We are having a community-wide meeting on March 16 at the UE hall in Taunton to plan for a mid-April jobs march from the Taunton Green to Haskon or vice versa. If anyone from SE Mass CLC and U/Mass labor center can make it that would be great. There will be a report on the Haskon closing and the UE Local 204 fight back as well.

March 16
6:15 pm

5 Hill St.
Taunton, MA

(5 Hill St. is Manny's Hardware and the union hall and offices are on the second floor. Take the door to the right of the building.) Thanks for all you help and support.

--
UE Northeast Region
Peter Knowlton, President
5 Hill St.
Taunton, MA  02780

774-264-0110
office@uenortheast.org
www.uenortheast.org

Join the Morton Hospital Nurses & Health Professionals at an Informational Picket for a Fair Contract to Include Safe Staffing, No Mandatory Overtime and Protection of the Nurses’ Defined Benefit Pension

Wilkins said 340 health professionals at the hospital have signed a petition in support of the union’s position, and that the letter was delivered to hospital management Wednesday afternoon. The nurses intend to picket outside of Morton Hospital next Wednesday.

Diman last week signed an articulation agreement with the Dorchester-based Sheet Metal Workers Local Union 17 that will give graduates of the metal fabrication and welding program first pick at apprenticeships and potential future employment with the union.

The union movement and our allies are taking our fight for good jobs now to the biggest Wall Street banks whose reckless greed has gone a long way to wreck the U.S. economy and kill American jobs.

From March 15-26, working people will hold rallies and demonstrations at branches of the Big Six Wall Street banks—Bank of America, Chase, Citigroup, Wachovia-Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley—across the country. They will tell the banks “We Are Not Your ATMs” and “Make Wall Street Pay for Creating New Jobs.”

Two Republican senators from Tennesse are doing a big favor for a big company from their home state by fighting unionization rights for drivers at the Memphis-based courier FedEx.

The vice president for one of the nation’s most anti-union, anti-worker organizations showed what we knew all along: Those fighting workers and their unions oppose the democratic process.

The Jobs Crisis:
Not Everyone is Feeling the Pain    
This is the second in a short series of Info Alerts on the jobs crisis.   Please distribute widely.

While our nation struggles with a whopping unemployment rate of nearly 10 percent, with four out of every 10 unemployed Americans among the long-term unemployed (more than 27 weeks), there are some people who continue to do just fine:

• Wall Street paid $20.3 billion in bonuses in 2009.  That’s a 17 percent increase in one year.
  
  
• At Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley – three of the biggest banks – compensation was up 31 percent in 2009.
  
  
• The average taxable bonus on Wall Street was nearly $124,000 last year.
  
  
• The five biggest health insurance companies reaped $12.2 billion in profits in 2009 – a 56% increase over the year before.
  
  
• The 400 richest households in the U.S. saw their income more than double since President Bush’s tax cuts in 2005. 
  
  
• These households have more wealth than 155 million Americans combined.
  
  
• The number of U.S. millionaires rose by 16 percent last year.  Those worth five million or more jumped by 17 percent.

Meanwhile, Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) recently chose to hold up an extension of unemployment benefits and COBRA health insurance assistance for 1.2 million hard-working Americans who lost their jobs through no fault of their own.  When confronted and asked to relent by a fellow Senator, his comment was “tough sh*t.”