Your best shot at protecting workers rights in the legislature

      The Tennessee legislature went into session this week, spending most of its time fighting over re-districting lines. But it won't take long before legislators begin debating bills that will have a big impact on the rights of workers across our state.

      Workers Interfaith Network wants to help advocates like you be more prepared and informed this year. That's why we're launching a brand new email list dedicated to tracking and taking action on worker rights bills in the legislature. Sign up here so that you'll know exactly what to do when critical bills come up, like:

• positive bills that will create fair raises for Tennessee's public higher education workers
• negative bills that will repeal our local living wage and prevailing wage laws
• negative bills that will take away the voice of union members in our political process
• negative bills that scapegoat immigrant workers and don't protect their labor rights.

      You may have noticed a pattern: a lot more negative proposals than positive ones. If you kept up with 2011 legislative session, you know that workers' rights were under heavy attack.

      Tennessee's teachers were stripped of the collective bargaining rights they had for over 30 years. Legislators passed a bill that gives permission to local government contractors to discriminate against workers based on sexual orientation. Another law passed requires Tennessee employers to use the deeply flawed e-verify system to check workers' immigration status, an act that will surely lead to hiring discrimination against job applicants who look or sound foreign.

      If you're like me, you're ready to let legislators know that you expect them to stand up for Tennessee's workers, not attack them. So please, sign up for legislative alerts today.

     You may be asking, "If I already get emails from WIN, do I need to sign up for legislative alerts?" Yes, if you want to take action at the legislature, please sign up. This is a separate list from our general WIN email list, which mostly concerns local Memphis issues.

     How else can you stand with Tennessee's workers at the legislature this year?

• Share this post on your Twitter or Facebook page, or easily email to your friends by clicking on one of the buttons at the end of this post. Let people know why you're signing up for alerts, and encourage them to as well. We need folks from every county in the state to sign up!
• If you're part of a union, community group, or congregation that has a gathering coming up, use our print sign up sheet to collect names of others who want to be on the list. Then, just mail it back to WIN using the address at the bottom of the sign up sheet.
• Save the date for a worker rights lobby day in Nashville on Wednesday, March 7th.  Transportation will be available from Memphis and Knoxville, and may be available from other cities too. More information will be coming soon on the blog and through the legislative alert email list.

What's really going on with the Postal Service

If you watch the nightly news, you've probably heard that the U.S. Postal Service has had $20 billion in lost revenue. You've probably also heard some Congressional leaders suggest this means the Postal Service must be slashed to make it more "efficient." But the news stories are leaving out a lot of relevant facts, painting an inaccurate picture of the state of the Postal Service.

Once you've learned more, I hope you will sign this petition from America's postal workers to preserve Saturday delivery. (Scroll down past the petitions you can download, and you'll find an online version you can sign.)

What you need to know about the U.S. Postal Service:

1. The Postal Service does not use any taxpayer dollars, and it has not for the past 30 years. All its funding comes from the sale of products and services.
2. In recent years, the labor productivity of postal workers has doubled.
3. Despite the recession, over the past four fiscal years, the Postal Service has earned a $611 million net profit delivering the mail.
4. The $20 billion in postal losses you've heard about are not related to mail delivery. The real reason behind them is legislation passed by the 2006 Congress that has the ridiculous requirement that the Postal Service pre-fund its future retirees' health benefits for the next 75 years, and that USPS must do this within the next decade. You read that right - Congress is requiring the Postal Service have funding now for retirees who haven't even started working for the Postal Service yet. This is a burden that no other public or private business is required to meet.
5. Lawmakers can fix this mess without taxpayer dollars by passing House Bill 1351, which would give the Postal Service access to the funding it has already set aside for these future benefits.
6. The Postal Service also has tens of billions of earned revenue in surplus funds, which other businesses would tap into during a recession. However, the Postal Service can only draw on this money with Congressional approval.
7. While cutting Saturday delivery represents a 16 percent cut in services, it does not save the Postal Service much money.
8. If Saturday deliveries are eliminated, it will undercut the Postal Service's ability to deliver parcels, which is the fastest growing part of its business right now.
9. Cutting Saturday delivery is likely to drive mailers away, making the Postal Service's financial problems worse.

Please support your postal workers by signing the petition today to keep six day delivery.

Speak out for a living wage on November 1st

     Some people would say it's crazy to call for a living wage in this economy. Maybe it is a little crazy. But I'll tell you something else - it's working.

     Because of the activism of workers, students, and community members like you, the University of Memphis has taken first steps toward a living wage for their workers. All of last academic year, the United Campus Workers union, Workers Interfaith Network, and the Progressive Student Alliance publicly pushed the University to move to a living wage for all U. of M. workers. Many of you wrote emails and postcards, made phone calls to the University. You lobbied the state legislature. You took part in a speak out on campus, a prayer vigil, and a rally to deliver the hundreds of postcards you gathered for President Shirley Raines.

