Allegiant flight attendants picket headquarters

Excerpted and reposted from: http://www.reviewjournal.com/business/aviation/allegiant-flight-attendants-picket-headquarters

After two years of on-again, off-again negotiations, Allegiant Travel Co. flight attendants have made little headway in their negotiations with management to forge their first union contract.

But as about 20 of them picketed in front of the company headquarters on Wednesday, they had received a bit of a boost over the weekend in their efforts to pressure the company by highlighting operating snafus at the Allegiant Air unit. An Allegiant flight from McCarran International Airport on Sunday that arrived at Mesa, Ariz., four hour and 20 minutes late received international attention when a passenger posted to YouTube a video of passengers breaking out in a spontaneous rendition of the song, “I Believe I Can Fly.”

“We’re hoping that Maury (chairman and CEO Maurice Gallagher Jr.) will being to realize the value that employees bring to the company and negotiate seriously,” said Debra Petersen-Barber, a flight attendant and lead negotiator on behalf of about 600 flight attendants. “There is also a board of directors, and we’re hoping some of them will stand up to (Gallagher) and say, ‘Enough is enough.’”

The flight attendants voted for representation by the Transport Workers Union in December 2010. Talks began the following June but have been stalled over several issues for the past nine months.

Company spokesman Brian Davis declined to comment on specifics.
“Management is interested in attacking issues, not each other,” he said. “We’re working with the union in good faith on a range of issues and trying to reach solutions beneficial to both.”

Although a number of disagreements have cropped up, the three main areas outlined by Petersen-Barber include:

— A dues check, where union dues are automatically deducted from pay much like taxes. Gallagher has adamantly opposed this, but the union claims it is necessary to fund itself.

— So-called duty regs, allowing flight attendants to receive compensation for time on a shift where they are not actually working on the plane, such as during major delays due to mechanical problems. The company has said the flight attendants are already fairly compensated, but Petersen-Barber said they are more interested in making the company call in fresh crews for unusually long shifts rather than money.

— The length of the contract. The company wants a long term for financial certainty, but the union prefers a short one the first time so any shortcomings can be corrected.

“We want this company to be successful,” Petersen-Barber said. “We just want a fair contract.”

According to Davis, the ill-starred Flight 582 to Mesa pushed back from the gate four different times, and had to return twice due to unspecified mechanical problems and once due to a passenger illness. The latter instance necessitated changing plans.

This led to about 90 minutes of waiting in Concourse D at McCarran and two other stretches of one hour and 20 minutes each on the plane in temperatures of about 110 degrees. The limited cooling capabilities of Allegiant’s MD-80 series jet liners aggravated the wait on board.
The passenger-made YouTube video had already received nearly one million view hits by Wednesday afternoon and several other versions were added. Although it shows passengers in a party mood during the delays, Petersen-Barber said flight attendants in other parts of the plane were “subjected to verbal abuse, being called horrible names.”

Flights attendants could strike if other methods don’t lead to a contract, and the company has already trained people elsewhere in the company to take their places. But the attendants says they want to avoid this scenario.

“I’m proud the way Allegiant makes profits, but I am not proud of the way they have treated us,” said flight attendant Diane Chimko. Recalling her days at Continental Airlines when labor strife was rampant, she added, “I never want to do that again.”

The Most Dishonest Words in American Politics: ‘Right to Work’

Excerpted and reposted from: http://www.alternet.org/labor/right-work-unions-collective-bargaining?page=0,0

Right-to-work measures appeal to freedom and choice, but they’re all about busting unions.

“Right to work” is the most dishonest phrase in American political discourse. It sounds like it’s defending people’s right to earn a living. But as used by its supporters, it means making it impossible for workers to form an effective union, couched in the language of “freedom” and “choice.”

Specifically, it means laws banning “union shops,” in which everyone in a workplace has to join the union or pay a fee to cover the cost of union representation. Twenty-four states have such laws. All were in the South and West until last year, when Indiana and Michigan enacted them. Michigan’s law was rammed through the Republican-dominated legislature in a lame-duck session last December.

The Michigan law was “pretty devastating for the labor movement,” says Erin Johansson of American Rights at Work. It came in the state where the United Auto Workers’ six-week occupation of General Motors plants in Flint in 1937 won the victory that opened the doors for unions throughout American industry, the state whose union labor defined the working-class prosperity of World War II to the 1970s.

Both Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and Dick DeVos, the heir to the multibillion-dollar Amway fortune who bankrolled the campaign for the law, stuck to the party line about “freedom.” Snyder said the law would give workers “the freedom to choose” and unions “an opportunity to be more responsible to their workers,” because instead of automatically collecting dues, they’d have to show workers “a value proposition.”
“Absolute horseshit,” responds Ed Ott, former head of the New York City Central Labor Council. “This is a total offensive against workers. They don’t want workers to have any say. After workers vote for a union, they don’t want them to maintain membership.”

