We’ve come to expect greedy execs at for profit corporations (Home Depot, Enron, etc.) but you’d expect better from a Catholic non-profit hospital.

Unfortunately, Resurrection Health Care, a Catholic hospital system in Chicago, seems to be taking on the worst traits of corporate America. Read all about it in the report “Coming Up Short: Resurrection Health Care’s Distorted Pay Priorities.”

Released by AFSCME Council 31 last week, the report documents the stark disparity between the compensation of top executives and the low wages paid to patient-support staff on the frontlines of hospital health and safety.

You can listen to a story about the report and Resurrection workers’ struggle on the Workers Independent News radio network.

Father Larry Dowling, a supporter of the workers trying to form a union at Resurrection and interviewed in the WIN story, said it well:

Catholic social teaching is very clear about the need for employers to pay a living wage and respect workers’ rights to organize a union. These low wages are an embarrassment - an embarrassment - for a Catholic institution.

When it comes to the families of union activists, the fruit doesn’t often fall far from the tree. That’s especially true of Davida Russell, a bus driver and president of Local 744 of the Ohio Association of Public School Employees (OAPSE)/AFSCME Local 4. In the 1970’s Russell’s mom was a bus driver, too.

Last year, Russell enrolled at the George Meany Center’s National Labor College to pursue a bachelor’s degree, which she received this summer. As she learned more about the labor movement and how unions have made a difference in people’s lives, she recalled her own childhood experiences riding her mom’s bus through Cleveland, attending union meetings and watching her mom lead the fight when her co-workers at the Cuyahoga County Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities got tired of being mistreated and decided to form a union.

Russell’s memories became the foundation for a book – “The Birth of a Union: The Legacy of Noridean McDonald” – which is scheduled for publication in July. Russell considers the work a tribute to her mom. We consider it one more example of the deep roots that support all working families.

Custodians at the 10 campuses of the University of California (UC) scored a major victory in their fight for better wages and to put an end to the outsourcing of groundskeepers. UC and AFSCME Local 3299 members reached a settlement that mandates wage increases for all UC custodians and allows the replaced groundskeepers to be brought on as full UC employees effective July 1, 2007.

The agreement was based on the recommendations of former state Senate Pres. Pro Tem John Burton, who mediated between both parties. The 18-month struggle was backed by high-profile boycotts of UC campuses by former President Bill Clinton, presidential candidate John Edwards, and actor/activist Danny Glover and also included boisterous student protests.

As the saying goes, respect is earned, never given. New York’s child care providers know it better than anyone given their long fight to gain recognition for the critical work they perform.

Earning an average $19,000 a year and having little or no benefits, providers just took a momentous step forward as Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) signed an executive order granting them the freedom join a union and bargain for a better future (for more on their win, read this article from The New York Times.)

Not ones to rest on their laurels, their union, the Voice of Organized Independent Childcare Educators (CSEA/VOICE), has already filed with a solid majority of signed providers for recognition from the New York State Employment Relations Board.

Providers in New York have added their voice to that of the more than 220,000 family child care providers, day care center workers, Head Start teachers and early childhood employees who have joined AFSCME across the country to secure greater investment in our children.

Standards such as the 40-hour workweek, plus medical and family leave, define the current American workplace. But they weren’t conceded to workers out of the goodwill of their employers’ hearts. They were fought for and won by generations of workers who refused to give up.

This same fighting spirit fuels the battle of AFSCME members across the country to help workers bargain for a better life for themselves and their families.

Take Nevada, for instance. A bill introduced by the State of Nevada Employees Association (SNEA)/AFSCME Local 4041 to grant collective bargaining rights to state workers just passed a state Assembly committee unanimously. Since local government employees in Nevada already enjoy this right, it is simply a matter of fairness that their state counterparts should do so, too.

Meanwhile, in Oregon, members of Child Care Providers Together CCPT/AFSCME Local 132 of Council 75 recently went before the state Senate Commerce Committee to demand that lawmakers write CCPT’s collective-bargaining rights into law.

Working families are the backbone of the country’s economy. Bargaining for better conditions at the workplace is our hard-earned right. AFSCME is making sure it stays that way.

Unions are the best option for workers to get ahead economically. The bipartisan group of U.S. senators co-sponsoring the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) understands this and so do working families across the nation. Does your senator support our freedom to bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions? See for yourself.

