Wind, Web, Telecom and Sanitation Workers Join AFL-CIO Unions

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/09/03/wind-web-telecom-and-sanitation-workers-join-afl-cio-unions/

by Mike Hall, Sep 3, 2010

Telecom workers, green industry wind power employees, sanitation workers—and, in a precedent setting win, website writers/producers—have recently joined AFL-CIO unions.

In Puerto Rico, 171 call center workers at AT&T Mobility won union representation with Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 3010 through majority sign-up. Under an agreement between AT&T and CWA, the company will remain neutral and will recognize the union once a majority of employees sign up. Meanwhile, in Ocean County, N.J., five employees of the Borough of Island Heights won representation by CWA Local 1088 also through majority sign-up.


Workers at wind turbine maker Trinity Structural Towers voted to join IBEW.


A group of more than 130 workers at Trinity Structural Towers—Iowa’s leading manufacturer of wind towers—voted to join Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 347 in Des Moines.

IBEW organizer Brian Heins reports that Trinity mounted a two-monthlong anti-union campaign that included hiring two union-busting firms. “It was nonstop.…They used everything in the book.” The IBEW website has a detailed look at the workers’ victory here: http://www.ibew.org/articles/10daily/1008/100818_TowerWorkersGoIBEW.htm

In Portland, Ore., 13 workers in the sanitation department at the Safeway Bakery voted to join the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Local 114. Incredibly, even though the rest of the bakery department had long been unionized, Safeway not only used anti-union lawyers but flew in top executives to try and beat the drive by the bakers’ dozen to join the union. It didn’t work.

FULL story at link.