This year, “right to work” measures were introduced in 17 states, according to Peggy Shorey, director of state government relations at the AFL-CIO. Ten were defeated, including those in Missouri, Kentucky, and New Hampshire, where Gov. John Lynch vetoed one in 2011. Republicans in the Ohio legislature introduced one in early May, but the state senate president said he didn’t want to give Democrats an issue to raise funds on. (Ohio voters overwhelmingly overturned draconian limits on unions in 2011.) Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced one in January, but it hasn’t gotten a committee hearing.

“It’s striking that they were not successful in passing it in Missouri,” says Shorey. The most significant measures still pending, she says, are in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. In North Carolina, House Speaker Thom Tillis proposed making the state’s “right to work” law and a ban on public-worker unions an amendment to its constitution, after declaring that he wanted to keep North Carolina “the least unionized state in the United States.” In Pennsylvania, the sponsor is Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, chair of the State Government committee, who also sponsored the state’s voter-ID law and fulminates against “illegal alien invaders.”

To read more click here: http://www.alternet.org/labor/right-work-unions-collective-bargaining?page=0,0

Wal-Mart hiring more temporary workers May be a strategy to mitigate higher health care costs

Excperted and reposted from: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-walmart-temporary-workers-20130613,0,4015060.story

Wal-Mart Stores Inc has in recent months been only hiring temporary workers, which it calls “flexible associates,” at many of its U.S. stores.

A Reuters survey of 52 stores run by the largest U.S. private employer in the past month, including one in every U.S. state, showed that 27 were hiring only temps, 20 were hiring a combination of regular full, part-time and temp jobs, and five were not hiring at all. The survey was based on interviews with managers, sales staff and human resource department employees at the stores.

The new hiring policy is to ensure “we are staffed appropriately,” when the stores are busiest and is not a cost-cutting move, said company spokesman David Tovar. Temporary workers, he said, are paid the same starting pay as other workers.

Using temporary workers enables the company to have adequate staff on busy weeknights and weekends without having to hire additional full-time staff.

Tovar said fewer than 10 percent of its U.S. workforce is temporary, compared to 1 to 2 percent before 2013. The majority of its workforce is still regular full-time staff, he said.

Walmart U.S. Chief Executive Bill Simon also confirmed that the company is hiring more temp workers.
“Their hours flex by the needs of the business from time to time,” he told reporters the day before Wal-Mart’s annual meeting last week.

The hiring strategy could save Wal-Mart money by trimming labor costs at a time when its margins remain under pressure.
It also could set an example for some other companies as they look for ways to cushion themselves from a potential rise in healthcare costs next year as a result of President Barack Obama’s health care reforms, according industry experts and retail executives. Tovar said that the move wasn’t related to these reforms, commonly known as Obamacare, but he did acknowledge that it could take a year or more for temporary workers to receive health care benefits. Turnover in retail often occurs within the first few months.

Wal-Mart’s U.S. staffing has remained relatively flat even as more stores have opened in recent years. At the end of fiscal 2013, Wal-Mart had “more than 1.3 million” workers in the United States, the majority of them at 4,005 Walmart U.S. stores, compared with “approximately 1.4 million” workers in the United States at the end of fiscal 2009, the majority of them at 3,656 Walmart U.S. stores, according to the company’s annual filings for both years.

The temporary workers are often being hired on 180-day contracts, according to the survey of Wal-Mart stores. The temps could eventually be hired for a regular full or part-time job or they could reapply for their temporary position, the Wal-Mart staff said.

Temp workers typically have a completion date after which they have to reapply for work, but part-time employees work fewer hours than full-time workers indefinitely.

“Full-time people are getting slimmer and slimmer,” said a supervisor at a store in North Carolina, who asked not to be named, as did other store-level employees who were interviewed for this story, because she is not authorized to talk to the media.

She said that the five new employees hired this year at the store are all temps and hours of existing employees are being cut.

“Everybody who comes through the door I hire as a temporary associate,” said a store manager in Alaska, who asked not to be identified. “It’s a company direction at the present time.”

“Long-term associates are particularly distraught by this short-term hiring as many are looking for more hours and full-time work,” said Mary Pat Tifft, a member of the Organization United for Respect at Walmart, or OUR Walmart, a group of current and former Walmart employees campaigning for better wages, hours and benefits. It does not define itself as a union, although its members do pay $5 monthly dues. OUR Walmart is part of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.

