NEW YORK, NY (August 8, 2018) — The Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) celebrates with the courageous people of Missouri who stood up to wealthy special interests by voting NO on Proposition A, defeating a coordinated corporate campaign to make Missouri the nation’s newest so-called “right-to-work” state. If passed, the ballot measure would have decimated wages, benefits, and rights in Missouri’s workplaces—while failing to deliver on its proponents’ promises of more jobs, higher wages, and more freedom for workers. Though the fully-fledged corporate assault on working people’s rights marches onward, we applaud the everyday Missourians who turned out to vote against this disastrous policy, which threatened to reverse the gains in wages, benefits, and rights that were fought for and won by workers committed to fairer, safer and more equal workplaces.

Have you heard? The new Union Plus Scholarship application is now open! Since 1991, the Union Plus Scholarship Program has awarded more than $4.3 million to students of working families who want to begin or continue their post-secondary education. Apply online today – and start your application ahead of the January 31, 2019 deadline: http://unionplus.deals/union68528

Only public employees in states with full collective bargaining make as much as their private-sector peers, according to a new report from EPI. Their counterparts in “right-to-work” states and states that prohibit collective bargaining earn lower wages and compensation than their private-sector peers.

In Eliminating Fair Share Fees and Making Public Employment “Right-to-Work” Would Increase the Pay Penalty for Working in State and Local Government, Jeffrey H. Keefe, a professor emeritus  in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University, examines the effects of collective bargaining and union security on public employees’ wages and compensation.

The First National Guild of Healthcare Providers of the Lower Extremity/OPEIU Guild 45 is celebrating a major legislative victory with today’s signing into law of the VA MISSION Act*, which includes language that reclassifies podiatrists as podiatric surgeons within the VA Health Administration and puts them in the same pay category as their allopathic and osteopathic peers.

This represents the largest advancement for federally employed podiatrists since 1976 and is the first bill specific to podiatry passed by the United States Congress.

The Supreme Court issued a 5–4 decision Monday in Epic Systems v. Lewis allowing employers to deprive their workers of their right to sue collectively. Its ruling, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, blasts a massive hole through post–New Deal labor law, hobbling employees’ ability to recover in court when their employers underpay them. It is difficult to overstate how devastating Epic Systems is to labor rights in America—and how far Gorsuch strays from federal law in order to implement his preferred economic policy.

Watch this video from the Solidarity Center, AFL-CIO and ITUC about efforts to pass an ILO standard on gender-based violence at work. Employers, government and labor representatives will debate a draft gender-based violence at work standard beginning May 28 at the UN in Geneva. Six-hundred workers from around the world will be there, working to ensure the final standard is strong. Watch this video and see what you can do to help.

https://youtu.be/dOkcez2nwvg

OPEIU has been awarded first place in the general excellence category for web design and content by the The Metro New York Labor Communications Awards. The award honors excellence in all facets of website design and content, including timely and relevant news, user interface and accessibility and the effective use of graphic, typographic, layout and structural elements.

 

OPEIU President Richard Lanigan was also honored for his op-ed, He’s Now on the Supreme Court, But Does He Care About Working People, which appeared in White Collar, Issue 537, Spring/Summer 2017. All issues of White Collar can be found under the Member Resources tab.

MT. CLEMENS, Mich. (PAI)—If you’re a registered nurse and your union contract with two hospitals includes safe-staffing ratios, what do you do if the hospitals break those pact provisions?

The answer from Office and Professional Employees Local 40, which represents 1,000 nurses at two hospitals in the upscale Detroit suburb of Mount Clemens, Mich., is you hammer at the issue in bargaining sessions, file labor law-breaking complaints with the National Labor Relations Board – and raise hell in public.

Which is what the local did, convening a Town Hall meeting in Mount Clemens on the evening of April 19 to tell the community what’s going on, and take questions, Local President Jeff Morawski said in a pre-meeting telephone interview.

Safe staffing is a nationwide problem, as insurers lean on hospitals to cut costs by cutting down the number of nurses available per shift. The firms’ tactic is to deny reimbursements for claims, arguing they’re paying too much for too many people. One result is doctors’ short visits with patients.