Jobs with Justice coalitions in several major airport locations across the country, including: Seattle, Portland, Denver, St. Louis, Orlando, Washington DC, and Boston are actively supporting the nationwide campaign to organize 40,000 airport security screeners.  This campaign, considered to be the largest union organizing effort in the U.S., includes workers at airports across the country, where union activists and allies are demonstrating support for the women and men who help keep air travel as safe as possible.

Background:

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, AFGE successfully urged the U.S. government to take charge of airport screening from a collection of private employers and make all airport screeners federal employees.  But the legislation that federalized airport screeners, creating the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), also stripped the newly federalized workers of their rights.  The law gave the new TSA sole discretion to decide the terms of employment of the security workforce, including their collective bargaining rights.

President George W. Bush successfully used the fear created by the terrorist attacks to move his anti-union agenda in creating the TSA.  Bush administration officials claimed that union representation of workers

Continue reading JwJ Continues Support for Airport Security Screener Organizing

(Originally published on Working In These Times blog at http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5639/troublemakers_go_to_school_in_boston)

BOSTON—More than 90 union members, students and community activists jammed the SEIU Local 888 union hall here on Saturday for a “Troublemakers School” sponsored by Massachusetts Jobs with Justice.

IBEW Local 2222 Business Manager Myles Calvey gave a rousing welcome to kick things off. “We’re not going to get labor’s problems solved in Washington or on Beacon Hill unless we take a page from the civil rights and gay rights movements,” said Calvey, a former New England telecom strike leader. “We’ve got to be a lot more aggressive so that politicians are forced to deal with our issues. We’ve got make our problems, their problems!”

Calvey was followed by a panel of local organizers from the United Food and Commercial Workers’ Angelica Laundry strike, Service Employees’ Local 1199′s Caritas hospital campaign and American Federation of Government Employee’s Transportation Safety Officers organizing drive. Their presentations were followed by a wide-ranging discussion about organizing strategies and reports from other

Continue reading Troublemakers Go to School in Boston

As President Obama announced in Tampa that High Speed rail jobs were coming to Orlando, local community and labor activists came together to understand the uphill battle for workers accessing these jobs.   Central Florida Jobs with Justice along with the Central Florida AFL-CIO hosted a townhall to discuss how this economic crisis will impact the city’s outlook for jobs.

With over 40 people in attendance, people heard passages from the study Battered by the Storm: How the Safety Net is failing Americans and How to fix it which shows the severity of families quickly falling into poverty.  We also heard from the report Beyond the Quick Fix: ARRA Contracting, Jobs and building a fair recovery that highlighted the lack or transparency and impact of Stimulus dollars on communities of color and low income.

A diverse panel of speakers responded to these reports based on their experiences throughout this economic recession.   Paul Wilson, President of Amaglated Transit Union local 1596 representing Lynx, MV and Grant bus operators, spoke on how local counties use the stimulus dollars on things besides operating

Continue reading Central Florida Townhall and Call to Action on the Economic Crisis