Hiring temps is “one strategy” that retailers could use to mitigate the potential rise in healthcare costs due to the new healthcare care law, said Neil Trautwein, a healthcare lobbyist for the National Retail Federation. “Another strategy could be employing more part-time employees.”

Wal-Mart already has begun to change the healthcare plans it provides workers. Last November, it said that newly hired part-time employees would have to work a minimum of 30 hours a week, up from 24 hours previously, before they can qualify for health coverage.

Its U.S. employees also faced an 8-36 percent increase in premiums in 2013, the company said at the time, prompting some workers to forego insurance. The majority of eligible employees at Wal-Mart sign up for the company’s health insurance.

Under the reforms, large companies must next year offer healthcare to 95 percent of employees who work more than 30 hours a week or pay a penalty of $2,000 per worker for the entire workforce.

When the work hours are so variable that the employer is not certain whether an employee qualifies, they can elect to determine eligibility by measuring hours during a period of up to 12 months, a strategy Wal-Mart said it plans to use.

Temp workers may therefore have to wait a year - provided they are still employed at the company - to find out if they are eligible.

“A temporary worker may never get that far,” said Barbara McGeoch, a principal and health benefits expert at consulting firm Mercer’s legal, regulatory and legislative group. “They may never get the coverage.”

Bankruptcy Scheme Shafts Coal Miners Patriot Coal wins in bankruptcy court, reneges on retiree benefits

Excerpted and reposted from: http://inthesetimes.org/article/15131/bankruptcy_scam_shafts_coal_miners/


BY Leo Gerard, United Steelworkers President

Five years after its creation, Patriot employs about 4,200 and bears inherited responsibility for five times that many retirees.

When a kid snatches an old lady’s purse, it’s punished as a crime. But when a corporation manipulates bankruptcy law to deny thousands of retired coal miners benefits they labored their entire lives to earn, it’s endorsed by federal court.

Late last month, a bankruptcy judge sanctioned a scheme in which corporations create shill companies with a dram of assets and a sea of retiree responsibilities. Such a debt-burdened outfit quickly goes bust. Bankruptcy court, the judge said, can’t consider the intent of a company’s creation, but can approve a plan to reorganize it by betraying decades of promises to retirees.

Corporations have reneged many times before on pledges for pensions and retiree medical benefits. This, however, is a new twist on that old scam. It’s alarming because what the bankruptcy court approved provides a template for companies angling to reduce costs by abandoning their commitments to retirees. It’s a swindle that must be stopped.

Of course, lots of people get hurt in bankruptcies, not just workers. All kinds of creditors—from the local accounting firm to the big copy paper provider—get stuck with cents on the dollar owed. But this case, the Patriot Coal Corp. case, is different. That’s because Patriot’s bankruptcy was deliberate. Peabody Energy kneecapped Patriot on purpose at the outset.

“There can be no Patriot Coal stock to dispute, or tonnage payments to negotiate, or companies to reorganize, unless there are men and women willing to bend their knees to excavate coal.”

So said Bankruptcy Judge Kathy A. Surratt-States in her decision. Peabody and Patriot would not exist without those bended knees.
The judge also noted the suffering of workers, more than 900 of whom wrote to her:

Many discuss the horrendous conditions of the coal mines when those individuals first began to work, and how hard it was to achieve the promises made pursuant to both the previous and the current CBAs [collective bargaining agreements]. Some discuss how physically, mentally and emotionally grueling being a coal miner was, many of whom worked as coal miners for over 30 years—a sacrifice made with due consideration of the promised health care from cradle to grave. …

Many coal miners talk of six (6) and seven (7) day work-weeks, of over 12 hours a day. Some letters discuss various injuries sustained while working in coal mines, limbs of self and relatives lost, and the lives lost of relatives and friends … And, as counsel for the UMWA [United Mine Workers of America] so eloquently stated, many current and retired coal miners do not have cost spreading abilities, because, for many, cost spreading “means cutting your pills in half. Cost spreading abilities for retirees means making a choice today over medicine or food.”

And then she said none of it mattered. She contended she was forbidden from considering that. She also insisted that under bankruptcy law she couldn’t take into account whether Peabody, the world’s largest private-sector coal company, deliberately established Patriot in such a way that it would fail so that it could receive sanction through bankruptcy to desert its retiree health care obligations.

Peabody “spun off” Patriot coal in 2007 in what sounds like a pretty bad deal for Patriot. Peabody gave Patriot 13.3 percent of Peabody’s coal reserves and about 40 percent of Peabody’s health care liabilities.
Patriot showed a fondness for debt, however. In 2008, it bought Magnum Coal Co., a similarly debt-hobbled firm. Arch Coal set up Magnum in 2005 by giving it 12.3 percent of Arch assets and 96.7 percent of Arch’s retiree health care liabilities.

