Cebar Returns to LaborFest

The South Central Federation of Labor invites everyone in the community to celebrate Labor Day, Monday, September 7, from Noon until 5:30 p.m. at the Madison Labor Temple, 1602 South Park St., in Madison. This year’s LaborFest features a great afternoon of music and dancing, attractions for kids – and an extensive menu of good food, beer and soft drinks. Headlining again this year will Paul Cebar, some of the best pan-ethnic party music in the Midwest. Stay tuned for more details.

Public Option Necessary For Health Care Reform

Sometime this year it appears likely that, at long last, Congress will pass a health care reform bill. After all, President Obama has made health care reform his top priority, no less than five Congressional committees are working on the issue, and they all pledge to have a measure ready for a vote by the fall. The big unanswered question, of course, is what will that reform look like. Read more ...

Fired Workers Demand Justice from Taco Bell

Without giving workers any chance to refute questions of worker status, twenty-eight Latino workers were fired March 24 by six corporately owned Taco Bells in Madison. The workers – with tenure ranging from 4 to 13 years – are fighting back against the Taco Bell firings with a barrage of activities to publicize their cause as they seek a resolution. Nineteen Taco Bell workers with assistance from the Workers’ Rights Center have filed a discrimination complaint with the Federal Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC). The guts of the EEOC complaint include an array of discriminatory treatment the workers suffered at the hands of Taco Bell management. Read more ...

Tax Reform Would Save State Jobs and Services

Wisconsin’s deep and growing budget deficit has set the working class and the employing class on a collision course over tax policy. And the side that flinches first will pay the price for a generation to come.

As of June 1, the projected state deficit for the next two years is about $6.5 billion. Governor Jim Doyle’s plan is to radically cut state spending. He wants to lay off upwards of 1,800 state employees, furlough the rest for 16 days, cut promised raises for non-union state workers, increase out-of-pocket health insurance and retirement payments and impose a two-year wage freeze. Read more ...

From past issues of Union Labor News ...

Labor-backed Candidates Win Big in Spring Ballot

In this spring’s elections, labor-endorsed candidates scored big wins in races from the State Supreme Court to the Poynette City Council. With one exception, all of the South Central Federation of Labor’s fifteen endorsed candidates won, along with a referendum in Jefferson County to increase taxes to save the county home. Read more ...

UFCW and Woodman’s Settle Yearlong Dispute

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1473 and Woodman’s Food Markets have come to an agreement to settle the yearlong labor dispute in the Janesville, Beloit, Onalaska and Madison area stores. With the new agreement, the company has agreed to drop the charges filed against the union and to take a neutral position regarding the unionization of its employees. The union has also agreed to drop the Unfair Labor Practice charges filed against the company. Read more ...

Wisconsin’s Tax Law Needs a Closer Look

When the Governor and the Legislature joined twenty-two other states and approved the combined reporting of corporate income in the recent budget repair bill, they took a significant step toward reforming Wisconsin’s antiquated tax system. Included in the Governor's proposals for the 2009-11 budget are additional steps toward reforming our tax code – oil company gross receipts tax, lowering the capital gains exclusion from 60% to 40%, increasing by one percent the income tax on household taxable incomes above $300,000, and various changes to corporate taxation. And there's a wealth of more options. Read more ...

Labor Immigration Plan Seeks Shared Prosperity

U.S. labor unions have come together behind a common approach to immigration reform and efforts to make it the basis for debate in Congress in upcoming months. “Our nation’s broken immigration system isn't working for anybody – not immigrant workers who are routinely exploited by companies and not U.S. born workers whose living standards are being undermined by the creation of a new ‘underclass.’  As a part of broad-based economic recovery, we need a comprehensive solution – and soon,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, announcing the plan April 14. The framework differs from past immigration reform proposals in that it is structured entirely to protect workers rights. Read more ...

Free Choice Act Would
Improve Job Quality

Baldwin, Panel Agree: Unions are a Solution

Rep. Tammy Baldwin joined South Central Federation of Labor President Jim Cavanaugh and others for a roundtable discussion, February 18, about the economic crisis and the promise that union’s hold for a better life, if only workers could freely choose to join a union. “Higher rates of unionization would be a giant step toward moving us out of this economic recession,” said Cavanaugh, “and passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would be a giant step toward higher rates of unionization. Read more ...

Legislators Will Push Pro-worker Agenda

On February 16, a small panel of State Legislators addressed the South Central Federation of Labor on the prospects for various labor legislative initiatives. Jon Erpenbach, representing the State Senate, and Mark Pocan, representing the Assembly, discussed issues such as Wage Lein, the Minimum Wage, Education and Health Care. Read more ...

Symphony Musicians Vote “Yes” for Union

Amidst disharmony between the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra management and its musicians (see story below), players in the Madison Symphony Orchestra have sounded a high note in favor of unionizing. In spite of management’s antiunion campaigning, symphony players voted 43 to 36, February 2, to be affiliated with the American Federation of Musicians (AFM). Read more ...

Obama Begins Term Decidedly Pro-Labor

On January 30, President Barack Obama ceremoniously welcomed labor back into the White House, where it has not been welcome for the last eight years. The occasion was to witness President Obama reversing three Bush-era anti-worker executive orders and announcing a Cabinet-level task force to rebuild the nation’s middle class. Read more ...

UW Cuts Ties with Unionbusting Honduran Factory

UW-Madison announced that it would sever a contract with licensed apparel maker Russell Athletics, February 5, after its Honduran contractor fired workers and ceased production rather than deal with a unionized workforce. Just days later, two of the fired workers were welcomed on the Madison campus to put a face on the struggle. Read more ...

