for an entire week.   read more...
JANE PALMBACH - Our beloved Sister Jane joined the Midwest staff of ACTWU in 1990 as an organizer in Ohio and Minnesota. She went on to be a service representative in Ohio and Minnesota. Jane then took up the challenge of Northern District Director and finally Wisconsin State Director for UNITE HERE Midwest Regional Joint Board.   read more...
UNITE HERE! members rally at Cintas in Toledo. They have been in negotiations for the last 30 days, fighting for better wages, a pension plan and better insurance. Members of Local 323 rallied in front of Cintas on Dec. 7th, with a temperature outside of 20 degrees and with the wind chill factor under zero.   
They traveled in automobiles so dilapidated they were nicknamed “tin lizzies.” They had only gunny sacks and blankets to protect them from the extreme cold. There were 1,670 of them, but each was a delegate representing many others. They had come to confront the U.S. Congress, to insist that it give aid, not charity, to the unemployed.   read more...
Over an intensive 2-day series of classes Chicagoland members participated in steward training run by the region's Education and Mobilization Department . Organizing for power, recent politics, immigration issues at the worksite and a host of other topics were discusssed in depth. Future plans for activisim in their locals and State council were made.   
When we started in January, war profiteering was a subject that desperately needed attention. It was a story that wasn't being told and the issue cried out for exposing. And then this past Sunday November 12 the issue was front and center on page one of the New York Times and all over the news. In different and various permutations, the headlines all read that there will be hearings, there will be oversight, questions will be asked. The profiteers will be exposed. Is amazing too strong of a word? It is a result of all your efforts.. Your support of Iraq for Sale and the issue of war profiteering has been remarkable.   read more...
Unite Here Local Duluth and its community allies successfully got an ordinance passed by the Duluth City Council that will change organizing in the city. Termed the “Labor Peace” ordinance, it will require hotel and restaurant developers who receive subsidies or tax breaks from the city to sign a card check and neutrality agreement with Local 99. This agreement is negotiated between the employer and the union to establish ground rules for conduct by each party during a union organizing campaign. It allows workers to freely choose to be represented by a union without interference from an employer and without labor dispute and unrest.   read more...
First one shot was fired, then two more. Then dozens of the deputies began firing. The steamer lurched, and almost capsized. Several men lost their balance on the decks made slippery by blood, and fell into the bay. The deputies turned their guns on the men in the water. Only one man who fell overboard ever returned to the deck of the steamer.   read more...
It united 18,000 workers of all different nationalities – Mexicans, African-Americans, and Southern and Midwestern whites -- at a time of terrible divisions. It lasted less than one month, but had an enduring impact. The organization which started it was ultimately destroyed, but that group’s heroic struggle paved the way for other efforts to win justice for California’s agricultural workers.   read more...
DETROIT -- Sept. 28, 2006 -- The Constitutional Convention of the Chicago & Midwest Regional Joint Board of UNITE HERE got off to a rousing start at the Marriott Hotel in the Renaissance Center here this afternoon. About 300 delegates voted to adopt a new Constitution for the Joint Board, and then unanimously re-elected Noel Beasley and Lynn Talbott to be Managers of the Joint Board. The Convention also unanimously elected Pat Cronin to be the Joint Board's Secretary and Joe Costigan to be its Treasurer. Thirty-six union members -- "the Solidarity Slate" -- were elected to the Joint Board's Executive Board. The Convention then adjourned for dinner, and heard an impassioned after-dinner speech by UNITE HERE General President Bruce Raynor. MORE TO COME   
In a Northern state, the governor declared martial law after striking workers armed with rocks, flower pots, and broken headstones from a nearby cemetery battled troops armed with machine guns. In a Southern state, the governor declared martial law and then ordered the National Guard to arrest all picketers in the state, holding them in a former World War I prisoner of war camp for trial by a military tribunal.   read more...
Oklahoma’s dispossessed rebel against poverty and a ‘rich man’s war’ By Chris Mahin   read more...
Actor Danny Glover joined UNITE HERE last week to launch the Service Workers Rising! campaign, an effort to improve the lives of 100,000 UNITE HERE members employed in the Laundry, Airport concessions and the Food Service industries across North America   
Chicago Chicago Rising
Several hundred UNITE HERE (and other unions) members helped kick off the Hotel Workers Rising campaign tour when it landed in Chicago Feb. 17. At left are many singing and clapping in time with the Chicago & Midwest Joint Board Choir. So many members showed up that an overflow room was necessary at the Drake Hotel in downtown Chicago. We were joined by contingents of United Food & Commercial Workers, Carpenters, Service Employees International Union and Seminarians for Justice   

 
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