The EFCA was already passed by a vote of 241-185 in the U.S. House of Representatives. Now it’s time for the Senate to do its job. You can do your part by sending this letter to your representatives and urge them to vote for this critical piece of legislation.

Graduate students who work for their universities are also employees deserving better working conditions and pay. At least that’s what a group of student workers and union organizers at UCLA decided as they join forces to form a union with AFSCME Local 3299. Stressing the importance of having a voice at work, they recently attended a meeting of the Associated Students UCLA Board of Directors to state their case.

“We want to organize with AFSCME because currently there really is no voice for student workers,” Megan Markoff, a third-year political science student told UCLA’s The Daily Bruin.

People attend college to acquire the skills that will help them become better professionals and advance themselves in the world. As student/workers who provide valuable services to UCLA they should be treated with the same dignity they expect to receive after graduation.

An article in The Washington Post called it “a shield against corporate bullying”; a column in The Los Angeles Times said it “would restore balance to a system that is driven by aggressive employers, anti-union consultants, coercion and fear”; and The New York Times gave it its unqualified support. What additional proof does anyone who opposes the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) need in order for them to see that passage of the law would create a fair and effective way for workers to decide if they want to join a union?

How about 800 nurses joining AFSCME through majority signup, precisely the EFCA’s major provision — one that would give employees a voice on the job and allow them to bargain for a better life? On March 2, one day after the EFCA was passed by a vote of 241-185 in the U.S. House of Representatives, nurses at Kaiser Permanente’s Southern California facilities became the newest members of United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals (UNAC/UHCP/NUHHCE).

How did they do it? They simply indicated their intent to join the union by signing authorization cards. The signatures were checked by a neutral third party and Kaiser Permanente then honored the nurses’ choice.

According to UNAC/UHCP Pres. and IVP Kathy Sackman, “Respecting workers’ desire to have a voice on the job – rather than fighting the union – is not only the right thing to do, but it makes good business sense.”

Workers can choose a voice on the job without facing hostility and intimidation. The only way to make this the rule instead of the exception is by making sure Congress passes the EFCA.

For the past four years, Resurrection Health Care, one of the largest non-profit health care systems in Illinois, has systematically denied the rights of its employees to have a voice at work. It’s time for management to hear them loud and clear.

Despite its original mission of providing quality care, in recent years RHC has increasingly been run like a business, slashing budgets for patient care while increasing executive compensation. This is why the system’s nearly 8,000 employees, including 2,000 nurses, are not only fighting for themselves but also for the dignity of working families nationwide.

In order to drive the message home once and for all, AFSCME and Sen. Barack Obama will join forces in Chicago on Saturday, March 3 to support RHC workers’ fight for dignity. The rally will bring together labor, political, religious and community leaders including AFSCME International Pres. Gerald McEntee, AFL-CIO Pres. John Sweeney and Sen. Obama.

Be there on Saturday and come together for justice at Resurrection. For tickets, e-mail obamarally@afscmeillinois.org.

Every day, major U.S. corporations deny their employees the freedom to decide whether to form a union. They do so by routinely intimidating, harassing, coercing and dismissing workers who try to organize for a voice at work.

“Every 23 minutes, an American worker is fired or discriminated against for trying to join a union,” AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee said in a released statement. “There is now an entire cottage legal industry dedicated to helping businesses foil workers who try to unionize. Sadly, their business is booming.”

On Tuesday, Congress reintroduced the bipartisan Employee Free Choice Act with 231 congressional co-sponsors. The bill would strengthen penalties for union-busting and establish mediation and arbitration during first contract disputes. It would also make it easier for workers to form unions through what’s called “majority sign-up,” which would require employers to grant union recognition if a majority of workers say in writing that they want one.

Currently, if employees present an employer with union authorization cards signed by a majority of workers, the employer can demand a secret ballot election supervised by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). But under President Bush, the NLRB enables employers to intimidate, coerce and harass workers and drag out the process indefinitely.

More than half of U.S. workers—nearly 60 million nationwide—say they would join a union right now if they could. However, because the current system for forming unions is broken, only 12 percent of American workers are currently unionized.

The advantages of achieving collective bargaining rights for American workers cannot be overstated: Unionized workers earn 30 percent higher wages than non-union workers and are 62 percent more likely to have employer-sponsored health care.

“The Employee Free Choice Act will give employees the freedom to make their own choices about whether to have a union, without interference by management,” McEntee stated. “Until Congress acts, the right to join a union will exist primarily on paper.”