    The result? After four years of no pay raises, the University implemented a raise of 3% or $750 a year, which ever was greater. The $750 option, called a flat dollar minimum raise, is important because it's especially targeted to low-wage workers. Many custodial workers and other low-wage workers ended up getting 3 times as big of a raise because of this new approach. And it was an approach raised by activists like you!

   The University has also just implemented a one time $1,000 bonus for most full-time workers.
   But before you assume that our work is done, I also want to stress that many current workers at the University still make far below a living wage. Plus, the University has not changed any of its practices or policies about what new workers are paid when they are hired. Many new positions still pay just above minimum wage.

    That's why workers need you to come to a Living Wage Speak Out on Tuesday November 1st at 6:00 p.m. in Brister Hall Room 220.

    At the Speak Out, you'll:

• learn about what pay and working conditions are like for workers right now.
• understand how the first steps toward a living wage were won last academic year.
• get involved in efforts this academic year to push the University to take further steps to a living wage.
• hear from activists in the successful Vanderbilt University campaign for a living wage.

    Directions to Brister Hall: Brister is located on Alumni Ave., near the intersection of Alumni and Patterson St. There are two ways you can enter the building. If you are entering from the Alumni Ave. entrance, you will already be on the second floor when you enter. If you are entering from Wilder Tower (which is attached to Brister Hall), you will need to turn left at the elevators and go up 1 flight of stairs to get to the 2nd floor of Brister Hall.

    Parking info: A few metered spaces are available for visitors in the lot at Mynders and Patterson. There are also metered spots available in the large parking lot across the railroad tracks on Southern. Garage parking is available for $2 an hour in the garage on Zach Curlin, next to Campus School. You may also be able to find free street parking along Walker or Zach Curlin.
   View a University of Memphis campus map.

Help strengthen WIN's work for a living wage. Become a Workers Interfaith Network member today.

Mayor Wharton and City Council Dismantle Workers' Rights, Threaten Living Wage

    In case you missed it, the budget agreement passed by the Memphis City Council last week slammed the City's rank and file workers hard. 125 workers are going to be laid off. Sanitation workers will be offered buyouts, with the goal of reducing the department (which is currently contributing to the city's general fund) down to half its size. Death benefits were taken away from workers, though the City announced yesterday some of those benefits would be restored. Twelve of the thirteen paid holidays workers had were taken away.
    In their haste to pass a budget package - which is still not in writing, by the way - the Council ignored Councilman Joe Brown's assertion that workers' paid holidays were guaranteed by a City ordinance. Now that Mayor Wharton's administration has realized Councilman Brown was right, they're telling the City's rank and file workers they will have to accept a 4.6 percent salary cut.
   This salary cut comes after all the city's unions already negotiated pay and work agreements with the City this spring. In those agreements, workers went without any raises and agreed to absorb health insurance premium increases themselves. The unions upheld their responsibility to negotiate with the City in good faith, and now the City is trying to undo the agreements they've already come to with their workers.
    The agreements between the unions and the City are called memoranda of understanding. They include a procedure for dealing with situations of fiscal emergency. This procedure requires Mayor Wharton's administration to show their books to the unions to prove that a real hardship exists. So far, Mayor Wharton has been unwilling to do this. Instead his administration has urged the unions to "come to the table," without having key knowledge about what the City's financial situation really is.
    Furthermore, the Mayor's proposed 4.6 percent salary cut endangers the living wage resolution that the City Council passed in 2006, in which permanent City workers are to be paid at least $10 an hour. In 2007, the City Council passed another resolution promising temporary City workers at least $12 an hour because they do not receive any kinds of benefits. There are very likely workers being paid right at $10 and $12 an hour right now, and the pay cuts would violate the promise to pay a living wage.
     It's time for the citizens of Memphis to call on Mayor Wharton and City Council members to act in good faith with their workers.
    Here's how you can help:

• Call Mayor Wharton's office at (901) 576-6000 and the City Council office at 576-6786. Tell them a pay cut for the city's rank and file workers is unacceptable. Urge the City to neogiate in good faith with workers' unions.
• Come to the City Council meeting this Tuesday, July 5th at 3:30 p.m.

    No matter what happens in the next couple of weeks with the budget, this attack on the hard-working people who keep our city running is not over. We're working on long-term plans to address this attack, so keep your eyes open for more news from us soon.

   Special thanks to Brad Watkins of the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center and Chad Johnson at AFSCME Local 1733 for their monitoring and reporting on all the budget developments with the City Council. I am drawing heavily on their work in this post.
 
Want to take action with workers seeking justice  and keep up to date on what's happening with City workers? Sign up for email action alerts from Workers Interfaith Network at http://www.workersinterfaithnetwork.org/index/involved/subscribe.htm