ORGANIZING NEWS

Attention Organizers!
Click here to read and share your ideas, news and other information on organizing with your fellow members.

Mission Statement
As one of the most active unions in the labor movement today, the IUPAT has a deep and ongoing commitment to recruiting new members while mobilizing our current ranks. A large, diverse and active membership is crucial to the goals of the IUPAT: secure a safe workplace, ensure fair wages and benefits for all workers and cultivate institutional and political support for pro-working family policies.

We also provide state of the art training and continuing education to our membership to make us one of the most skilled, knowledgeable and safety conscious workforces in the finishing industries.

With these goals in mind, the IUPAT has developed innovative and exciting organizing strategies to ensure that our union will continue to be a force to be reckoned with.

News you should read…
The National Labor Relations Board recently made a decision affecting how employees can interact off the job as well as on the job. Is this an anti-organizing effort on its part? You decide.

Big Brother On and Off the Job
By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
They'll be bowling alone at Guardsmark tonight. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) doesn't want the employees chatting it up off the job.

On June 7 the three Republican appointees on the five-member board that regulates employer-employee relations in the United States handed down a remarkable ruling that expands the rights of employers to muck around in their workers' lives when they're off the job. They upheld the legality of a regulation for uniformed employees at Guardsmark, a security guard company, that reads, "You must NOT...fraternize on duty or off duty, date or become overly friendly with the client's employees or with co-employees." Read more...

Pay Abuses Common for Day Laborers, Study Finds
Washington Post
Thursday, June 23, 2005
More than half of day laborers in the Washington area have been cheated out of their wages and one in four has been harmed on the job, according to a study being released today that tries to sketch a portrait of the informal workers.
Read more...

CNN's Lou Dobb's Tonight does a story on the impact undocumented workers make in our industry. 
It features some of our very own members from District Council 9. (MediaPlayer: Download Now)

- Hi-Bandwidth Connection (6.1MB)
- Modem Connection (1MB)

The Stark Reality Behind China's Economic Miracle
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers recently produced an article detailing China's meteoric rise in the world economy and the price its workers have paid for that success.

It is a piece that should be read by every last member of the entire labor movement. It brings harsh examples to light of why the globalization of the organized labor is needed more and more every day.

Labor Board's Critics See a Bias Against Workers
The rulings of the National Labor Relations Board have poured out one after another in recent months, with many decisions tilting in favor of employers. Read more... (link requires registration at the New York Times web site)

Good News and Bad News: Union Workers Have Better Benefits
So what's the bad news?  Better benefits for union workers means that employers will fight organizing with even more determination in order to save money.  Another reason to join your local organizing efforts.  Read more here...

The Chicago-Tribune examines a growing population of immigrants in the membership of the IUPAT in Chicago.
Read more... (link requires free registration at the Chicago-Tribune web site)