Teamsters union OKs pact despite members rejecting it

Bill Knight column for Oct. 25, 26 or 27, 2018

The Teamsters union this month approved implementing a controversial five-year contract with United Parcel Service despite 54 percent of members casting ballots against the pact in a ratification vote announced Oct. 5. The wrongheaded power play sends a bad signal to the rank and file, allies in organized labor and the community, and foes, from the GOP to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Elsewhere, Teamsters Local 705 in Chicago, representing 8,500 workers, on Oct. 16 announced that it plans a strike-authorization vote in early November for a possible work stoppage the week after Thanksgiving. It hasn’t had a walkout since 1997’s national UPS strike.

As to the national Master Agreement (Chicago has a separate UPS agreement), the Teamsters’ constitution requires at least 50 percent of UPS’ hundreds of thousands of Teamsters to vote, and the turnout was 44 percent.

When the ratification results were announced, Denis Taylor, director of the Teamsters’ Package Division, said the union would resume bargaining to seek improvements, but he later said, “The leverage is not there. Certainly, the company understands they’ve got an issue that they’ve got to deal with,’’ reported Bloomberg News.

“The fact that they’re moving to ratify the contract over a ‘no’ vote is a huge betrayal to the members, and I think it’s very damaging to the labor movement as a whole,” said David Levin, an organizer with Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), a reform caucus within the larger union, which has more than 10,000 members nationally. “There’s a lot of attacks against the labor movement, from Right To Work, etc., and it’s a terrible time to be sending workers the message that union leaders can just ignore and override the voices of the members.”

Opponents to the tentative settlement objected to:

* a push for two-tier wages for drivers;

* provisions establishing excessive overtime –70-hour workweeks – during “peak season”;

* creating “combo-drivers” (inside part-time workers who could also be drivers when additional driving work is available), which the company could use for 25 percent of its driving workforce, and they’d top out at $6 less per hour than regular, full-time drivers for doing the same work;

* the union’s abandonment of the Fight For $15 an hour; and

* no additional protections against harassment by management.

Members also rejected several other, smaller contracts, including one representing 11,000 UPS Freight workers, most of whom want to eliminate subcontracting. There, negotiations are set to resume after 62.1 percent of those workers voted against the agreement (the turnout there being 66 percent).

Further, six of 36 supplemental agreements that deal with issues on the Local level, rejected by members, still must be renegotiated, so the complete agreement won’t get final ratification until those are resolved.

“The last UPS contract [in 2013] established a grueling, four-year wage progression for drivers,” reported Jenna Woloshyn, an Oakland, Calif., a UPS Package driver from Teamsters Local 70, “which meant temporary two-tier wages. But eventually all drivers would reach top pay.

“Union negotiators and the company seem to be banking on the hope that current drivers only care about themselves,” she added, “ – never mind that this simply shifts the burden of overtime and weekend work to different people and then pays them less.”

In May, more than 90 percent of members approved a strike authorization vote, something they didn’t do during negotiations for the last contract. When the current contract expired August 1, it was extended.

Chicago’s pact was also extended, but if the last scheduled bargaining sessions this week don’t go well, the Local could cancel the extension, which would permit a strike 30 days later – a peak season for UPS.

Local 705 also objects to the two-tier-wage scheme and demands improvements to the pension plan and health care, particularly for retirees.

Nationally, there were 92,604 eligible votes cast from UPS, Inc. – at 44 percent, a huge increased from the 64,000 who voted on the 2013 UPS contract (which had 47 percent rejecting the settlement) – the recent results were 54 percent no and 46 percent yes.

Teamsters reportedly face dissent in other divisions, too, including aircraft mechanics, who also recently rejected national agreements.           

Based in Atlanta, Ga., UPS reported is making $5 billion in 2017 and predicts this year’s profits to be $6 billion.

“The members know that UPS is making a lot of money, and they want to get what’s owed them,” UPS feeder driver Dave Bernt told the Chicago Sun-Times.

Meanwhile, the price of the Teamsters’ action on the Master Agreement could be incalculable.

Something wicked this way comes – again

Bill Knight column for Oct. 22, 23 or 24, 2018

Some things can’t be – mustn’t be – hidden

Fortunately, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke are initiating actions to disclose facts about sexual abuse of children apparently covered up by high officials in the Catholic Church. Madigan has demanded that the Church must open its “secret files” for independent review, and Burke – who served on the investigative board of laypeople appointed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops – is calling for its renewal.

The latest: four people on Oct. 18 filed suit in Chicago against all six Catholic dioceses in Illinois, months after a Pennsylvania grand jury said more than 1,000 child victims were abused by about 300 priests over 70 years in six dioceses, which concealed the truth there. Also on Oct. 18, the U.S. Justice Department launched an investigation on whether clergy committed federal crimes.

This column is no defense of pedophilia, abuse of authority or institutional coverup, of course. But it’s difficult to weigh in on such wickedness without being so accused.

Evil has occurred, and suspects should be tried and those convicted punished, according to prosecutors and news reports, not just from the Boston Globe’s 2002 stories but decades of investigations by National Catholic Reporter. Oddly, some people who wouldn’t condemn an entire group of people based on crimes by individuals, neighborhoods or a class feel comfortable stereotyping Catholics.

