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Government Affairs Report: January 2004

Author: Debbie Golombek, UAL MEC Government Affairs Committee Chair

Looking back at 2003, it’s amazing how fast the year progressed and how much we worked on – in the legislative arena we celebrated a great victory with our hard fought campaign for certification and we suffered a setback, thanks to the Republican leadership, on our efforts to have the TSA issue Flight Attendant security training guidelines. We successfully campaigned and lobbied for airline emergency relief in the Iraq War supplemental appropriations, helping U.S. airlines receive millions in refunds for security costs, while at the same time securing an extension of unemployment benefits for laid off aviation workers. We successfully brought to the attention of the U.S. Congress the need for pension funding relief and joined forces with other union members in opposition to the Administration’s desire to change rules on cash balance plans, overtime pay regulations and regulations regarding union financial reporting.

Elections 2004

With the November 2, 2004 U.S. General Election less than 300 days away, the activities of the Government Affairs Committee will turn to Elections 2004 – voter registration, voter education, absentee ballot information and our Get Out The Vote efforts. This will be the election of our lifetime and as we know from 2000, EVERY VOTE COUNTS!

The elections will present the American public, including America ’s union families, with critically important choices. Eligible U.S. voters will be electing a President, 435 members to the House of Representatives (all 435 offices of the House are elected every two years), 34 Senators (one third of the Senate is elected every two years) and State and Local officials. No choice will be more important than who will serve as President of the United States .

I encourage all LEC Officers and Local Council Committee members to get involved in our Get Out The Vote (GOTV) activities for the primaries and general elections.

What can you do?

• make sure you are registered to vote - if in doubt, re-register
• include voter registration applications in your Local Council transfer packets
• publicize State Presidential Primary dates and encourage Flight Attendants to request absentee ballots for Primary elections
• recruit volunteers for your voter registration/absentee ballot information drives

Our International Council locations can now access the Federal Voting Assistance Program at www.fvap.gov This web site provides U.S. citizens, who reside overseas, information on registering to vote and how to obtain absentee ballots. I will be working with MEC Webmaster Christopher Lee to have a link to this site posted on our web site as well as a U.S. voter registration link.

As in the past, the Government Affairs Committee will be holding voter registration/absentee ballot information drives in ALL Council locations. These drives have always been well received by our membership, and I expect this year Flight Attendants will especially appreciate the information.

Since our voter registration drives are limited to distributing information on how to register and how to obtain absentee ballots, voter education will be through MEC and Local Communications channels, including comparing candidates on issues and communicating how anti-worker and anti-Flight Attendant the current Administration is. I would also like to encourage Local Councils to publicize FlightPAC endorsed candidates and encourage local council members to volunteer on campaigns.

Political/Legislative Policy Committee

I will be attending the Political/legislative Policy Committee meeting in Washington , D.C. January 13-15, 2004 .

The following are discussion topics I submitted for Jan 13-15 Political/Legislative Policy Committee meeting:

• Ensuring retirement benefits for members by opposing Republican leadership efforts to privatize, weaken or dismantle the Social Security system
• Voter education campaign and using the sham Medicare bill and health care crisis as issues to compare presidential candidates
• Discussion of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group efforts to start-up a new airline in the US and should AFA, if necessary, institute a grassroots campaign to educate flight attendants on cabotage and foreign ownership
• How to best implement the AFL-CIO Battleground States Strategy and Labor 2004 Ten Point Program
• Creating a 2004 Get Out The Vote timeline
• 2004 Government Affairs regional training calendar
• Request to establish a link to the Federal Voting Assistance Project to assist Flight Attendants residing overseas in requesting voter registration and absentee ballot materials
• Supporting the Human Rights Campaign opposing a Constitutional Amendment on marriage
• Discussion of how Local Council Government Affairs committee members can utilize CWA regional structure resources
• FlightPAC

Pension Funding Legislation

In our continued efforts to help ensure United’s emergence from bankruptcy we will continue our efforts on pension funding relief when the U.S. Congress reconvenes for the second session of the 108 th Congress.

While Congress has been in recess it has been relatively quiet on the legislative front but I expect our grassroots efforts to begin again after Congress reconvenes on Jan 20th.

In other news ……

BUSH ANTI-UNION RULES DELAYED

A federal judge issued a one-year injunction on Dec. 31 against the Department of Labor’s attempt to force burdensome new financial reporting rules on unions. The rules were due to go into effect Jan. 1. The AFL-CIO filed suit to block the rules, and U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler wrote that Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao "has simply failed to offer any reasonable justification for requiring such far-reaching changes to take place in seven weeks."

Kessler said such a short period of time for unions to come into compliance would cause unions "irreparable harm." The new reporting rules-which could cost local and national unions as much as $1 billion a year-are part of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act and involve the LM-2 annual report all unions file with the Labor Department.

NO HELP FOR JOBLESS WORKERS

The federal Temporary Extended Unemployment Compensation (TEUC) program that provides workers with federal benefits after they exhaust their state UI benefits expired Dec. 21. An estimated 80,000 to 90,000 workers a week are running out of their state benefits, typically 26 weeks, without finding jobs. The percentage of jobless workers who have been unemployed for more than six months is at its highest level in 20 years, but Republican leaders claimed the slightly improving economy made it unnecessary to extend the TEUC. Bush ignored calls from congressional Democrats and some governors to call Congress back for a special session to extend the program. Roughly 2.3 million private-sector jobs have disappeared since March 2001, and there are at least three unemployed workers for every new job opening.

GROCERY WORKERS HOLD THE LINE

Negotiators in the two-and-a-half month lock-out and strike involving 70,000 United Food and Commercial Workers at three southern California supermarket chains took a break from talks over the holidays. On Dec. 19, union leaders offered a contract proposal, but the employers-Safeway, Albertsons and Krogers-rejected it, continuing to call for large health care cuts for all workers and wage reductions for new hires. UFCW also removed pickets from distribution and warehouse facilities, which IBT delivery drivers had been honoring since Nov. 24. "We have never seen such solidarity amongst workers in the supermarket industry as has been displayed by members of the Teamsters union," said UFCW President Douglas Dority.

FIGHT FOR OVERTIME PROTECTIONS

More than 200,000 people have signed electronic and hard-copy petitions calling on President Bush to withdraw his overtime pay proposal that could cost as many as 8 million workers their overtime pay protections. The petitions, thousands of which have been downloaded and distributed at workplaces around the nation, also urge Bush to back away from his threats to veto any legislation that would block the Department of Labor from implementing changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act that would eliminate many workers' overtime pay protections. The U.S. Senate is expected to rekindle the legislative fight when it reconvenes later this month.

In December, Senate Democrats blocked an omnibus spending bill that failed to include overtime pay protections that the House of Representatives and Senate previously approved as part of the fiscal year 2004 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education appropriations bill. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) offered the overtime pay guarantee as an amendment to the Labor spending bill, but Republican lawmakers stripped the Harkin amendment from the bill that was rolled into the omnibus measure. Democratic leaders will push for inclusion of an overtime pay protection guarantee when the bill is brought up for a vote in January.