North Shore

IBEW Local 103 has been feeling some heat for its prolonged campaign against Anna Jacques hospital. But Local 103's Business Manager, Michael P. Monihan is braving the blowback and will continue exposing Anna Jacques hospital.

The cuts will reduce the rate of pay for custodians from a high of $16 per hour to $14, and the lowest from $14 to $12 per hour. The concessions amount to a budget line item of more than $450,000, nearly $10,000 less than the city's $207,000 unemployment costs and $255,000 additional outsourcing expenses combined. The concessions restored 11 positions, but could not keep all of the custodial jobs in the budget. At the end of the day, city will lay off one full-time and 3 part-time custodians next year.

Antonia Chun, a contracted janitor at the GE plant for twelve years recently fired for her union activities, said “After all these years of hard work, I was still making eight dollars an hour with no benefits. When the manager fired me, he said, ‘This is because you support the union.’ We are on strike because we will no longer be treated like the trash we clean.”

"The Department of Labor has fined an Upper Crust restaurant in Salem more than $80,000 for violating federal overtime and record-keeping laws. The pizza shop, operated by franchisee Michael Buchhalter, failed to pay 11 kitchen employees overtime when they worked more than 40 hours a week, according to the agency."

On the local level, the contract represents 1,860 River Works employees. According to GE, the new four-year agreement would provide better wages, pension and job and income security. When talks opened last month, workers like Ted Comick, a River Works machinist, said pension protection was high on the list of important issues and union negotiator Ric Casilli said the IUE would focus on the health care fight.

With a merger or sale of Northeast Health Systems to one of four larger organizations looming at the end of the month, nurses from Addison Gilbert Hospital took their case to the street Wednesday to demand assurances that "successor language" protecting their jobs be included in any new contract.

For the first time in about 40 years, Peabody's budget will not include raises for city employees, Mayor Michael Bonfanti said yesterday. "I give a pat on the back to the unions, at least on the city side, for realizing that this is a difficult time and for stepping up," Bonfanti said.

Without that written assurance, union leaders said, a new owner could come in and lay off nurses or cut their pay and benefits. "They can say, 'We don't like your pay scale, you've got too many holidays, we're going to take away your pension,'" said Marie Freeman, a registered nurse and co-chairwoman of the union's Beverly Hospital bargaining unit. "They can do just about whatever they want if we don't have that language."

On May 26, the North Shore Labor Council (NSLC) in Massachusetts celebrated three important wins for workers: IUE-CWA 201 members won their first contract at Budget Rent A Car after a two-year battle; nurses in the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) won essential safe staffing improvements in new contracts and more than 700 human service workers voted to join SEIU 509.