IUE-CWA members shine light on Walmart’s role in offshoring good jobs

March 3, 2021 by

Outside the West St. Paul Walmart, Local 1140’s Howard Terry (L) and district rep Richard Shorter show solidarity with Ohio workers.

Walmart’s supplier of LED light bulbs has announced plans to shift production to China, a move that will cost some 80 members of IUE-CWA Local 84704 in Bucyrus, Ohio, their jobs.

The GE-Savant plant has had a presence in the Ohio community for nearly a century, and union members aren’t going down without a fight.

They’ve enlisted the support of fellow IUE-CWA members, who are staging protests outside Walmart stores across the country, including in the Twin Cities.

The most recent day of action, Feb. 20, saw actions at 80 stores nationwide. Outside the West St. Paul Walmart, IUE-CWA Local 1140 President Howard Terry and district representative Richard Shorter showed their solidarity.

“We all stand together when American jobs are at stake,” Terry said. “It’s a blatant slap in the face to force jobs overseas just to save a buck or two, especially for Walmart, which claims to be a supporter of American manufacturing.”

Sign a petition in support of the Bucyrus workers online at bit.ly/WalmartKeepUSABulbs.

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#NAW2016: Apprenticeship helps MN manufacturers boost skills, stay competitive

November 17, 2016 by
Pictured on the Hood Packaging shop floor in Arden Hills: (L to R) USW’s Gerry Parzino, Beth diGrazia, USW member and apprentice Larteng Kong, apprentice Dave Frisk, USW member and apprentice Andy Ramirez, Mike Ramirez and Local 264 President John O’Neil.

Pictured on the Hood Packaging shop floor in Arden Hills: (L to R) USW’s Gerry Parzino, Beth diGrazia, USW member and apprentice Larteng Kong, apprentice Dave Frisk, USW member and apprentice Andy Ramirez, Mike Ramirez and Local 264 President John O’Neil.

 

About 85 percent of registered apprentices in Minnesota are employed in the construction trades, but federal grant funds are helping more of the state’s manufacturers harness the power of apprenticeship to boost their employees’ skills – and remain competitive in a global economy.

Hood Packaging is among a growing number of firms taking advantage of a free registered apprenticeship program for industrial workers, sponsored by the AFL-CIO’s Working for America Institute.

A privately owned company with 20 production facilities in the U.S. and Canada, Hood employs about 86 people at a facility in Arden Hills, where members of United Steelworkers Local 264 print and laminate poly-film packaging for salted snacks and pet food.

When the Steelworkers came to Operations Manager Michael Ramirez with a pitch for the apprenticeship program, Ramirez and human resources officer Beth diGrazia jumped at the opportunity.

“For a lot of our workers, this isn’t just a job they’re going to leave; these are careers,” diGrazia said. “We want to keep them here, so if we have folks who want to learn more, we want to give them that opportunity.”

Four Hood employees – three Steelworkers and a manager – are currently enrolled in the fourth semester of the 18-month program. Every Thursday evening, they assemble in a conference room with two large screens and connect via Skype with an instructor, as well as apprentices from other Minnesota manufacturing firms.

Coursework ranges from safety to quality control and beyond, and it’s typical for apprentices to receive up to six hours of homework each week. They take quizzes and tests, and receive a grade at the end of each course.

So far, all four Hood apprentices are keeping their grade point average above 3.0.

“They’re doing their work,” United Steelworkers representative Gerry Parzino said. “I don’t think you get those grades by accident.”

If they keep it up, the apprentices, who are paid for the time they spend in class, will complete the program – and receive their journeyperson cards – in June 2017.

“These guys are showing the initiative,” diGrazia said. “They’re stepping up. And we hope they’ll never leave the company, but it is something that’s transferable, and it definitely looks good on their resume.”

For Ramirez, the apprenticeship program is providing Hood with future leaders ready to help train their co-workers, troubleshoot problems on the shop floor and keep an eye out for safety issues. He’s already seeing results: Hood sent 15 employees through the apprenticeship’s safety course last January, and the Arden Hills facility hasn’t had a safety incident since then.

“It’s the longest stretch we’ve ever gone at this facility without any recordable or lost-time incidents,” Ramirez said. “And that’s a direct effect of these guys going through that program and using that info on the floor. The results speak for themselves.”

Parzino wants to see other union employers take advantage of the industrial apprenticeship program, which Ramirez called “a big win-win for all of us.”

“To be competitive, we need the highest trained workforce we can possibly have,” Parzino said. “In Wisconsin, some of these programs have brought back products that were being manufactured in India. So we know this can have an impact.

“It’s all about job security, quality and being competitive, and we can keep these manufacturing jobs. We think by working with the employers and with our members to keep them as trained as possible, these kinds of programs are going to keep us competitive.”

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Public finally gets a look at TPP – and it isn’t pretty

November 5, 2015 by

web.tpp-aboveLabor, environmental and other fair-trade activists are getting their first look at the Tran-Pacific Partnership, released to the public overnight. Their initial reaction?

It’s worse than expected.

“It’s absolutely not a progressive trade deal,” Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition director Kaela Berg said after an early analysis of the text.

“It’s clear that TPP will perpetuate offshoring of our jobs and stagnation of our wages. There aren’t strong, enforceable labor and environmental standards, which have been a constant worry since NAFTA.”

[Tell your members of Congress to oppose the TPP! Click here to take action.]

