Union

Private security officers in Philadelphia are joining together in a civil rights campaign for fair wages, benefits and dignity on the job.

Guards are signing up with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 32BJ and anticipate upcoming employer contract negotiations.

Produced by Kistine Carolan.

By Jonathan C. David

Philadelphia — A weekend night in Olde City. Restaurants bustle with diners unwinding from the pressures of the work week, and Independence Park is alive with Chanukah celebrants. This is not where you would expect to hear animated conversations about the benefits or drawbacks of charter schools over public schools.

Almost half the classes at Temple University are taught by adjuncts - part time faculty who work with no job security and little access to benefits. Now, a group of adjuncts is campaigning to form a union and join Temple's branch of the American Federation of Teachers.

On Wednesday evening, caregivers at Broomall Presbyterian Village, a nursing home in Broomall, Pennsylvania, voted to form a union with SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania, which represents over 22,000 health care workers statewide.  These workers celebrated their first moments as proud union members by sharing their stories with Sharita Rollins, a certified nursing assistant from Philadelphia and a longtime member of SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania.  She interviewed the workers and asked them what they hoped to win in their first union contract.

The mining accident in the coal region of West Virginia is a tragedy. The loss of 25 lives in what amounted to the worst explosion in a mine in the past 25 years, along with the death of four miners who were found this past weekend, is inexcusable. We now know that the mine where this incident occurred was riddled with safety violations that the Massey Coal corporation skirted and ignored.

Thanks to everyone who came out to the public hearing last Friday March 19th at City Hall.  MMP was there along with representation from every group in MMP.

In this audio piece, Kate Harkins, of Temple University's Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) discusses what she learned from listening to the stories of Temple Nurses and Allied Professionals (members of PASNAP).

This summer, students from the Philadelphia Student Union visited the town of Matewan, West Virginia; a town with a rich history of coal miner organizing. There, a man named Wes Harris explained the conditions faced by coal miners in the early 20th century, and that some miners are still experiencing today. This visit was part of a larger immersion into Appalachia, to better understand poverty in this country and how to build a multi-racial movement to end it.

On this show:

+ Organizers from around the world gather to strategize building a movement to end poverty.
+ Domestic workers fight to be protected under labor law.
+ Workers United speaks about their creation as a new union.
+ Poor & working people see loss of services under PA budget stalemate.
+ Local news and analysis from Philly's working people.

In late April, the Baltimore based human rights organizing group United Workers Association held a major human rights march and protest to announce the worst of the worst of the employers in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.