Five years after its creation, Patriot employs about 4,200 and bears inherited responsibility for five times that many retirees.
It’s no wonder then, that by 2010, saddled with debt loaded on it by both Peabody and Arch, Patriot began losing money. It filed for bankruptcy in 2012.

The bankruptcy judge explained it this way: “There are several events that catalyzed Debtors’ [Patriot’s] bankruptcy filing. Above all other reasons however are the liabilities that Debtors [Patriot] inherited from Peabody and Arch.”

Patriot’s obligations to retirees and their family members exceeded $1.6 billion. But more than 90 percent of the miners owed these benefits never worked a day for Patriot. They were employed by Peabody, Arch and their subsidiaries.

The bankruptcy judge approved a plan under which Patriot would replace that obligation with a $300 million fund—a fund worth less than 19 percent of what was promised the retirees. Also, Patriot would place in the fund royalty payments that the bankrupt company contends could be worth “tens of millions” of dollars. Finally, the UMWA would receive 35 percent ownership of the bankrupt company—an “asset” the court contended could be sold to help finance the retiree health care fund.
None of this gets close to covering $1.6 billion in obligations. Thousands of miners and retirees have protested Patriot’s efforts to escape its commitments, marching in the streets of St. Louis and Charleston, W.Va. And the UMWA, which represents about 40 percent of Patriot’s hourly workforce, has said it will appeal.

The judge noted that the bankruptcy code requires that the court treat all parties fairly and equitably and that this standard was intended to disperse the burden of saving a company and to ensure that debtors did not seek reorganization on the backs of retirees.

Still, the judge allowed Patriot to reorganize on the backs of retirees. And on the backs of current workers whose labor contract will be broken and whose pay and benefits will be slashed.

When employers promise pensions or retiree health care, workers count on it as deferred compensation. It is money earned now but received later. When a bankruptcy judge approves rescinding those earned benefits, the court grants the corporation authorization to take money out of workers’ wallets—permission to pickpocket. It’s a crime when committed on the street. It’s a crime bankruptcy courts should forbid when it’s clear the failed company was set up to go bust and rob retirees of earned benefits. If the UMWA loses on appeal, Congress must change the federal bankruptcy code to forbid this new method of mugging workers.

Interns win huge victory in labor lawsuit against fox

Excerpted and reposted from: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/interns-win-huge-victory-labor-566360

In a ruling that is likely to be scrutinized throughout Hollywood — and maybe corporate America at large — a federal judge on Tuesday handed a couple of the interns suing Fox Searchlight a victory on summary judgment and also certified a class action over the internship programs of Fox Entertainment Group.

The lawsuit was first brought in late 2011 by two interns — Alex Footman and Eric Glatt — who both worked on Fox Searchlight’s Black Swan and claimed that the company’s unpaid internship program violated minimum wage and overtime laws.

Read the ruling here: hollywoodreporter.com/sites/default/files/custom/Documents/fox_interns.pdf

The lawsuit then got bigger, with amended claims brought by added named plainitffs such as Kanene Gratts, who worked on Searchlight’s 500 Days of Summer as well as Eden Antalik, who participated in the FEG internship program. To prevail, they would need to jump several hurdles, including showing that the training programs set up weren’t for the advantage of the trainees.

On Tuesday, Federal Judge William Pauley issued a ruling that is very favorable to the suing interns.

Regarding Footman and Glatt, the judge grants summary judgment to them that Searchlight was their “employer,” as that term is defined in the Fair Standards Labor Act and New York Labor Laws.

Fox attempted to convince Judge Pauley that the production companies — like Lake of Tiers Inc. instead of Searchlight — were responsible for hiring and controlling the interns, but the judge didn’t buy it. Judge Pauley writes that “Searchlight’s power to fire Black Swan production staff was unbridled,” that “Searchlight closely supervised work on Black Swan,” that “the crew of Black Swan was tied to Searchlight, not Lake of Tears,” and so forth.

The judge also looked at whether the internship program qualified as a bona fide training program under the Labor Department’s six criteria for determining whether an internship might be unpaid. These factors include whether the internship is similar to training that would be given in an educational environment, whether it is for the benefit of the intern, whether the intern displaces regular employees, whether the employer derives immediate advantage, whether the intern isn’t necessarily entitled to a job after the conclusion of the internship, and the understanding about no entitlement to wages.