What of similar charges against Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky, Michigan State sports doctor Larry Nassar, Ohio State team doctor Richard Strauss and Syracuse coach Bernie Fine? Are all coaches condemned? Also, hundreds of other victims of abuse were students at mosques and madrassas in Britain, in Orthodox Judaism, and by police officers supervising Boy Scouts for some 40 years, and such charges have been made against former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, and evangelical pastor Heather Larson of the Willow Creek megachurch in suburban Chicago.

Protestant preacher Billy Graham’s grandson, Boz Tchividjian, runs GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment), and he reminds people that such tragic sexual abuse isn’t rare. (In fact, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men are sexually victimized before the age of 18, but “many of these cases are never reported.”)

Tchividjian adds that data compiled by insurance investigators working on behalf of Protestant churches showed “260 reports a year” by Protestant leaders or members, and that compares with “228 credible accusations” against Catholic parishes found in the Church’s 2011 John Jay Report.

“I really believe churches need to enter into a season of lament, acknowledging decades of failure to understand, address and confront these horrors,” Tchividjian said.

Indeed, a report this year by three scholars studying “characteristics of accused child sex offenders” summarized that adult caregivers “take advantage of the disparity of their age, power, authority or strength to impose their desires and interests,” and such violence against the innocents is more often found in families than outside the home.

Gregg Erlandson of Catholic News Service commented, “The crisis is amplified by divisions in the church that some are trying to exploit.”

The best example of that is disgruntled Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who’s long criticized the Pope’s and progressives’ focus on social justice, especially serving the poor and marginalized. The former Vatican diplomat – who lost a power struggle with Pope Benedict and who in 2016 was recalled from his post for participating in insurgents’ efforts to weaken Pope Francis – leveled unsubstantiated accusations of the Pontiff’s complicity, a long diatribe seen as trying to undermine Francis’ papacy more than protect victims.

It’s a reprehensible abuse of power to commit such atrocities, and Pope Francis in part echoes the psychological research, blaming the exploitation of positions of authority, saying “the thirst for power and possessions are so often the root of those evils.”

Meanwhile, the seeming atmosphere of secrecy means no accountability for assailants or bishops, who are no longer trusted to be shepherds of their flocks.

Most Catholics, conservative and progressive, feel profoundly betrayed by bishops, but still adhere to teachings and examples from Catholic voices such as Dorothy Day, Michael Leach, Thomas Merton and Garry Wills, and still believe in the Church and its meaningful sacraments about the Mystery of God.

It’s time for people in pews to reassert that “we are the Church,” not the hierarchy.

St. Paul warned humanity that we fight not against flesh and blood, but against “powers and principalities.”

In 2 Corinthians, he wrote, “We look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen.”

Trump using Dept. of Labor to attack workers, not to defend us

Bill Knight column for Oct. 18, 19 or 20, 2018

The federal Department of Labor for decades was the agency responsible for defending labor law and, by extension, U.S. workers who were supposed to be protected by the National Labor Relations Act, OSHA and various regulations.

Under the Trump administration, however, it seems as if the Labor Department is TARGETING workers, not PROTECTING them.

Last month, the Department of Labor (DoL) took steps to impose certain Christian tenets on employment policies by means of new guidelines and a new administrator.

Workers will be the most affected, followed by taxpayers.

First, “religious freedom” advocate Steven Begakis in August was appointed policy adviser to the DoL’s Wages & Hours Division, which supervises issues such as employment discrimination, family leave, and wage theft. Begakis is a conservative lawyer who’ll help set policies covering areas such as wage equality and family leave.

With policymakers like him, who needs union-busters?

Begakis’ appointment followed DoL’a Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs’ Aug. 10 announcement directing staff “in all their activities ... [to] take into account recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions and White House executive orders that protect religious freedom,” citing cases involving Hobby Lobby and a cake shop, plus other lawsuits that claimed that a fundamentalist brand of Christianity was being suppressed by laws requiring employers to make birth-control available to women workers or equal rights for gay Americans.

To be clear, “religious freedom” in such a context means special consideration for one variation of one faith.

With little subtlety, the directive encourages contractors to discriminate against gay and transgender Americans – and other religions, frankly – based on narrow interpretations of Christianity.

“This is an attempt to encourage business to take taxpayer dollars and then fire people for being transgender,” commented Harper Jean Tobin of the National Center for Transgender Equality. “Religious organizations have ample protections under federal law, but they are not allowed to use federal money to discriminate against people. The language of this directive is so broad and so vague because it is part of a long line of attempts by this administration to sow confusion and encourage any employer to act on their worst prejudices.

“No employers should be allowed to use taxpayer dollars to fire someone because of who they are,” Tobin added.

Indeed, as a group, federal contractors make billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded work – work that is supposed to be governed by strict rules concerning fair business practices.

The new policy and new hire could result in U.S. taxpayers of all faiths, sexual preferences, gender identification – as well as age, race, class, etc. – paying companies to discriminate against fellow U.S. citizens.

The Department of Labor’s moves come on the heels of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Aug. 1 establishment of a “Religious Liberty Task Force” in the Justice Department, and the Department of Health & Human Services’ spring announcement of an HHS rule permitting the imposition of religious viewers on patients’ health care.

Government is increasingly being used not as a shield, but a weapon.