Report: Pensions Succeed at Half the Cost of 401(k)s

In these uncertain times, a new report evaluating the cost-effectiveness of retirement plans is sure to interest workers who rely on them to maintain a decent standard of living in their golden years. The study recently published by the nonprofit National Institute on Retirement Security, “A Better Bang for the Buck: The Economic Efficiencies of Defined Benefit Pension Plans,” breaks with the conventional wisdom by demonstrating the superiority of traditional defined benefit pensions, as compared with 401(k)-type defined contribution plans. Read more ...

Who Are the Real Workplace Thugs?

By Kurt Kobelt

When in 2002 Saddam Hussein proclaimed himself the unanimous victor in a secret ballot election, then White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer protested, "You can't have free elections when the electorate goes to the polls in the knowledge that they have only one candidate, that candidate routinely murders and tortures opponents of the regime and the penalty for slandering that sole candidate is to have one's tongue cut out." Most Americans would agree with his point that you have to look at the environment in which "secret ballots" are cast to know whether it is a genuinely democratic election. Read more ...

Disaster Capitalism Wrecks World’s Economies

By Sue Vilbrandt, Union Labor News | For those feeling lost in corporate media spin, a new book by Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, provides a new narrative for our times and a lens through which to view this period in history. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism is a fascinating, alarming and ambitious look at how American style free-market fundamentalism took root around the world, with crisis providing the point of entry. Taking readers through the last fifty years – from Chile and Argentina to Russia, from Poland and South Africa to Iraq and New Orleans – Klein demonstrates that, in the real world, freedom (meaning the free market) and democracy seldom march hand in hand. Read more ...

“Naomi Klein has written the most important and necessary book of her generation … so important and so revelatory a book that it could very well prove a catalyst, a watershed, a tipping point in the movement for economic and social justice.”

– Actor Tim Robbins

Real Debate Over Healthy Wisconsin Starts Now

While the Healthy Wisconsin health care reform plan is no longer in the State Budget, the debate over the proposal is just getting started. As battle lines are drawn, it becomes an argument between a free market, everyone-for-themselves ideology and one that recognizes that we-are-all-in-this-together.

Union Labor News attended one such debate between Wisconsin State AFL-CIO President David Newby and Assembly Rep. Leah Vukmir (R-Wauwatosa), a registered nurse who chairs the Assembly’s Health and Health Care Reform Committee. The hour-long debate was held on the UW Campus, October 16, sponsored by a student chapter of the American Medical Association. Read more ...

Just What is SCFL and What Does it Do?

By Jim Cavanaugh, SCFL President | Since early December the national AFL-CIO, in what’s called the “New Alliance” process, has been working with Wisconsin labor leaders to study the Wisconsin labor movement and to make recommendations for structural changes that will improve its effectiveness. As I have participated in this process, it has become clear to me that many union leaders do not have a very thorough grasp of what labor councils do, or have the potential to do. Hence, I thought I’d summarize what the South Central Federation of Labor (SCFL) is and some of what it does. Read more ...

Wanted: Mural Painters to Make History

If you have a steady hand and a couple hours a week to spare, consider volunteering for the Madison Labor History Mural project this summer. Depicting more than a century of Madison labor history, the two-story mural is beginning to fill three walls inside the south entrance to the Madison Labor Temple, 1602 S. Park St. 

Progress on the mural stalled when Muralist Marcus Nickel began experiencing some debilitating health problems, shortly after he began putting paint on the walls. Unable to completely recover, Nickel has been providing guidance to a number of volunteers from various unions who are working to complete the project.

A crew paints regularly, scheduled based on volunteers’ availability. Volunteers can also work independently whenever they have free time.  Each volunteer receives a complimentary 45 min. video (DVD), Madison Labor: Building a City, Building a Movement.

Artistic ability is welcome but NOT required. Come enjoy relaxing work and meet new friends – while being a part of this remarkable community art and labor history project. Mural painting might also be appropriate for high school students interested in extra credit or community service. Must be 14 years old to participate.

Interested? Send an e-mail with available times (Subject: Mural Painting Volunteer) to TheMuralProject(at)SCFL.org.

New DVD on Madison's Labor History Available

As work progresses on the Madison Labor History Mural project, the South Central Federation of Labor has released a new DVD, Madison Labor: Building a City, Building a Movement. The DVD includes The Early Years (30 min.), originally produced in 1985, and Madison: A Union City, 1985-2005 (15 min.) which brings Madison’s labor history up to date. Read more about the Madison Labor History Mural project and the DVD, which is available for $25, here.

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SCFL Scholarships Available

The South Central Federation of Labor is offering four $1000 scholarships to union members or their children, awarded by lottery drawing.
Applicants (or a parent or legal guardian) must belong to a union affiliated with the South Central Federation of Labor and live or work in Dane, Dodge, Columbia, Sauk, Jefferson or Iowa counties. This year, for members or children of members who live or work in Dodge County, SCFL’s Dodge Chapter is offering two additional $500 scholarships. Applications must be received by July 13, 2009. If you have Adobe Acrobat Reader v.8 or later you can fill in and submit the application form electronically. Download the rules and application form here.

Labor volunteers are being sought to fill seats on three of United Way's Community Solutions Teams that address the problems in the community of homelessness, access to health care, and senior independence. Read more ...

SCFL Chapters

As a result of the New Alliance, a statewide labor reorganization, the Dodge and Jefferson County Central Labor Councils merged with SCFL and became Chapters. Click here for more information on the Dodge and Jefferson Chapters.

Union Sectors in Brief

The South Central Federation of Labor is preparing brief introductions to the various union sectors in the area. These articles are meant to foster a greater understanding of the unions and the issues facing workers in each sector. Click on any of the following sectors to read the briefing:

Additional sector briefings will be added as they become available.