All posts by Bob Cain

Safety in the workplace is essential whenever there are great amounts of potential energy at work around and beside where workers also work. Nowhere is this more true than in a power station environment. High voltages, large machines that spin at hundreds and sometimes even thousands of revolutions per minute, piping systems carrying large volumes of various process fluids at high temperatures and pressures, and all the dangers of handling, transporting, preparing, and burning combustibles.

Such an environment is a breeding ground for accidents.

In Behaviour Based Safety (BBS-an acronym that fits such programs), there is NO SUCH THING as accidents. There are incidents, and each one of these have a causality chain that just so happens to prove the employee liable and absolving the company of all liability.

Isn’t that a convenient?

Unions are well aware of what BBS represents for their members, as well as all workers. Imagine if such programs existed at the turn of the 20th century. Imagine blaming the workers of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, the Texas City oil refinery fire, and any of the many coal mine disasters right here in our own state.

That is exactly what such programs are designed to do.

Many national and international unions recognize such programs for what they are and are educating their members to the dangers they face in just trying to do their jobs. Here are some useful links: United Auto Workers, United Steelworkers(1), United Steel Workers (2),  even the AFL-CIO has recognized what BBS represents.

The argument is that “traditional” safety programs did not work because they failed to prevent accidents, opening the door for a new approach. Behaviour Based Safety was born. In it’s purest form, BBS was supposed to remove the blame, and accusatory elements, that many blamed for their safety program failures, and instead use a cooperative approach in dissecting each accident into it’s basic facts and then attempt to address the human performance aspect to nullify future events.

 So did it work?

Dupont, which was key in BBS development, adopted and implimented the program. According to the United Steelworkers, Dupont’s results are less than stellar, as detailed in their report, “Stop Not Walking The Walk-Duponts Untold Safety Failures.”

Proponets of BBS claim that the behavior based safety model is sound and anywhere that the program failed was because it was improperly implimented or that the adverarial relationship between the company and the workers (or their unions) poisoned the purity and well intentioned attempt by those companies to address their safety responsibilities. One safety consulting firm even published the “7 Deadly Sins” of BBS programs.

In a game of “one up-manship”, corporations have even used their BBS programs to acquire the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s accreditation under the Voluntary Protection Program, or VPP. So not only do they feel are they absolved of all liabilities for providing a safe workplace, they gain the added caviat of not being inspected regularly by the federal agency tasked with ensuring worker safety. VPP has had many critics and updates, and even a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that identifies many areas for improvement.

The result is a more dangerous working environment for all workers whose employers weild this double edged sword that slashes through skin and bone just as it shreds safety standards established over the past decade and a half of the industrial revolution and paid for in the blood of workers killed on the job. Many wonder if VPP is broken. Unions are dealing with both BBS and VPP, and agree that the union must own their workplace safety, since the company won’t, and are educating their members in working in this new environment of “blame the worker” philosophy.

What it all means is that the rich get richer at the expense of working people and that wealth is further protected by both programs that deflects responsibility of providing safe workplaces.

Most of you have heard that Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Snap Chat, Insta-Gram…etc) is fast becoming a factor affecting your application for getting a job, but did you know that it may also play a role in your keeping a job?

The stories of prospective employers who dismissed a candidate from consideration for a position because of something stupid that was found on social media are not uncommon. Employers are using social media in many ways, many of them are still evolving. Companies are trying to connect with their customers in a more personal and intimate way.

Much of this effort is purely public relations. Social media can create a “warm and fuzzy” illusion between customers and a company that provides them a service. If that company has competition, social media can drive up customer satisfaction surveys, even if the service is not improved or even gets worse. Bottom line, companies with a strong social media presence are less likely to face criticism or backlash from customers and communities they serve when it comes time to push through initiatives to the comany’s benefit before government regulators, and they are more likely to forgiven for their transgressions.

For working people, social media may also give companies an advantage for monitoring their employees, especially when forming or managing a union.

Our Brothers and Sisters at UWUA Local G-555 are facing this issue head on.

In a charge before the National Labor Relations Board, The Gas Workers Union G-555 has stated that their employer violated their Section 7 rights to engage in concerted union activity by monitoring their members on social media and then used that unlawful surveilance to target members. According to the charge, members were interogated about certain posts, and that posts were even removed from the union’s forum resulting from intimidation of those investigations.

 Simply put, the union says the company’s activities are a violation of members privacy and interferes with the union’s ability of self organization and administration.

 The National Labor Relations Act states: “Employees have the right to unionize, to join together to advance their interests as employees, and to refrain from such activity. It is unlawful for an employer to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of their rights. For example, employers may not respond to a union organizing drive by threatening, interrogating, or spying on pro-union employees, or by promising benefits if they forget about the union.

Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (the Act) guarantees employees ‘the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection,’ as well as the right “to refrain from any or all such activities.”

As employers try to dominate more and more of their employees’ time, their speech, and their activities outside of the workplace, it’s important to remember WE ARE AMERICANS FIRST!

Unions have a RIGHT to get their message out, and to discuss, debate. argue our points among ourselves.

Union Busting is moving into the 21st century, to online websites and social media, but, just like any other type of union busting, it can be defeated by the workers if we stand together and demand that our rights to free speech, free expression, and freedom from oppression be respected.

There have been a couple of issues that came up the last few weeks that really begs the question that if you HAVE a UNION, why are you not using it as it was intended?

One employee was on a “special assignment“, one that the company wanted done and assigned him voluntarily to do, but without discussing it with the UNION, as required by the CBA.

Now, there’s a problem with that employee’s eligibility for overtime work while on the assignment and the employee has came to the union for help.

We are certainly willing to help the affected member, and the failure is not the member’s since it was the company that has the requirement to discuss such things with the union, AND that our members are being consistently lied to by management telling them, “the union agreed.”

Another isssue involves sick time, in which there are several issues.

One of the issues was discussed at the November meeting, which is that there are hidden fine print items in the company’s FMLA package that, if you sign them without reading them, you’ve just agreed to grant the company FULL and UNFETTERED access to ALL of your medical records.

Another issue is with the company’s Physicians Release (click to get the Allegheny form) that is required for an employee to return to work after an extended illness or injury. The company INSISTS that members use their 709 form, which is a part of their Absence Manangement Program. Absence Management was proposed at the bargaining table and rejected by YOUR union. This means we are still under the Allegheny (or as the company called it at negotiations, the “102 plan”) sick plan. This means NO ABSENCE MANAGEMENT, NO FIT FOR DUTY, and only minimal access to employees medical records to those pertaining to the illness and injury.

All the above are examples of things that were discussed at our Regular Monthly Meetings, but if you weren’t there, then you don’t know about it.

If you are not visiting your union’s website, then you are missing out, yet again.

We constantly post updates on the NEWS tab, meeting dates on the EVENTS page, and the CBA, M.O.A.s and other useful information on the 304 Resources page.

Our 304 Officers are often approached at work with union questions, or someone casually asking what happened at a meeting. While most of these conversations are considered incidental, it’s not fair to your Officer or to YOU because we know, as union officers, that we can’t have extended dialogue with members on company time on union issues.

It’s not that we are unwilling.

Come to the meetings or call us at home, since most of our home phone numbers are on the 304 CONTACTS page. We are always willing to talk to members.

The more we are involved in our union, the more we act like a union, and the more effective we are as a union.

It is the responsibility and the duty of EVERY 304 member to work under and enforce the contract. You do this by KNOWING the CBA (since the CBA is on the website, many employees have it saved on their phones and handheld devices, while some access it from the company’s computers which is thier right), and then asking questions of management when you think they are operating OUTSIDE of it. If the answers you recieve are not acceptable, you have the duty to file a grievance and demand an answer.

The NEXT TIME YOU ARE TOLD THE UNION AGREED TO SOMETHING, ASK FOR IT IN WRITING!

Only the company and management wins when you forgo your rights at work and they profit by us not acting like the union that we are. It’s YOUR job, YOUR compensation, and YOUR union.

   It’s NOT that any of us take our jobs or our employer for granted. It’s quite the opposite, we have a job that is good enough to FIGHT for and protect, even against our employer if we have to. 

Want a job where this is not neccessary?

 A former Plant Manager suggested to a concerned employee that he go work at Wal-Mart if he didn’t like what was going on at Harrion Power Station. He’s gone now (the Plant Manager), but 304 is still here. 

All aboard!

Charleston Gazette-Mail

Friday, December 4, 2015

by Rick Wilson: Be wary of Right-To-Work bait

The ancient Chinese sage known to us as Confucius was once asked what he would do if he ever came to a position of influence in a kingdom. His answer was a little surprising. He said he would begin with “the rectification of names.”

Then as now, a great deal of damage can be caused by misleading language. As he put it, “If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.”

The 20th century writer and thinker George Orwell made pretty much the same point in his essay “Politics and the English Language,” where he wrote “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. … The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.”

Misleading language, he argued, is designed to “make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Hence the term Orwellian language. In his dark novel 1984, political slogans such as “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength” abound.

A great example of Orwellian language is a policy now being considered by the Legislature known by the misleading name of “right to work” (RTW). After all, who could be against the right to work?

Actually, the policy would lower labor standards, undermine the democratic process, weaken unions and allow free riders to benefit from collective bargaining agreements without providing dues to support the process.

Unfortunately many people today may not be familiar the ugly history behind RTW.

