A safety video we'd like to see

You may have had to view a safety short to get a certificate to work on a site, at a plant or in the office, but they aren't very entertaining, maybe if more could be made like staplerfahrer klaus we wouldn't have to be awaken when the lights went back on.

Fork lift driver Klaus on his first day of work in the warehouse. This German short isn't for the squeamish to say the least .

As far as I know the English subbed version isn't available for sale yet, but you can check here

Brooklyn,NY: Handyfat workers win $360,000 in back pay, with help from IWW and Make the Road by Walking

UPDATE to-> NY & Surrounding Area : IWW I.U. 460/640 Needs Our Help !!!

From: The Industrial Workers of The World (3/13/08)

IWW to picket Handyfat Trading in celebration of jury award for 6 fired workers of $360,000 in back pay!

Workers from Handyfat Trading founded IWW Industrial Union 460 in December 2005. They were instrumental and active in organizing all the other food service shops that have joined IU 460 since then (ten shops). In addition, these workers along with the workers from EZ Supply/Sunrise Plus achieved the first collective bargaining agreements in this segment of the food industry.

In December 2006 and January 2007, all union members from both Handyfat and EZ Supply were fired. After winning orders of reinstatement and back wages at the NLRB, the workers now begin to win the court battles for their stolen backwages.

The IWW will be holding a picket and press conference this Saturday at Handyfat.

Saturday - March 15th, 2008 at 10am

at Morgan and Thames street in Bushwick, Brooklyn (Look for the big rat on the corner) L train to the Morgan Avenue station The press will be invited to talk to the workers about their struggle and victory.

From UnionReview - NY & Surrounding Area : IWW I.U. 460/640 Needs Our Help !!!

The Story at Handyfat (9/22/07)

In August of 2005, Pablo Montes and Carlos Hidalgo, workers from Handyfat Trading Corp., attended a meeting of Workers in Action, the labor group at the Bushwick, Brooklyn, community organization Make the Road by Walking. They spoke of terrible working conditions: they worked 60 or more hours for a mere 280 dollars per week (at most $4.66/per hour with no overtime); they had no benefits or sick days, and they were called "dirty Mexicans" and worse by an abusive manager. Afterwards, they agreed to bring their fellow workers to meet with two IWW organizers/Make the Road members, six of whom joined the union. On December 5, 2005, over 50 supporters joined the Handyfat workers in a march to declare their IWW membership and demand that the owner observe the wage and hour law. By the end of the winter, the owner was paying legal wages, and the union had won a minority contract, complete with wage increases, sick days, vacation time, and other perks.

You can read more about Make the Road by Walking at UnionReview in the article entitled:
Brooklyn , NY - Fighting For the Little Guy And Winning
and you can read more about the IWW with a search at UnionReview,
While this is a huge victory for the workers, as of 9/22/08, the IWW local 460/640 had been dropping deeply into debt supporting these workers. You can contact them to see if they still need assistance. Hopefully the NLRB decision made them whole again.

U.S. Lawmakers worried about safety after Charlotte Observers expose on the poultry industry

You may have noticed this masterpiece of investigative journalism which was reported on here at Joe's Union Review in the article entitled NC: The Human Cost of the poultry Industry by The Charlotte observer

Well the story has been published in full at the Observer and as of an article published on Feb. 4th at The Observer, the US Senate and House committees are now planning hearings on workersafety in the poultry industry.

U.S. Senate and House committees, spurred by an Observer report on N.C. poultry giant House of Raeford Farms, are planning hearings on worker safety in the poultry industry, congressional leaders and aides said.

"All Americans should be horrified at the conditions reported in this investigation," Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said in an e-mail. He said he plans to hold a hearing this spring.

In a six-part series that began last Sunday, the Observer reported that House of Raeford, which has seven processing plants in the Carolinas, had masked the extent of injuries behind its plant walls.

You can catch the report and related articles in it's entirety at The Charlotte Observer

NC: The Human Cost of the poultry Industry by The Charlotte observer

NOTE: UPDATE can be found at U.S. Lawmakers worried about safety after Charlotte Observers expose on the poultry industry 3-08-07

From: The Charlotte Observer
*Click within the Flash below to view the entire project

The Charlotte Observer has produced an unreal look into the dark side of todays meatpacking industry, with a investigative story entitled The Cruelest Cuts: The human cost of bringing poultry to your table. I urge all of my readers to check it out, according to their plants records they are safer than a toy store, can you imagine that?

Safer than a toy store?

Workplace safety experts also question a reported drop in musculoskeletal disorders. In 2006, 20.8 of every 10,000 poultry workers missed work because of MSDs, down from 88.3 in 1996, according to the Labor Department.

That 2006 rate would make poultry plants safer than toy stores. "It's intuitively implausible," said Dr. Michael Silverstein, a former OSHA policy chief. "Something is clearly wrong."

Here are the rates of MSDs resulting in lost time, per 10,000 workers:

47.4 Hobby, toy and game stores

38.6 Average for all industries

27.5 New car dealers

25.9 Pharmacies

20.8 Poultry processing

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Seems to me they probably have an tremendous illegal alien workforce, injuries occur, but don't get reported for fear of employer retaliation. God forbid they try to unionize, ICE will storm in and raid the place. Big props to the investigative writers at the Charlotte Observer, I can wait to read the entire work.

NY: Waldbaum's and A&P screwing 400 local employees and moving to nonunion facilities

Great Atlantic & Pacific takes our money, then turns it's back on NY workers.

