On the picket line

VT nurses win improved contract

Nurses represented by the Vermont Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, AFT Local 5221, have been bargaining since March to win a new contract that guarantees quality patient care and safe staffing and addresses the nursing shortage at the largest hospital in Vermont and two other facilities in Burlington and Colchester.

Maybe it was the threat of a strike by midnight on July 9 or maybe it was the determined vigil held by community supporters in Burlington on July 6, but after 39 hours of negotiation the union announced before midnight on July 8 that they had agreed to a three-year contract. It must still be ratified by the 1,500 members.

Though the hospital administration initially refused to consider the nurses’ proposals to address the staffing crisis and improve patient care, the nurses won better language on scheduling and equitable pay scales. These will “help with retention and recruitment of new nurses,” union president Jennifer Henry told the Burlington Free Press (July 10). Other improvements included more education days and better differential pay for night and weekend shifts.

City workers unionize in Jackson, Miss.

Organizing in the South received a big boost on June 20 when the Jackson, Miss., city council voted unanimously to recognize the Mississippi Alliance of State Employees, CWA Local 3570, as the bargaining representative of 1,200 city workers. (Excluded are police and firefighters who already have unions.) That vote ended a yearlong collective bargaining campaign.

After helping to elect a pro-labor mayor and city council, MASE-CWA presented cards signed by a majority of the city workers to the mayor’s office in January 2006. CWA members and supporters wearing purple CWA organizing T-shirts packed the June 20 council meeting where they cheered their hard-fought victory.

The MASE-CWA 3570 website (www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/4017/) reads: “As a ‘right-to-work’ state, Mississippi is tough to organize; but the courage and determination of our rank and file, elected leadership and staff of organizers have delivered us some real successes in the twelve years of our existence.” Local 3570 is the only public workers’ union in Mississippi, representing over 3,000 state workers in such state agencies as the Department of Human Services, the Health Department, Head Start and all state universities.

NJ workers rally against wage cuts

Thousands of New Jersey state workers—members of the Communication Workers and the city and state employees unions, along with teachers—filled an entire city block outside the statehouse in Trenton on June 19 in a massive rally to protest projected wage cuts.

The workers were responding to a proposal by some state legislators to force a 15 percent wage cut on state workers to solve the state’s $4 billion budget shortfall. The state workers’ message was loud and clear: “A deal is a deal.”

The lawmakers got the message. After a six-day shutdown of the state government ending July 8, the budget crisis was resolved without touching the workers’ wages.