The person who came up with the name and launched the movement to enact it as law was a Texas businessman and politico named Vance Muse, who lived from 1890 to 1950. An unabashed racist and anti-Semite, he bitterly opposed the labor law reforms of the New Deal, which he sometimes referred to as “the Jew Deal.”

At the time, the labor movement was making huge advances and helping to build what would become the great American middle class. However, it faced serious obstacles in the south, where a racial caste system divided workers and kept wages low for everyone.

Vance and his allies in the “Christian American Association,” an organization he founded to promote RTW, were opposed to unions not only for their promotion of better wages and conditions but also for their potential threat to the system of racial segregation. But they soon gained powerful supporters beyond the south and began to win major victories.

According to Dartmouth historian Marc Dixon: “The Christian American Association out of Houston was the first to champion Right-to-Work as a full-blown political slogan in 1941. The organization stood out in a crowded field for its fiery rhetoric against President Roosevelt and especially labor. But Right-to-Work quickly moved from the fringe to the mainstream. After the war, organizations like the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers championed the laws with great effect. By the early spring of 1947, fourteen states had adopted Right-to-Work, and the Taft-Hartley Act, passed by Congress later that year, solidified the rights of states to pass and enforce these laws.”

Muse was able to play on racial biases to promote RTW with considerable success — but not a lot of subtlety.

At one point he warned that without such laws, “From now on, white women and white men will be forced into organizations with black African apes whom they will have to call ‘brother’ or lose their jobs.”

He promoted the rumor popular among some white segregationists that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was organizing subversive “Eleanor clubs” which supposedly encouraged black domestic servants to oppose their employers. At one point, he warned that such imaginary clubs were a “RED RADICAL scheme to organize Negro maids, cooks and nurses in order to have a Communist informer in every Southern home.”

He also told supporters that anti-labor organizing would “keep the color line drawn in our social affairs.”

Ironically, back in the 1940s, labor organizers dreamed of launching “Operation Dixie,” which was to organize southern workers and overcome segregation. Instead, thanks to Orwellian language and bankrolling by billionaires and big business groups, Muse’s successors have rolled back labor laws in many northern states. And we may be next.

Rick Wilson, director of the American Friends Service Committee’s Economic Justice Project, is a Gazette contributing columnist.

Before West Virginia takes Muse’s bait, maybe we should consider these words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work.’ It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights.

I invite you, the reader to allow me to take you through a mental exercise…

 You and I are businessmen, we make an essential product, one that is in constant demand by the public. We’ll call our product a, “widget”. For years our widgets have grown and prospered to the point of being closely monitored and regulated by our Federal Government. We have new widget factories and old widget factories, but the regulators tell us that we can’t close our old and most inefficient widget factories because they may be needed to meet widget demand in an emergency.

   So we go along making widgets, making profits, while our good widget factories offset the cost of our bad widget factories and our regulators and the communities we serve are all happy that people are employed and there is no shortage of widgets.

   Suddenly, the political winds shift, and now the entire widget industry is under attack by just one of our former regulatory allies, we’ll call them the “Department of Regulating Things We Don’t Even Understand”,  because we use something in the manufacture of our widgets they object to; we’ll call it, “black dye number 5”. The regulating agency doesn’t mind the other dyes we use to make our widgets, whether it be blue, green, yellow, or red; but they insist that the evil black dye#5 must go. 

   Now remember, you and I are the businessmen and in being good businessmen we understand our widget making process and we know that black dye #5 was one of the main ingredients we used in the making of our widgets back when we first started making widgets, but has since been replaced by other things. So we look at the new demands from the DRTWDEU, which basically opens a door that gives us the perfect excuse to reduce our headcount of employees, closing old, outdated and inefficient widget factories and create a widget shortage in the market that will pump up our widget profits.

   Of course, you and I are smart businessmen and we’re going to publicly decry the intereference and over-reach of the Department of Regulating Things We Don’t Even Understand, give passionate speeches lamenting the closing of operations that had previously served as anchor industries in the communities in which they served and were located, and of course we’ll show great sympathy for those former employees we had to turn out into the cold.

   Behind the veil of public opinion, though; being smart businessmen, we are raking in the profits, enjoying the fact that we have less overhead, and we can use the threat of the widget factories we closed to strongarm the employees we still have to accept concessions because they are now living in fear that their widget factory will be next. 

  The reality is that we don’t make widgets, we make and deliver electricity, but you can apply the elements from the example given about widgets to the state of our industry. The EPA (for our purposes, known as “The Department of Regulating Things We Don’t Even Understand”) has targeted coal (know by the pseudonym “Black Dye #5” in our little excercise), while ignoring the problems presented by other available fuel sources.

