Union Privilege to Make Local Union Contacts

The Union Plus Mortgage and Real Estate Program continues to be popular among union members, including those of the BMWE. Since its inception, there have been several enhancements to the program. One of the latest is the availability of Chase branch coordinators serving union members in a number of metropolitan areas nationwide. Branch coordinators typically arrange home buying seminars and/or address groups of union members and/or leaders where they provide details about the program and highlight its unique benefits. Local Lodge leaders should be aware that these resource people are available for their use at union meetings and other functions and take advantage of their services when possible.

U.S. CEO Pay Out-of-Whack Globally

An AFL-CIO news release in April announced their updated Executive PayWatch website - www.paywatch.org - which gives visitors the tools they need to get the real scoop on CEO pay. CEO pay is growing faster than all major economic indicators - up 23%, according to the New York Times. The average CEO of a major U.S. corporation made $11.9 million in 1999, 476 times what the average blue-collar American worker made. That's up from 42 times more in 1980 and 85 times more in 1990. U.S. CEO pay dwarfs foreign CEO pay. German CEOs make 13 times more than the average German manufacturing employee. In Japan, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio is just 11-to-1. "What looks excessive in the context of U.S. workers is truly outrageous when viewed globally," said AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka. "The global economy is not working for working families when boards of directors hand U.S. CEOs tens of millions of dollars while paying the people who actually do the work less than ten dollars a day." GE's Jack Welch, for example, earned over $90 million in 1999, as much as the total earnings of half of GE's Mexican workforce of 30,000. A GE worker in Mexico makes about $2 an hour. GE also operates in China and India, countries where workers are often paid pennies an hour. Checking the site for the four major railroad CEOs recently, we found that John W. Snow led the pack in 1999, raking in $6,859,054 in salary, bonus and other compensation from CSX. If you add in the $2,813,000 in stock option grants awarded to Snow, that's a total of $9,672,054. And Snow has $1,484,075 in unexercised stock options from previous years. That's not counting the value of perks that CEOs often enjoy such as: free country club memberships, luxury company car or chauffeur service, no interest loans, use of the company resort home or penthouse suite, free financial and tax-planning services. In 1998, David R. Goode, raked in $4,224,858 in salary, bonus and other compensation from Norfolk Southern. If you add in the $1,942,500 in stock option grants awarded to Goode, that's a total of $6,167,358. Robert D. Krebs raked in $1,473,134 in salary, bonus and other compensation from Burlington Northern Santa Fe. If you add in the $3,246,585 in stock option grants awarded to Krebs, that's a total of $4,719,719. And Krebs has $17,061,900 in unexercised stock options from previous years. I'm sure you will all have sympathy for Richard K. Davidson who only raked in $938,095 in salary, bonus and other compensation from Union Pacific. Adding $1,048,422 in stock option grants awarded, that's a total of a paltry $1,986,517 for Davidson in 1998.

Court Rules for Railroads in Crossings Lawsuit

The Journal of Commerce reported on April 19 that the "Supreme Court has given railroads greater protection against being sued over allegedly inadequate warning devices at rail crossings, the scenes of hundreds of fatal accidents each year. The justices, voting 7-2 in a Tennessee case, said railroads are not financially liable if the equipment installed at a grade-level crossing was federally funded. The two dissenters [Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens] said the decision 'defies common sense and sound policy.' Congress has provided states with more than $3 billion since 1975 to increase safety at most of the nation's 170,000 public grade-level crossings. During that time, the number of fatal accidents at crossings has dropped from more than 1,500 a year to 431 in 1998. ... The decision wiped out a $430,765 legal victory Dedra Shanklin had won against Norfolk Southern Railroad after the Oct. 3, 1993, death of her husband, Eddie, whose car was struck by a train at a crossing in Gibson County, Tenn.," the Journal said.

Corporate Bucks Buy China Vote

Congress voted May 24 to give China a blank check to continue its systematic and widespread abuse of human and workers' rights. By a 237-197 margin, the U.S. House approved permanent Normal Trade Relations with China. Estimates show that Big Business poured more than $12 million into its advertising and lobbying blitz to gain access to China's oppressed, low-paid and sometimes imprisoned workforce. "This vote was a choice between casting a vote dictated by conscience or a vote dictated by corporate money. We stood for what's right, but big money won this round," said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. "Congress had a chance to stand up for the brutally oppressed workers in China and the hundreds of thousands of U.S. manufacturing workers who will lose their jobs because of increased imports from the sweatshops of China. Instead, it turned its back on Chinese and American workers." Sweeney told a morning-after press conference, "I am deeply angry that the president working families elected chose to divide progressive elected officials and their core constituencies at a time when we need to be unified and mobilizing around Social Security, health care, education and other crucial working family issues." Sweeney vowed to mobilize working families around a Working Families Agenda and
global fairness and to elect candidates who support these issues.

Congress Defeats Two Health Bills

Congress acted on several bills affecting working families in June, defeating patients' rights legislation and banning the federal government from issuing new ergonomics standards. The U.S. Senate rejected the labor-backed Patients' Bill of Rights amendment to the Department of Defense appropriations bill. The Vote was 51-48, largely along party lines, with four Republicans joining 44 Democrats. House lawmakers voted 220-203 to retain a provision in a Labor, Health and Human Services appropriations bills that bans OSHA from going forward with proposed ergonomics rules. The labor-supported rule, proposed in November, is designed to reduce work-related musculoskeletal disorders that injure nearly two million workers each year and force some 600,000 to take time off from work.

La Causa: A History of the United Farm Workers Union

La Causa traces the 38-year struggle of the UFW to obtain justice and dignity for all workers who toil in the fields of American agribusiness. The La Causa exhibit will be on display at the George Meany Memorial Archives in Silver Spring, Maryland from June 26 through October 27, 2000. Exhibition hours are Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The Archives are closed on weekends and holidays. The United Farm Workers of America was founded in southern California, in the small San Joaquin Valley agricultural town of Delano in 1962, and led by Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Arturo Rodriguez and others. The historical records of the UFW have been deposited at the Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs (Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan) for over thirty years. Chavez believed that the preservation of union records was essential for historians, journalists and other researchers as well as present and future unionists. The UFW's historical legacy is still an active blueprint for organizing and collective bargaining in the 21st Century.