PHOTOS: Top 10 Legal Disclaimers in Hollywood

After going through the experiences of Footman and Glatt on Black Swan, here’s what Judge Pauley concludes:

“Considering the totality of the circumstances, Glatt and Footman were classified improperly as unpaid interns and are ‘employees’ covered by the FLSA and NYLL. They worked as paid employees work, providing an immediate advantage to their employer and performed low-level tasks not requiring specialized training. The benefits they may have received — such as the knowledge of how a production or accounting office functions or references for future jobs — are the results of simply having worked as any other employee works, not of internships designed to be uniquely educational to the interns and of little utility to the employer. They received nothing approximating the education they would receive in an academic setting or vocational school. This is a far cry from [the Supreme Court’s decision in] Walling, where trainees impeded the regular business of the employer, worked only in their own interest and provided no advantage to the employer. Glatt and Footman do not fall within the narrow ‘trainee’ exception to the FLSA’s broad coverage.”

Gratts, who completed a similar internship on (500) Days of Summer, was not as lucky. The judge grants the defendant’s motion that her claims are time-barred.

But Judge Pauley’s decision doesn’t end there.

The federal judge in New York has certified a class action that will explore internships throughout the corporate departments at Fox Entertainment Group. Unlike a fellow judge who recently refused to certify a class action for some 3,000 fashion magazine interns working at Hearst, this judge sees commonality and the other factors that are required to move forward with such a class action.

Specifically, the judge rules “Antalik has identified several common questions relevant to determining NYLL violations, including: (1) whether Defendants derived an immediate advantage from interns’ work, (2) whether interns displaced regular employees, and (3) whether FEG’s internship program was for the benefit of interns.”

The judge adds, “Here, the relatively small recoveries available to individual plaintiffs make a class action a more efficient mechanism.”
The interns were represented by the law firm of Outten & Golden, which has now been appointed as class counsel.

Fox issued a statement to The Hollywood Reporter on the ruling:
“We are very disappointed with the court’s rulings. We believe they are erroneous, and will seek to have them reversed by the 2nd Circuit as quickly as possible.”

COALITION OF FLIGHT ATTENDANTS COMMENDS TSA FOR KEEPING KNIVES OFF PASSENGER PLANES

The 90,000-strong Coalition of Flight Attendant Unions today celebrated the success of its campaign to keep knives off planes and commended the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for holding the line against weapons on flights.

“We promised ‘No Knives on Planes Ever Again,’ and today that promise was kept,” the Flight Attendant Coalition announced. “Terrorists armed only with knives killed thousands of Americans on 9/11/2001. As the women and men on the front lines in the air, we vowed to do everything in our power to protect passengers and flight crews from harm and prevent that type of atrocity from happening ever again. We commend the TSA for revising its policy based on input from front line aviation workers with the greatest stake in the rule change. The result is better security policy and the assurance that our nation’s aviation security system continues to be vigilant for knives that could be used in a terrorist attack or criminal act against passengers or crew.”

Five unions representing 90,000 Flight Attendants from across the industry quickly mobilized after the TSA announced plans on March 5, 2013 to allow knives with blades up to 2.36 inches long back onto aircraft cabins for the first time since 9/11. Knives in the hands of terrorists or mentally ill or drunk or drugged passengers would have posed a clear threat to everyone in the air and in airport secure areas.

On May 6, 2013, each of the coalition unions representing Flight Attendants joined with TSA screeners, pilots, law enforcement officers and airline passengers to file a legal petition to the TSA against the rule change that would have permitted knives in the aircraft cabin.

Administrator John Pistole demonstrated leadership and sound judgment by responding to this petition and other stakeholder feedback. Today, the Administrator has determined that knives will remain on the official “prohibited items list” governing what airline passengers may carry on their persons or in carry-on bags onto planes.

The Coalition of Flight Attendant Unions was quickly joined by organizations representing virtually everyone else potentially affected by a new knife policy, including TSA security officers, pilots, gate agents, federal air marshals, and airline passengers. The Flight Attendants thank the American Federation of Government Employees representing TSA Security Officers, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, FlyersRights.org, the nation’s largest organization representing air travelers, the Coalition of Pilots Associations, the United Airlines chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association, the families of Betty Ong, Sara Low and Alfred Marchand as well as Airlines for America, the trade association representing U.S. airlines.

Flight Attendants also wish to thank Members of Congress from both parties for their crucial support. House Homeland Security Members Bennie Thompson (D-MS), Cedric Richmond (D-LA), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) and Eric Swalwell (D-CA) were instrumental in pushing for a process that would include input from aviation stakeholders.

Congressmen Ed Markey (D-MA) and Michael Grimm (R-NY) led the charge against knives in the aircraft cabin by introducing the No Knives Act of 2013 within days of the policy announcement. Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Kristin Gillibrand (D-NY), the late Frank Lautenberg (DNJ) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ) co-sponsored the “Keep Knives Out of Our Skies Act.”