With annual sales of $9.4 billion, Great Atlantic & Pacific operates 456 stores under the A&P, Waldbaum's, A&P Super Foodmart, The Food Emporium, Super Fresh, Pathmark and Food Basics banners. They have plenty of stores here in the NY metro area, they like to take our hard earned, but they don't want us to have good jobs.

This is a story very dear to my heart, I worked as a Teamster here in Brooklyn in Key Foods warehouse 15 years ago, the company moved half the operation to New Jersey and "bought out" half of the union employees. I was one of those who were bought out. While the contract helped the process the New Jersey warehouse got organized. So the remaining employees in New Jersey and the new union employees were all finally without a job within a few years when Key Foods operations finally moved into some New England state where there wasn't a union at all. Last I heard the employees get paid by the piece. So much for good local jobs. I have never stepped foot into a Key Food since. Now I read in NY Newsday that quite a similar situation is happening once again, with the employees out in Central Islip, Long Island, NY. While in conversation with a coworker at the end of the day opened my eyes to the fact that the Central Islip facility has been losing union employees for quite some time, this coworker's mother worked in the clerical division which were union employees at the time, that division was moved out about 10 years ago. The A&P group has also recently closed their Bronx, NY and Edison, NJ warehouses in 2005 when they were bought out by C&S Wholesale Grocers, a Keene, N.H.-based company. Their entire operation will now be moved to nonunion facilities in Connecticut and Pennsylvania. From NY Newsday

The facility, which initially operated decades ago as a Waldbaum's warehouse, employs approximately 400 people, said Kevin McCaffrey, president of Teamsters Local 707, which represents 220 warehouse workers. Another 90 unionized workers, including truck drivers, and about 80 non-union management and support staff also will be affected, he said.
Representatives of A&P and C&S did not return numerous calls seeking comment.

McCaffrey said C&S officials notified workers and the union last week of the plan to shutter the Central Islip warehouse, saying it would save the company some $7 million annually. The unions and C&S had been negotiating a new contract.

One long-time employee said workers took the news hard. "We were in shock," said Joe Mullady of Holtsville, who has worked at the facility for 27 years, most recently as an inventory checker. Mullady said he will retire, but most co-workers "are scrambling to find jobs in a dying industry."

I feel you brother, I remember well. Good luck guys, hope you and your families can make it through. Unfortunately, warehousing isn't a dying industry, it has just become another sweatshop industry here in the state, according to Alex from IWW (Industrial Workers of the World):

Brooklyn, NY, July 2007 - They work 115 hours a week, earning under $4 dollars an hour. In New York City, where minimum wage is $7.15 and a studio apartment may cost $900 a month or more, workers at HWH Trading Company work in conditions that are closer to slavery than anything else.

Here is a blatant case of our losing community, there is absolutely no winner to this story, except a small handful of wealthy individuals at the top.

Who's gonna lose a house? Who's not gonna get paid because these people are trying to make ends meet? This is just another reason that 400 more New Yorkers and all American working people shouldn't vote for anyone who is involved in this:

The economic stimulus package is stalled in the U.S. Senate. Senate Republican leaders—backed by the Bush White House—threatened a filibuster against efforts by Senate Democrats to extend unemployment insurance (UI) benefits for the millions of jobless workers who will run out of benefits in the next several months.

Shame on the union leaders for the continued lack of rank-and-file and intra-union-communication!

We have absolutely zero boycotting ability, we do not stick together, we collectively give employers zero fear as a unified voice, we stand divided and I don't blame that on the workers in the field.
I will put this to the test in about a week, when I ask the next Teamster I come across about what he thinks about the warehouse closing in Long Island and I'm almost certain will get the curious look of bewilderment that I have come to expect from the average rank and file union member.

Shame on the Federations for not openly supporting one another!

Give us something to believe in. Fight for us! Hire more communication staff! Do it before we're all on the unemployment line! I would say that 98% of the union workforce in the country hasn't a clue that the next truck they will unload has a high probability of having a Mexican driver who has driven it directly from Mexico if the Bush administration has it's way, why isn't the entire country getting prepared to be joining hands and blocking the border together? Why isn't this an infomercial?

More introduction to computers classes for our members, more public relations, more advertising, more community outreach, more presence in the curriculum of the Public schools.

We need to get into the hearts and minds of the youth in America, the future voters and union members. We need to give the public a reason to believe in us once again. We need to equalize the media bombardment of the anti-union lobbyists. My Google ads are 100% anti-union sites, wheres our paid advertising? Defeat lies with truth. When we educate John and Jane Public as to what unions fight for, when they truly believe in us, then we will have more of a right to ask them to vote for our candidates.

Shame on us for being so fucking complacent!

We keep buying the NY Post, who vehemently hates organized labor, we buy Carhartt clothes, who turned it's back on union construction workers who made them famous and has now removed their final 5 Made in the USA items from it's website and we buy Red Wing shoes without checking the label while they are quietly moving their operations to China. We invest against our own interests, we still shop in Wal-Mart, we showed that we didn't give a shit if it was made here, we don't care if a child made it, we don't care if it poisons our children. We bitch about our union leaders and don't make an effort for change. We made our bed.

40 years ago there would be a massive boycott of all their stores in the New York area, now we all just bend over and take it up the...

Like I said before, I took this story personal. My old warehouse job in Brooklyn which paid $700+ for 40 hours, is now being done for $460 for 115 hours (with no taxes being paid)

Yeah I'm mad, and you should be too