The strike has been blocked. For now, at least, Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) bus drivers will NOT be allowed to walk off the job and begin striking over their labor dispute. So why has the strike been blocked? Arnold went to court. (From OC Register)

They determined that a bus strike would cripple the county’s transit system and disrupt the lives of thousands of residents.

In addition to affecting more than 200,000 daily bus passengers, a strike would have adverse economic impacts on businesses, with a potential loss of $800,000 in sales per day.

The findings of a state-appointed ad-hoc panel were sent to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who in turn asked state lawyers to seek an injunction to prevent a strike from happening Monday.

“He sees this labor dispute as a safety issue for the county,” said aide Sabrina Demayo Lockhart, a spokeswoman for the governor’s office. “We think this next step will help.”

So what happens next? Follow me after the flip for more…

So why can’t the OCTA drivers strike? The court agreed with the finding of the ad-hoc panel appointed by Governor Schwarzenegger that too many Orange County residents would lose their mobility.

A walkout would “significantly impair the health, safety and welfare ability of a sizeable portion of Orange County residents,” according to the report.

The board was appointed last week to gather information about the dispute between bus drivers and their employer, the Orange County Transportation Authority.

An Orange County Superior Court judge agreed with the board’s findings Monday and ordered a 60-day cooling-off period that bars 1,100 bus drivers from walking off of the job and potentially leaving thousands of bus riders stranded.

And what does this mean for the workers? How are they feeling about this? And is there room for an agreement between the bus drivers and OCTA that can potentially avoid any strike altogether? Apparently, $2.8 million can make a big difference.

Currently, OCTA bus drivers earn hourly wages of between $13.72 and $21.42. Currently, OCTA and the union are about $2.8 million away from reaching an agreement.

OCTA officials say the wage increase is based on economic projections prepared by Chapman University. Union leaders argue that Chapman’s projections were off three years ago during a previous contract negotiation, and were inaccurate during recent negotiations.

Patrick D. Kelly, principal officer of union Teamster Local 952, said union members will spread their message to the public and bus riders to drum up support.

In terms of negotiations, Kelly said the union cannot ask for less than the $210 million, three-year contract it requested. The OCTA has offered the union a $207 million contract, about a 13.3 percent increase in wages and benefits.

“I don’t think there’s much room for us to make a lot of movement,” Kelly said. “[The OCTA]hasn’t moved one iota in the last couple of months. … It might get to be a hot summer.”

Now that the court has ordered more time for negotiations, let’s hope that OCTA can reach an agreement with its workers. The economic well-being of these workers is at stake. If Chapman’s economic projections really are off, then OCTA needs to bridge the $2.8 million gap and pay the workers what they need to make ends meet.

Oh yes, and this is not just about the well-being of the bus drivers. This is about the economic well-being of the entire county. If OCTA cannot reach an agreement with the drivers, and if the drivers have no option left but to strike, then there will be way too many thousands of people who would suddenly be immobilized. They wouldn’t be able to go to work, or go to school, or go to the grocery store, or really go anywhere. We can’t let that happen.

Let’s hope OCTA uses this opportunity to make a deal with the bus drivers that all sides can agree to, because no one can afford to just not get around.

Uh, oh. I guess I won’t be using the bus for a while. Look at what I found in The Register:

http://www.ocregiste…

Orange County bus drivers could go on strike at midnight tonight, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called for a 60-day cooling-off period and lawyers for the state are expected to seek a court injunction today that would stop an immediate walkout.

The bus drivers earlier authorized a strike and will be without a contract at midnight, with no further talks scheduled, according to Teamsters Local 952, which represents about 1,100 Orange County Transportation Authority bus drivers.

So what does this mean for the 200,000 plus people who ride OCTA buses every day? And what might happen to the drivers? Follow me after the flip for more…

So what does this mean for the workers? Another snippet of the article gives us a clue:

Meeting Friday, representatives of the bus drivers union and OCTA failed to extend the driver’s old contract, said Patrick Kelly of the Teamsters.

The contact expired last Monday, but was extended for a week when Schwarzenegger ordered a seven-day cooling off period, which expires at midnight.

Today, attorneys for the state are expected to ask an Orange County judge to prohibit a strike for 60 days more, Kelly said.

More than 200,000 people a day ride Orange County buses.

If the judge determines a walkout would not significantly disrupt public transportation services and endanger the public health, safety or welfare, and does not issue an injunction, the bus drivers are ready to walk off the job just after midnight, Kelly said.