Paris Las Vegas, Bally’s dealers vote to join Transport Workers Union

Excperted and reposted from: http://www.reviewjournal.com/business/organized-labor/paris-las-vegas-ballys-dealers-vote-join-transport-workers-union


Casino dealers at two of the Strip’s most popular resorts have overwhelmingly voted to join the Transport Workers Union, a union official said Monday.

Dealers at Paris Las Vegas late Friday voted 105 to 26, while Bally’s dealers voted 183 to 13 on Saturday to seek union representation. Both properties are owned by Caesars Entertainment Corp.

The Transport Workers Union, which arrived in Las Vegas in 2000, represents dealers at Wynn Las Vegas and Caesars Palace. The union does not represent dealers at Wynn’s sister property, Encore.

“We are ready to sit down and negotiate separate contracts,” TWU Gaming Director Joe Carbon said. “We are trying to work together to reach an equitable contract.”

As of Monday, no contract negotiations were scheduled. Gary Thompson, a spokesman with Caesars Entertainment, said the company had no comment.

In July, 89 percent of casino dealers at Caesars Palace ratified an 8½-year contract that includes job security, seniority rights, and other workplace protections. Some 560 Caesars Palace dealers voted to be represented by the union in 2007.

The Grim Rapper warns MTA riders to ‘stand back’ from the tracks in subway

Excerpted and reposted  from: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/mta-puts-rap-tracks-article-1.1361397


The Grim Reaper rides the subway.

The skeletal figure can be seen standing on the platform edge as a 400-ton train races into the station, the rush of air blasts and billows his black hood and cape.

He walks silently through a subway car.

He glides up a station escalator, looking right into your eyes.

These are three scenes from a public service message by Transport Workers Union Local 100. The subject is death, or rather, how to avoid death by train.

The public service message comes in the form of a rap music video. I know, that sounds lame. Public service message-rap music video sounds like a recipe for disaster — three minutes of your life you won’t get back.

But this is a surprisingly good and impressive bit of work. The video takes on a serious subject, but manages at times to have fun with the catchy refrain “stand back,” as in stand back from the yellow line. With no solution to the carnage in sight, the production won’t be outdated anytime soon.

Trains and riders collided 657 times between 2008 and 2012, according to MTA data. I say ‘collided’ because it’s not uncommon for people to walk into the sides of trains that are entering, departing or idling in stations. These stumblers usually have had more than a few cocktails.

Nearly 230 riders, approximately 35%, were struck after they fainted, tripped or descended to the roadbed intentionally, sometimes to retrieve property dropped to the tracks, according to the MTA data. This group also includes the rare instances in which a lunatic pushes another person from a platform.

About 26% — 175 poor souls — killed themselves or attempted to commit suicide by train. A very small group — nine riders — fell between subway cars.

As of Sunday, the latest to die was a deejay who went to the tracks at about 1 a.m. Saturday at the Wakefield/241st St. station in the Bronx to retrieve an iPhone that he dropped, officials said. Francisco Diego Jr., of the Bronx, was just 22.

Motorman Noah Rodriguez, now assigned to the union hall, raps about such incidents in the video, using the transit code 12-9 for body on the tracks:

“Every time I hear about a 12-9/that means somebody didn’t stay behind the yellow line.

Or they dropped something on the tracks/and just had to get it back.
But they ain’t make it back up in time.

Now there are rules you should follow if you drop/something of yours, call a transit worker or a cop.

STOP if you think you can outrun, you’re insane/that’s more than 400 tons of a train.”

Trust me. It works when Rodriguez, straight outta the subway, raps it.
Local 100 has a three-point plan to reduce subway deaths: slow trains entering the stations, put more transit workers on platforms and give token booth clerks the ability to cut track power from their posts.

The MTA has rejected or been silent on all three, opting instead for pilot programs testing longer-term strategies that may or may not be feasible, like a network of sensors. The sensors conceivably would detect when someone is on the tracks that triggers an alert to any approaching trains.
In the meantime, stand back.

Reckoning Nears for Detroit

Excerpted and reposted from: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324423904578523521751530436.html


DETROIT—Detroit’s emergency manager plans to call unions and creditors to a meeting in mid-June amid signs he is laying the groundwork to take the city into bankruptcy within a matter of months.


Kevyn Orr, appointed by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder in March to take control of the long-struggling city, plans to use the meeting to present a detailed restructuring plan for Detroit’s liabilities, which he says total about $17 billion.

See some of the assets owned by the city that could be at risk in a bankruptcy filing.