   The “shale gas revolution” is fine when talking to investors and the uninformed, but we, as Utility Workers, know firsthand of the dangers of old gas infrastructure like piping and pumping stations, which is not unlike our aged electrical grid.             

     Everytime industry officials are ready to herald a new nuclear power renaissance, a nuclear power plant blows up and reminds us of the dangers involved in nuclear energy.

   The rest of the EPA regulations seem to be formulated without understanding the technical limitations and lack of development in those energy sources they are counting on to take the place of coal. Like Carbon Capture (CCS), much of the embryonic renewable energy market is theoretical instead of tried and true proven and viable technologies that are fully scalable, employable, and capable of meeting the nation’s demand for reliable and affordable power.

    America’s remaining coal plants, the ones lucky enough to survive the onslaught of the battle between owners and the EPA, are the most efficient and cleanest users of coal in the history of electrical generation.  They use the latest in proven technologies to reduce SO2, NOX, and mercury emmissions. They are safe, reliable, and good stewards of the environment.

   The main thing they do lies in their impact on the electrical market in keeping the price of electricity affordable.  

 The real opportunity and challenge for us as Utility Workers is to educate the public on energy issues. Why should energy companies do it when they are reaping the benefits of the EPA’s actions?

   Why would the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) want to do this, when all they can see is the closure of coal plants that they have deemed as evil? 

This is a perfect storm scenario in which unions have to be the voice of reason and an informed source for both the public and the regulators so that coal’s place in the energy marketplace is understood and appreciated. Unions often find themselves in the role of acting as the checks and balances, and with the upheaval within our energy industry that role is more important than ever.

Connecticut Senate Bill 963 was recently PASSED and signed into law by that state’s Governor. The bill will allow a curriculum addition that includes labor history.

When the bill passed with a 24 to 9 vote in the legislature’s upper chamber, state Sen. President Martin Looney expressed the value of exposing students to labor history.

   “The children of Connecticut have to know that many of the things they take for granted in terms of rights were not freely given by employers,” he said from the Senate floor. Sen. Looney added, those rights “had to be fought for by workers who showed great courage and made great sacrifice.”

Trying to get the point of how important having a union in their workplace is a hard sell for many young workers. Unfortunately it’s easier if they moved from the wage theft, hours stealing, authoritarian, and harsh private sector to a union shop. They seem to appreciate what a union can do for them when they were previously denied a voice in their former workplaces. If a young worker has not had that experience, chances are that getting them to engage and appreciate their union can be an uphill battle.

Too many older trade unionists just write it off as a symptom of the generation, forgetting a time when they were young, ten feet tall, and bullet proof. They forget how fine it was to have all the energy and drive of youth, unencumbered by thoughts of rights, poliitics, and all the things older trade unionists were forced to learn over the years.

Most unions recognize this. In the UWUA, we have the Young Worker Initiative, and the Member To Member programs to help build that bridge between generations of union workers. Other unions are doing other things to address this problem, and the National AFL-CIO even has a tab on it’s website that specifically addresses young workers.

Josh Israel has a great article on Think Progress entitled: “Five Ways Unions Are Trying To Get Their Mojo Back.”  Josh gives real world examples of what unions are doing to raise awareness of what unions are about, the importance of unions at the local level in the communities they serve, and to fight back the attempts of anti-unionists to portray unions as lazy, out-dated, and non-relevant.

In a cultural atmosphere of greed and looking out for #1, unions have an important part to play in reminding all workers that it’s easy for employers to pick off workers one-by-one, when workers aren’t organized or represented. Even in established unions, all the power a Local Union has in addressing workplace issues flows from the membership standing together.

Solidarity is a word that some pundits have tried to denegrate over the years, conjuring up visions of socialistic or communist overtones. All solidarity really stands for is when workers look out for each other. This can be in a specific workplace, on a local level, state level, as well as a federal level. Solidarity means we stand together regardless of race, creed, or religion so that all of us have a fair and equal opportunity to earn a decent living for ourselves  and our families. It means we don’t attack each other, when we disagree we do so in a civil manner of mutual respect, and we recognize the forces against us are big, well organized, heavily financed (usually secretly),  and motivated by greed to strip our rights, wages, benefits, and pensions in the service of their own wealth and their shareholders whom they serve. In this paradigm, unions act as an essential balancing factor that works to swing the scales of social justice in favor of those who actually do the work.

An advantage workers have today is a greater access to multiple viewpoints, news, and information thanks to the internet and domains like Facebook, Twitter, and other websites.

The battle for workers rights is alive and well in cyber-space. 

Bottom line is: if you are a young worker who finds themselves in a union and have a job that pays well that offers you a path into the middle class and a good living that can’t be easily replaced by quitting and going to work somewhere else, you owe it to yourself to do everything you can to protect that job by getting involved in YOUR union.

 If you’re not organized and represented, the only question is why?