The public release of the TPP, a 12-nation trade agreement covering about 40 percent of the global economy, starts the clock on a 90-day review period, after which Congress may approve or reject – but not amend – the pact.

Berg said the Fair Trade Coalition, which unites family-farm, environmental and labor groups, would use the review period to educate the public about what’s at stake in the TPP – and to lobby Minnesota’s Congressional delegation to vote “no.”

All seven DFLers in Congress voted against so-called “fast track” authorization, which positioned TPP for a simple up-or-down vote, over the summer, and Berg was cautiously optimistic they would vote to reject TPP as well. Republican Reps. Tom Emmer and Erik Paulsen are “poster boys for corporate free-trade,” she added, and likely to vote “yes.”

“All the officials are going to want to look at the text and see what’s in there,” Berg said.

Many union officials were busy doing the same today, leading to a chorus of warnings about the TPP’s impact on jobs, wages, public health and more.

“This much is clear,” said Rick Ryan of the Minnesota State Council of Machinists after a first read through the TPP. “The rich get richer as we race to the bottom.”

Citizens Trade Campaign, a fair-trade advocacy group, said the TPP would force U.S. workers to compete with workers abroad who, in some member countries, earn less than $1 per hour. It also would ban laws that encourage government agencies to buy American-made or locally made products.

“TPP will do nothing to promote manufacturing jobs here in the U.S.” Bob Ryan, a Minnesota-based representative of the United Steelworkers, said. “In fact, it will promote more job loss through outsourcing to low wage countries.”

Nurses warned of a provision in the TPP that protects multinational pharmaceutical companies by delaying the introduction of generic drugs into the market, making health care more expensive and life-saving medicines harder to access. In fact, the TPP would roll back some of the protections for access to medicine included in trade agreements negotiated during the George W. Bush administration.

National Nurses United President RoseAnn DeMoro likened the provisions to “gifts to the billionaire drug companies,” and called the TPP “a cruel and disgraceful threat to the lives of millions of people.”

The TPP also threatens U.S. sovereignty, critics said. It would grant corporations new powers to challenge U.S. laws, regulations and court decisions in an extrajudicial tribunal known as the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) court.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, the highest-ranking labor leader in the U.S., pledged unions would “join with our allies to defeat the TPP.”

“From what we have already seen, it is clear that the threats of this expansive new agreement outweigh its benefits – for good jobs, for democracy, for affordable medicines, for consumer safety, and for the environment,” Trumka said.

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Franken takes the lead in Senate effort to sway Trans-Pacific trade negotiations

December 6, 2012 by
U.S. Sen. Al Franken, shown here at a union rally in St. Paul, co-authored a letter to President Obama urging enforceable protections for workers' rights in the TPP.

U.S. Sen. Al Franken, shown here at a union rally in St. Paul, co-authored a letter to President Obama urging enforceable protections for workers’ rights in the TPP.

As negotiations on the latest U.S.-backed free-trade agreement resumed in Australia this week, U.S. Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota led a bipartisan appeal to President Obama, urging his administration to craft an deal that protects American jobs and workers’ rights worldwide.

Franken, a DFLer, joined Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine in authoring a letter to Obama on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed free-trade agreement currently encompassing 11 countries and reaching all corners of the Pacific Ocean.

The senators want Obama to ensure the new free-trade agreement is “crafted to maximize good job creation and market expansion while minimizing the incentives for further off-shoring of middle class jobs,” according to the letter (click to download as pdf).

Twenty-two other senators, including Minnesota DFLer Amy Klobuchar, signed onto the letter.

The senators voice specific concern in the letter about including enforceable protections for labor rights in the TPP – a provision that has been lacking in previous free-trade agreements entered into by the U.S.

“A country that denies these rights to workers is providing a hidden subsidy that keeps wages artificially lower than they otherwise would be if workers were free to organize and bargain – a subsidy that makes U.S.-based producers less cost-competitive,” the letter says. “The free exercise of fundamental labor rights is key to improving the standards of living and expanding export markets while labor suppression merely ensures that middle classes – and export markets – will be smaller than they otherwise would be.”

Congress has been mostly shut out of TPP negotiations, now in their 15th round. As a result, letters like Franken’s are as close as federal lawmakers can come to influencing the talks before the TPP lands in Congress for a ratification vote.

Josh Wise, director of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition, which is closely monitoring TPP negotiations, equated the senators’ letter to the committee hearing that takes place before a bill reaches the Senate floor.

Members of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition protested outside Cargill's offices in Hopkins last July, targeting the company for its involvement in secretive TPP negotiations.

Members of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition protested outside Cargill’s offices in Hopkins last July, targeting the company for its involvement in secretive TPP negotiations.

Wise praised Minnesota’s senators for taking a “strong stand for the rights of workers in Minnesota and around the globe.”

Countries currently engaged in TPP talks with the U.S. are Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Vietnam and Brunei.

Although members of Congress – and the media – have been shut out of negotiations, a handful of multinational corporations like Cargill have been included in the talks – a big reason why it is critical for lawmakers like Franken and Klobuchar to speak out, Wise added.

“With countries such as Vietnam, which has been referred to as the ‘low cost labor alternative to China,’ being party to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it is vitally important that our elected officials do everything in their power to ensure that this massive free-trade deal does not repeat the results of NAFTA and create a race to the bottom for wages and working conditions,” Wise said.

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