Over the coming weeks, Mr. Orr is expected to ask the city’s largest unions, pension funds, creditors and bondholders for concessions. It is unclear whether such moves could stave off bankruptcy—or pave the way for it by serving as a template for a court-supervised reorganization.
A bankruptcy filing likely would be the largest ever by a U.S. municipality in terms of debt outstanding, surpassing that of Jefferson County, Ala. It would follow a decades-long decline of the onetime industrial power, whose population fell 25% from 2000 to 2010 to about 700,000, according to the Census Bureau. In 1950, Detroit crested at nearly two million people.

Stymied by a flight of residents and businesses to the suburbs, reductions in state aid and a crash in real-estate values, Detroit borrowed heavily to meet operating costs and payments on long-term liabilities, including pensions and health care for retired city workers.

On average, since 2008, Detroit has spent $100 million more a year than it collected in taxes and other revenue.

In March, Mr. Snyder appointed Mr. Orr, who has the power under state law to run the city, break union contracts and sell city assets. Last month, one-term Mayor Dave Bing announced he wouldn’t run for re-election along with a majority of City Council members.

On June 15, the city is due to make a debt payment estimated at more than $30 million, according to a person familiar with the matter. It is possible Mr. Orr will decide not to make the payment to conserve cash, this person said.

Mr. Orr confirmed in an interview that a debt payment is coming, but declined to comment on its amount or whether the city intended to pay.
Detroit had $64 million cash on hand in April but owed $226 million in payments on pensions and other obligations, forcing the city to delay paying its bills to stay afloat, Mr. Orr wrote in a report last month.

In an interview late last week, Mr. Orr said he planned to call the meeting with creditors this month to “at least attempt to have a mature and sober discussion” outside of bankruptcy court about the city’s dire financial straits and the need for better repayment terms on its debt. Mr. Orr pegged the chances of success outside court at 50-50.

Mr. Orr said he sent a letter to the city’s unions last week seeking talks over concessions and several unions said they are willing to come to the table.

“The question of bankruptcy isn’t entirely up to me,” Mr. Orr said, adding the city may avoid the move if two or three big creditors agree to better terms on their debt.

Union representatives criticized city leaders for failing to implement cost-saving reforms. Some dismiss the idea that Mr. Orr might push Detroit into bankruptcy.

“I think it’s a scare tactic,” said Ed McNeil, assistant to American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 25 President Al Garrett, the city’s largest union for municipal workers. “It’s been something like six times that the city was going to go bankrupt. But it never happened and they never had a payless payday.”

Creditors have largely remained mum, waiting to see Mr. Orr’s plan. At least two representatives for creditors approached him after a recent speech in New York, saying they were ready to talk, said a person familiar with the matter.

Lyle Fitterer, managing director at Wells Capital Management, which owns Detroit water and sewer bonds, said Monday “it will be very hard to get all the parties to come to an agreement” to avoid bankruptcy. He said any restructuring plan Mr. Orr lays out to unions, bondholders and others ultimately could serve as a “prepackaged bankruptcy” to be presented to a judge.

Up to now, Gov. Snyder and Detroit elected officials have said they want to avoid using bankruptcy to clean up the city’s mess. But in recent days, their positions have softened.

Mr. Snyder would have the final say on a filing. He said his concerns about using the Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy process could be reduced if Mr. Orr crafts a road map to guide Detroit in and out of court in a matter of months.

Mayor Bing said in an interview last week, “I don’t want to go to bankruptcy, but I do know that it is a strong possibility.”
“It’s not like something that would drag on for years,” said Mr. Snyder, who stressed that he hopes the city can still avoid bankruptcy.

Mr. Orr sharpened the debate about bankruptcy in late May when his office confirmed he was evaluating the potential sale of prized city assets, including the artwork at the Detroit Institute of Art, a collection potentially worth billions.

But in the interview Friday, Mr. Orr said he was doing his due diligence to assess the value of all city assets and had no plans to explore a sale of the art institute collection.

Use the Nuke, Harry, Use the Nuke

Excerpted and reposted from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leo-w-gerard/use-the-nuke-harry-use-th_b_3376193.html#giveus5

Marcus Hedger was wrongly fired. That’s what the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) determined. Despite that, Mr. Hedger lost his Antioch, Ill., home. His case got mired in allegations that the board that heard it was illegitimate.

Similarly, West Virginia’s Cannelton miners wrongly lost their jobs. The NLRB said so twice. But quarrels over NLRB quorums effectively nullified both decisions. Three of the miners have died waiting for justice.
“And that’s the way, uh-huh uh-huh, the rightwing likes it! Uh-huh uh-huh!”