So what happens to everyone riding the bus? Does this mean that I can’t take Route 57 from my house to Newport? Does this mean I can’t take Route 1 from Newport to Laguna? What happens to all the workers who use the bus? What happens to the disabled folks who depend on OCTA to get around?

I’m really disappointed that OCTA could not make an agreement with the Teamsters. Not only are they putting the livelihoods of these bus drivers at risk, but they are also jeopardizing the livelihoods of all the many thousands of workers who depend on OCTA to get to their jobs on time. I have a feeling that this won’t work out for anyone.

Too bad that OCTA and the County of Orange allowed this labor dispute to become a transportation nightmare.

(a perspective we didn’t focus nearly enough on, thanks, Erik – promoted by Todd Beeton)

From The Courage Campaign

For me, a member of UAW Local 2865, one of the highlights of the convention was the strong presence of the labor movement in San Diego.  The only caucus bigger than the vibrant and exciting Progressive caucus was the Labor Caucus, and I'm proud to count myself as part of both caucuses.

It's almost cliché by now to blog about the importance of organized labor in the progressive movement.  Every progressive who's walked a precinct or worked a phone bank has done this important grassroots organizing alongside union members.  In fact, every time I've worked a phone bank for progressive issue campaigns or for progressive candidates, I've done it using telephones at the offices of a local union.  There are very few organizations that have the ability to bring together American suburbanites, urbanites, and rural voters into a place where they hear about and work hard on issues like education, health care, stopping the war, and all the other progressive priorities that define us.  Labor unions do this, and they do it well. 

The Labor Caucus at the 2007 California Democratic Party Convention was an exciting place to be.  Teachers (like me), store clerks, auto parts manufacturers – people from all over the state working in all kinds of jobs were in the room to hear detailed speeches about universal health care, the looming grocery strike, teacher layoffs, the need to protect workers at enormously profitable casinos, and the need to end the war.

My favorite moment came when the chair, Jim Gordon, recognized State Senator Jenny Oropeza, who was sitting on the right side of the room.  Oroteza waved to the crowd as we applauded her (just like we had for many, many other electeds who were in the room).  Then Jim Gordon suddenly intoned, "And with recognition comes accountability!  Senator Oroteza is one of the Senators who voted against worker protections in the compact."  Oroteza's smile turned into a frown as the crowd jeered and hissed.  She left a short time later.

Labor's strengths in the Democratic party were on full display in San Diego.  Not only did the California Teachers Association serve as the official host of the convention, but union members used their collective muscle to help get important resolutions passed.  I'm looking forward to the 2008 convention, where hopefully there will be even more people who attend both the progressive and labor caucus meetings.  We've got a lot in common, and we need one another if we want to succeed.

Yesterday the Calitics staff sat down with Sen. Christopher Dodd, Senate Banking Committee chair and candidate for President in 2008, for about a 30-minute interview.  Dodd impressed me as someone who thinks clearly about issues and the implications of them, who carefully ponders all of his decisions, and who always strives to do the right thing.  In other words, a Democrat.

He’s also embraced new media, hiring Tim Tagaris, who should be familiar to the netroots as having worked on Ned Lamont’s campaign (here’s a bio).  Dodd talked about the new media era and how it can impact a campaign like his that is looking to get their views out in the face of the media-hyped monster that his Hillack Clintobama.

The full interview (not transcribed, but paraphrased) on the flip:

We asked Dodd about the role that blogs and the Internet are playing in his campaign.  During last week’s debate, they set up a live streaming “war room” where people could watch his staff react to portions of the debate (Dodd actually criticized the debate format in his convention speech, which I thought was accurate).  He said that his campaign cannot “rely on what’s filtered through the traditional media.”  He talked about how he can read articles on the Presidential race, and see where his portion of the story “died on the editor’s desk,” because you only have so many column inches and you have to talk about Hillary and you have to talk about Obama.  The Tom Friedman quote that Brian Williams brought up in the debate (“nobody has come up with a specific energy and environmental policy”) really stung him, because Dodd HAS done just that, and he said that he sent it to Friedman to boot.  We talk about the proposal later.

Now I’ll segue into a Q-and-A shorthand format.

Next question: When the media does stop at the Hillary-Obama phenomenon, how do you react to that?

