President Obama vows to support Labor and sign the Employee Free Choice Act! NLRB Charges HTH with illgal acts at Pacific Beach Hotel From Justice At The Beach, September 15, 2008: After eight long months of investigating, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a formal complaint against HTH Corporation for its illegal acts, including: Refusing to recognize the ILWU as the workers' elected union; Firing workers for union activity; Conducting surveillance and taking photos of workers participating in union activities; Interfering with, restraining and coercing workers who were trying to exercise their legal rights; Failing to negotiate in good faith. HTH Corporation will be prosecuted by an attorney from the NLRB at a hearing which has been set for November 4, 2008. "The community has always been strong in its support of Pacific Beach Hotel workers' rights," said ILWU O'ahu Division Director Dave Mori. "It is heartening to know that the federal government is now standing behind these workers as well." "These charges have tarnished the reputation of this hotel," said U.S. Congressman Neil Abercrombie. "Now that the Labor Board has ruled, I call on the hotel to sit down with its employees' union, and resolve all outstanding issues—including settling a fair contract without further delay and rehiring the loyal employees it fired," Abercrombie added.

TEAMSTERS CALL FOR BOYCOTT OF TIMES SUPERMARKETS
First Posted On: Jan 15, 2008
www.boycotttimes.com/

Honolulu -Unionized workers at Times Supermarkets rejected the company's latest offer over the weekend and is asking the public to boycott Times Supermarkets in protest of the company's unfair labor practices, the Hawaii Teamsters and Allied Workers Union Local 996 announced today.

"Times talks about 'Ohana, but the union and its members are now questioning whether Times even knows what 'Ohana means," said Ron Kozuma, president of the 6,000-member Hawaii Teamsters. "Many of these people have been loyal Times employees for 20 or 30 years. They have dedicated their working lives to this company and built a loyal customer base in their communities. They deserve much more respect than what they're getting."

The company's latest proposal would have given less than 25 percent of the union's 116 Times meat department workers their job back while permanently eliminating deli clerk positions, the guarantee of a 40-hour work week and the employees' retirement plan. The company also significantly cut its contribution to individual or family medical coverage for employees on long-term medical leave.

Quinn Supers, Inc. acquired Times in 2002 from the kama'aina Teruya family, who had founded Times in 1949. QSI is a subsidiary of PAQ, Inc., which operates a chain of Food4Less stores in Northern California. All PAQ stores are non-union.

"The actions taken by John Quinn, the owner of Quinn Supers, are a stab to the heart of all working people in Hawaii," said Kozuma. "These are threats not just to Teamsters at Times but to every employee in the state whose employer puts profits before our local people.

"We had hoped the new owner of Times would understand the local culture and take care of his workers, which is what our union and community would expect from any employer," Kozuma said. "Instead, this company seems hell-bent on taking more and more benefits away from its employees.

"Management explains that it wants to be competitive. We understood the company's position and had proposed no pay increase for our members for one year. We only asked that the company maintain the employees' benefits. However, management flatly rejected our offer."

As the labor dispute entered its fourth week last Monday, the union gave the company an unconditional return to work offer to halt the company's hiring of permanent replacement workers. The company only recalled 26 meat managers, assistant meat managers and several journeymen meat cutters over the weekend. However, Times management refused to specify whether the other employees were terminated or laid off, the union said.

US Labor Law is Outdated   Steven Hill   This opinion article originally appeared at WashingtonPost.com on March 20 and is reprinted here by permission of the authors. By Steven Hill and Dmitri Iglitzin The top priority of pro-labor members of the U.S. Congress is passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, a law that would make it easier for workers to organize a union in their workplace and negotiate a contract with their employer. This legislation has been the subject of vigorous public debate among labor organizations and business lobbyists, yet it only scratches the surface of a badly needed overhaul of U.S. labor law. Currently, labor law is stuck somewhere in the mid-20th century instead of in the 21st century. It has yet to catch up with a new era where the basic relationships between workers, employers, government and the global economy are changing before our eyes. Read More   Hard-to-Reach Data on AFL-CIO website       The AFL-CIO has launched a Web site that provides important information on federal health and safety violations, salaries of chief executives, labor-violations, and other data gathered from government records on some 60,000 employers. It is the first time such hard-to-obtain intelligence has been easily within reach of the public, according to the federation. Most of the government records have always been public, but effectively inaccessible because records are only available by request through the federal Freedom of Information Act, a process that typically takes weeks or months, and effectively denies access to all except professional researchers, reporters, or those with the time and money to pursue requests doggedly. The site can be found at www.workingamerica.org/jobtracker.