Achieving such spectacular defeats of worker rights took Republicans years of focused, dedicated and relentless scheming. They’ve abused the filibuster process at a record rate. They’ve manipulated Senate recess to unprecedented levels. They’ve delayed and appealed decisions.

Government disgusts Republicans, so obstructing it makes sense to them. They’re equally repulsed by unions, now representing a grand total 11.3 percent of all American workers, largely as a result of decades of effort by the GOP to destroy worker protections and worker rights. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., can hobble this right-wing campaign against working people by deploying the nuclear option. He’s got nothing to lose and workers have everything to gain.

There is no doubt about GOP intent. Sen. Linsey Graham, R-S.C., stated it loudly and clearly. He threatened to filibuster all of President Obama’s nominees to the NLRB because: “The NLRB as inoperable could be considered progress.”

Republicans have used the filibuster interminably to prevent confirmation of President Obama’s nominees, to the NLRB, to judgeships, to administrative posts. Democrats did it too during George W. Bush’s presidency. But it was nothing like the level to which Republicans have exploited the filibuster during the Obama presidency. Nothing. No comparison.

President Obama responded, exactly as other presidents have, with recess appointments. These selections, made while Congress is not in session, are temporary and don’t require Senate approval.

The GOP cried foul, saying Congress wasn’t really recessed. The lawmakers had left town for a break, true enough. No business was being conducted, true enough. But the GOP-controlled House had refused to approve a Senate recess, so a member would drive to the Capitol once every few days during the break, slam down a gavel and announce the place was open for business. For a minute. Then end business with another strike of the gavel.

Two appeals courts have now approved this tactic. In a split decision, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled invalid President Obama’s 2010 recess appointment to the NLRB. And the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled invalid the President’s three 2012 recess appointments to the NLRB. The White House is appealing to the Supreme Court.

One of those two appeals courts — the D.C. Circuit Court — leans Republican hard. Until last week, the court operated with four judges appointed by Democratic presidents and nine jurists appointed by Republicans, including senior judges who routinely hear cases.

For two and a half years, Senate Republicans delayed a vote on President Obama’s first nominee to fill a vacancy on the D.C. Circuit court =- so long the candidate withdrew. Last week, the Senate finally confirmed a judge nominated by President Obama.

That means the court now uses 14 judges — five nominated by Democrats and nine by Republicans. And it still has three vacancies. To retain the GOP stranglehold, Republicans have proposed legislation eliminating those three slots. It was introduced by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who had no problem with the size of the court when he voted to approve Bush’s nominees to fill its bench.

Losing three Democrat-appointed judges on this bench would mean that next time the GOP wants this key court to rule against Wall Street regulation or environmental protection or an NLRB appointment, Republicans would pretty much know they had the decision in the bag.

If the GOP had won the presidency, a Republican could fill those three slots. But the GOP did not win. Instead, it wants to jettison those judges until, of course, the next time a Republican is in the White House.
The D.C. Circuit Court and Third Circuit Court decisions voiding the recess appointments to the NLRB raise questions about the validity of all NLRB decisions during the time when those appointees served — nearly three years of rulings. Rulings affecting the lives of workers like Mr. Hedger and the Cannelton miners.

That’s fine with Republicans like Graham. They want to eliminate the NLRB, which has for three quarters of a century protected workers’ rights. Even if the appeal to the Supreme Court on the recess appointments goes against the GOP, they’ve got another poison pill up their sleeve.
That’s ensuring the NLRB can’t operate. The board hasn’t had a full contingent of five members since August, 2003. For more than two years beginning Jan. 1, 2008, the board had only two members. The Supreme Court ruled that two-member board invalid.

The board now has three members, including one whose term expires Aug. 27. His loss would render the board inoperable. Exactly what Republicans want.

President Obama has nominated five candidates to serve, including two Republicans. Graham has made it clear he intends to filibuster any and all of them, thus killing the board on Aug. 27.

When Republicans controlled the Senate, Democrats filibustered Bush nominees and engaged in “pro forma” recesses — but nowhere near the level the GOP is doing it now. During the Bush administration, the GOP threatened to change the rules to prevent filibustering of nominees. That’s the nuclear option. If Republicans went nuclear, Democrats said they’d scuttle Bush’s entire legislative agenda. So Republicans didn’t.

Now, however, Democrats have nothing to lose if they go nuclear. There’s no threat in Republicans saying they’ll stymie President Obama’s legislative agenda. They already do that. They say no to everything. Even measures essential to prevent financial disaster.

Harry Reid stepped back from the nuclear option earlier this year. Now, however, is the time to use the nuke. The Cannelton miners, Mr. Hedger, all American workers need that protection.