A: “We’re building an operation solidly.”  Dodd believes in an almost architectural way to build an organization, by making the underlying structure solid.  Iowa and Nevada, he said, are all about organization; getting people to stay in caucuses for two hours and horse trade with their neighbors requires it.  And in New Hampshire, he’s a fellow New Englander.  His crowds are “decent-sized”.  And people seem to have an “amnesia about the last election,” where Kerry’s organization in Iowa was solid enough to help him win that race.

Q: Talk about the corporate carbon tax.

A: Dodd believes he can generate 50-100 billion dollars annually through this tax, which can be put into alternative energy programs.  This will have the effect of equalizing price for peopple.  People want to go green, but if it’s cost-prohibitive and they’re struggling to get by, they may not make the sacrifice.  It makes it easier to purchase things like wind and solar and ethanol, etc.  Dodd said that he got a great response on the proposal, particularly from Al Gore.  He also wants to mandate a 50mpg fuel economy standard by 2017.  I’ll quote his Boston Globe op-ed for a more detailed description:

That’s why, in addition to whatever else we do, America must enact a corporate carbon tax. Used in conjunction with cap and trade systems that allow clean corporations to sell pollution credits to dirtier companies, a corporate carbon tax can be implemented quickly, affect every energy sector, and above all provide the strongest disincentive possible to polluting.

Some argue that corporations would simply pass on costs of a corporate carbon tax to consumers. But in an era where the price of gasoline already jumps 30 to 40 cents in only a few weeks’ time, such arguments ring decidedly hollow. You cannot be serious about acting on the urgent threat of global warming, about making us less captive to Middle East oil, or investing in renewable energy, unless you have a corporate carbon tax that eliminates the last incentive to pollute: that it’s cheaper. With all we are facing — from health and environmental concerns to war abroad — making dirty energy a less attractive option to consumers and business is nothing to be afraid of.

But it’s particularly attractive because the revenues of a corporate carbon tax can be used to bring the cost of clean energy down. Used to fast-track renewable energy research and development and deployment of clean energy and energy efficient technologies, a corporate carbon tax would generate more than $50 billion annually, helping us get technologies out of the laboratories and onto our roads and into our homes and businesses, jumpstarting America’s global competitiveness in the process.

Dodd also described it as a jobs program, and that the jobs of the 21st century can be alternative energy jobs.

Q: On Iraq, what are your thoughts on what to do after the expected veto of the funding bill with a withdrawal date?

A: “Any bill you send without definition is wrong.”  Bush obviously wants to play out the string and hand this problem to the next President.  This is the first Administration in his history in the Congress that treats diplomacy as a threat or a weakness.  Dodd would ramp up diplomacy and political solutions to the problem of Iraq.  He says that he gets people coming up to him all the time, Democrats and Republicans, who say “Don’t quit on this.”  Dodd is also a co-sponsor of Feingold-Reid.  I’m happy with his stance on Iraq.

Q: What is the status of your legislation restoring habeas corpus?

A: Not moving.  But he’s committed to the issue.  “When I first introduced it, I thought it would go over people’s heads,” would be too obscure.  He didn’t realize how widely held this opinion was that we need to restore habeas corpus, that it speaks to who we are as Americans.

Dodd talked about how the best advocates of his bill were the senior officers of JAG.  They understand that you cannot torture people or detain them indefinitely without telling them why they were charged.  He talked about all the reasons why you have to change the law.  And he said that if he were President, “I don’t know what I could fix by executive order.”  I said, “If you’re like this President, everything.”  Big laugh.  I killed with Chris Dodd.

Q: Talk about Webb and Tester.

A: He has a lot of respect for them.  Called Tester “a keeper” and great with his constituents.

Q: Talk about jobs and why so many people think they’re falling behind.

A: We need more union households.  Ben Bernanke made a speech in Omaha where he admitted that less union households have increased inequality.  Dodd has offered legislation to overturn the Kentucky River case, where people listed as supervisors cannot organize.  He talked about rising costs in energy, education, health care.  And he said that the GI bill was so successful in getting so many to college and into a good job.

He also mentioned that real unemployment is probably twice as much as reported, because it doesn’t count those who haven’t looked for work or have stopped looking.  And he said that 10 million households in this country haven’t been to a bank.  We need to get people out of the shadows and into that system.

Dodd finished by talking about trust.  Elections are rarely about the candidate; people want to know if you’re listening to them (a primal reaction).  He thinks America is not that divded and is just looking for leadership to get them from A to D and not A to Z.

Q: Talk about how you are interacting with Joe Lieberman now.

A: This was a great answer, and I encouraged Dodd to keep talking about it.  He had a 40-year relationship with Lieberman.  It was a tough choice for him to back Ned Lamont.  And ultimately, he said, “I did the right thing” because he respected the wishes of the voters.  He said Ned was a great candidate and would have made a great Senator.

OK, that was it.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports a tentative agreement has been reached between the CSU faculty union and the administration. From early reports this seems a significant victory for the teachers:

A labor showdown between the California State University system and its faculty union was averted Tuesday with a tentative accord on a new contract that provides a guaranteed pay hike of 20.7 percent over four years for professors, lecturers, coaches and librarians.

“We expect our members to ratify this. We think it’s a good deal,” [union president John] Travis said. “We pretty much got everything that we asked for.”

What I like even more about this is that part-time and adjunct faculty are included in the wage increase, although the article says the rate of increase for those instructors – currently more than half of the overall CSU faculty – is undetermined.

This is fantastic news for the CSU workers.

The 2003-2004 Southern California UFCW grocery worker’s strike and lockout was a low point in the history of the labor movement in America.  Grocery employees picketed the three major chain stores for 140 days, and despite public support, in the end they got almost nothing that they wanted, were forced to take on a burdensome two-tiered wage system (one for new employees and one for old ones), and scarcely impacted the bottom line of these huge conglomerates, who consequently turned the grocery worker job from a stable middle-class profession to the equivalent of flipping burgers.  It was disgraceful and deeply troubling that the lives of tens of thousands of workers in California were turned upside down.

Now there’s a chance to rectify it.  And you can help.

First, a little history.  In October of 2003, members of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) voted to strike at Von’s, a major Southern California supermarket chain owned by Safeway, Inc.  The other two big chains, Albertson’s (aka Supervalu) and Ralph’s (aka Kroger) locked out their workers within hours.  It was an example of the collusion by the big chains that characterized the whole strike.

The main issue was the health benefits of the workers, paid entirely by the company; Von’s wanted the workers to pay 50% of health costs under a new contract. They also wanted to introduce a two-tier wage system… Beginning in early October, 70,000 members of the UFCW were on strike in the region.

Since the U.S. has no national health care system, health benefits are often one of the most important parts of employee compensation. The average wage of a southern California UFCW worker is less than $12 per hour, and most workers are guaranteed only 24 hours of work per week. Many workers hold the job mainly for the health benefits.

I remember most the expressions of public support during the strike and lockout.  The chain stores were almost completely empty.  Trader Joe’s was a mob scene, walking in there was like walking into some postwar zone.  The shelves were ransacked, people were breaking open boxes faster than the stockboys could take everything out.  Indigenous people were selling crafts in the aisles, an attempted coup broke out in produce, people were spray-painting “Viva La Revolucion” on the organic broccoli. (OK, the rest of that didn’t happen.)

The point was that Southern Californians were by and large not crossing the picket line and respecting the right of the workers to bargain for fair wages.  This is especially salient because the employees were mostly bargaining for future workers, so that they could get better pay and benefits.  I remember dressing my dog up for Halloween as a striking grocery worker (and if the picture was on this computer, you’d be seeing it right now).  People really understood the issue and went out of their way to honor the strike.  Supermarkets lost roughly $2.5 billion in revenue.

And that’s when the chains started to play dirty.

On October 31, they pulled the pickets from Ralphs as a gesture of “good faith” to focus them on Von’s; the employers immediately announced that they would be sharing profits and losses during the strike – thus showing at least that the capitalists have class solidarity. The union went so far as to urge people to shop at Ralphs, where their own members were locked out. Even though the chains are all national, with total sales of $30 billion a year, the unions shyed away from any national strategy, sending a few “informational pickets” to outlets in northern California and elsewhere.

This ended up being a bad strategy because Ralph’s traffic picked up and then they SHARED THE PROFITS with the other two chain stores, keeping all three afloat and able to sustain the revenue loss.  Furthermore, Ralph’s started illegally rehiring union workers under phony Social Security numbers to keep the business going.  The company eventually had to pay a SEVENTY MILLION DOLLAR FINE for “conspiracy, using a false Social Security number, identity fraud, falsifying information sent to the SSA and IRS, and failing to make proper payments to employee welfare benefits plans.”  Criminal charges for the executives are still pending.

The strike wore on and finally was settled in February 2004, as public support waned and the union ran out of money for strike pay.  It was a combination of factors that led to the awful contract they were forced to accept.  They instituted a two-tiered system that offers lower pay and benefits to new workers coming into the system.  And the health care benefits that the old workers retained were trimmed, which led to increased turnover in the business.  This blog post offers a great summation of why this strike just didn’t work as well as it could have.

A generation ago, this strike would have been a complete victory for the employees. They were able to close down their stores for several months. When those stores were regional, the employers would not have been able to sustain those kind of losses.

But the grocery industry is increasingly a national and multinational industry. The companies decided it was worth taking huge losses in one regional market if they were able to break the back of the union.

In fact, it’s paid off handsomely.

The chain stores’ main complaint was that Wal-Mart and other discounters were moving into the region, and they could not compete with stores that offer no benefits.  Three years later, Wal-Mart and other non-union grocery stores are not a factor in the Southern California market at all. 

The employers always point to Wal-Mart and Costco as major reasons they need to cut costs (and pay their grocery workers less), but Wal-Mart and Costco control less than 8% of the Southern California market, even less than they had in 2003 when the employers claimed that this competition was forcing them to reduce wages and benefits for their grocery workers.

Indeed, the three major chains have retained all of the market share they lost during the strike and then some, propelling them to record profits.  Ralph’s, Von’s and Albertson’s and their parent companies made between 2 and 3 billion dollars in profits last year.  Their CEOs took home up to $9 million in compensation.

Meanwhile, under this two-tiered system, nearly half of all grocery workers at these three chains are making less than the people who work right next to them doing the same job every day.  And practically nobody is receiving quality benefits.  Rick Wartzman spelled it out in an article in the LA Times:

The reason: These are folks who joined the Pleasanton, Calif.-based supermarket giant after the 4 1/2 -month strike and lockout that ended in February 2004. And under the contract the United Food and Commercial Workers union signed with Safeway, Kroger Co.’s Ralphs chain and Albertsons (now owned by Supervalu Inc.), new employees can’t get any health benefits for 12 to 18 months. Their families aren’t eligible to be covered for 30 months.

Going without insurance for so long “is completely stressful,” says Suzanne Demers, who went to work at Safeway’s Vons market in Redondo Beach in July 2004 and earns $10.50 an hour training others, filling in at the Starbucks station and tackling a range of additional tasks. “You just hope and pray that you don’t get sick.” […]

Right now, figures from the trust fund overseeing the health plan show that a mere fraction of lower-tier workers have been in the job long enough to qualify for coverage: just 3,312 out of 12,520 at Vons; 3,771 out of 11,474 at Albertsons; and 2,044 out of 8,438 at Ralphs.

And how long will most of these workers last before they, too, head for the exits?

This two-tiered system is churning employees of what used to be a potential career out of the business; it’s become a low-wage service job.  And it’s getting worse with every upper-tier employee that leaves and every lower-tier employee that replaces them.

The last contract for UFCW employees in SoCal expired a week ago; they granted a two-week extension and negotiations continue.  Stater Bros. and Gelson’s, two regional chains in the area, have agreed to remove the two-tiered structure.  But the big stores (the ones that can afford it) have not budged yet.  In the meantime, there’s a lot you can do to help.

The UFCW has a website at RespectWorkers.com.  There’s a petition over there that I ask all of you to sign.

By signing this petition, you are indicating your support for compensating grocery workers fairly, ensuring that they enjoy a share of the supermarkets’ billions in profits, and ending the current two-tiered wage structure by endorsing equal treatment for equal work.

Full Petition Text:

I believe Southern California’s grocery workers deserve respect, and I therefore stand with them in support of the following contract goals:

–Fair benefits and pensions for all employees

–Equal treatment for equal work

–Elimination of the two tier contract

Another way you can support the employees is by patronizing those stores which have stepped up to their responsibilities.  There is a worker-friendly store finder on their site which you can use to find the stores in Southern California which have shown respect for their employees.  If you’re not in the area, I would suggest that Safeway/Von’s, Albertson’s/Supervalu, or Kroger/Ralph’s are NOT stores that you need to reward with your business at this time, until this gets ironed out.  This can only work as a national strategy, in my view, because a national corporation can sustain a regional strike, as they did the last time.

I would also suggest that any Democratic candidate looking to make some headway in California would do well to highlight this issue RIGHT NOW and make sure that these large grocery chains are being held to account.

Nobody wants another strike.  But there is an opportunity to rectify the deep injustice to working people that was perpetrated in 2004, and to ensure basic fairness in the workplace.  I hope all of you can help with this project.