The Western Kentucky Worker

Official Newsletter of the Western Kentucky Area Council, AFL-CIO

Prepared by Berry Craig, AFT-Kentucky and KEA-NEA

Volume 10, Number 4, April, 2009

‘Miss Frances,’ Labor Day mainstay, wins 2009 Young Award

When an organizer for the Food Handlers showed up where Frances Willey worked, she was quick to sign a union card.

“The union has meant everything in the world to me,” said Willey, the 2009 W.C. Young Award recipient. “The union gave me hope and something to hold onto.

“The union gave me a chance to better myself. The union has always been there for me.”

“Frances has always been there for the union,” said Jeff Wiggins, president of the Western Kentucky Area Council, AFL-CIO. “The W.C. Young Award is the highest honor our council bestows. No one has deserved it more than ‘Miss Frances.’”

The award, named for he late W.C. Young, a national labor and civil rights leader from Paducah, will be presented to Willey April – at the at the annual W.C. Young Award dinner.

In 1994, Young received the first award. Last year’s winner was Wayne Chambers, a council trustee and the last vice president of United Steelworkers Local 665 at the Continental-General Tire plant in Mayfield, which closed in 2007.

Forty years before, Willey – then Frances Allen – joined the Food Handlers at the USEC gaseous diffusion plant, then Union Carbide. “People used to call it ‘the atomic plant,’” Willey said. “I worked in the cafeteria. We were a small union but a good union. Everybody got along.”

Her first husband, the late Byron G. Allen, worked at the plant, too. An electrician, he belonged to International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 816.

Allen died in 1966, having survived the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, that plunged the United States into World War II. “I met Byron when we were in the navy,” Willey said. “We got married on the U.S.S. Saginaw Bay, an aircraft carrier, at San Diego, Calif.

“He stayed in the navy through the war and was in the reserve afterwards. We traveled around a lot and lived in California and other places.”

Frances and Byron grew up in Illinois. She was born in Meredosia and graduated from Jersey Township High School in Jerseyville. The couple settled in Paducah after World War II.

“I had never been in Kentucky before Byron got a job at the atomic plant,” she said. “He started in 1952 and I went to work at the cafeteria about two years later.”

Willey stayed in the cafeteria for about 20 years. After her husband died, she remarried but was divorced.

Though she is well past retirement age, Willey has remained wedded to the union movement. She is secretary-treasurer of the Western Kentucky Labor Day Committee, a non-profit group that puts on the city’s Labor Day program.

“Nobody on the committee works harder than Miss Frances,” said Wiggins, a Steelworker who is also the committee president. “More than anybody else, she makes the program go.”

For several years, the program featured a weekend of festivities that included food sellers, a flea market and free musical entertainment. It was the official Kentucky State AFL-CIO Labor Day program.

Since, the program has been scaled back to just Labor Day. “A lot of us have gotten older and the number of volunteers has grown smaller,” Willey said.

Willey joined the committee about a dozen years ago. “I heard someone mention the

committee and I had been to one of the parades and thought to myself, ‘My land, this is something great.

“I talked to Elizabeth and Henry Peyton who were on the committee. Glenn Dowdy was the head of it back then. I volunteered and one thing led to another.”

Her volunteering did not go unrewarded. She was grand marshal for the 2005 end-of-summer holiday procession. Willey rode in a horse drawn carriage in the parade accompanied by her great-grandsons Colby and Connor Griggs.

“They threw candy and loved it,” Willey said. “A lot of kids hollered ‘Colby!' and ‘Connor!' Tom [Erwin, the carriage owner and driver] said, ‘Frances, I think they are getting more attention than you are.' That was fine with me.”

She is grateful to everybody who helps out with the parade. “I'm not going to call names because I'm afraid I will leave somebody out,” she said. “It takes all of us working together to make this program what it is. We've got a great bunch of workers.”

Willey usually starts her work on the Labor Day program in January. “The ice storm slowed me this year,” she said.

Willey mails out letters asking for donations from union locals in Paducah and elsewhere in western Kentucky. “We don’t get any money from the city, the county or state governments,” she said. “We depend strictly on donations from local unions plus interested businesses and individuals.”

She also contacts local high school bands and helps line up floats and other units and marchers for the parade. “Jeff and ‘Bubba’ Dawes helps me a lot,” she said. Dawes, a Machinist and Area Council COPE director, is the parade organizer. “He’s a real pro at this,” Willey added.

“I also have to get out letters to other people about the concessions and the entertainment and the flea market. I have to take out advertisements in the newspaper and get with city hall about our parade license. We all go and go and go until Labor Day, then it’s over. Then it starts up again in January.”

Willey said on parade day, she pitches in and helps Dawes. “I’ve only watched one parade the whole time I’ve been on the committee. That doesn’t count the time I was grand marshal. I was in the front of the parade and didn’t see the rest of it.

“So what I do before the parade is help Bubba get everybody lined up. They’ve all got a number and a place. But a lot of times, people don’t know where they’re supposed to be and that’s understandable. We’re glad to help.”

Willey has no plans to step down from the Labor Day Committee. “As long as I’m able to go, as long as I can get up, I’ll be there.”

“There” to Willey also means the Area Council. She is a delegate from AIM-UNITE! Chapter 22, a group of union retirees and others. “That’s a great organization, too,” she said. “Am I an officer in AIM? I’m the treasurer, what else.”

Willey also finds time to work as a volunteer for the Paducah Cooperative Ministry and a local hospice group. She is an active member of Lone Oak Baptist Church. “I love my church,” she said.

“We love Frances,” Wiggins said.

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More local governments approve “Buy American” resolution
Steelworker-sponsored “Buy American” resolutions have been approved by the Paducah City Commission and the Graves and Marshall County fiscal courts.

“Brian Graves, USW 9447-05 unit president, Wayne Chambers former USW 665 vice president and USW staff Joe Villines, played big roles in getting the Graves fiscal court resolution passed,” said Jeff Wiggins, council president and USW 94475 vice president. “Former USW 665 President Romey Holmes is one of the commissioners on the court.”

Villines and Wiggins worked on the resolution the Paducah commission endorsed. “We have three good friends on the commission – Gerald Watkins, labor endorsed and a longtime

friend – Carol Gault, a first-time commissioner who is carrying labor’s endorsement and Richard Abraham, also labor endorsed and a long time friend of mine,” Wiggins said.

Wiggins also thanked Villines “for all the hours and hard work and effort he has put in on passing these resolution in Western Kentucky and the state of Kentucky.” He added, “But Joe has told me we can't rest to we at least get one in every county.”

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Minutes of the March 5, 2009, Council meeting

Taken by Hardy Williams in Berry Craig’s absence

President Jeff Wiggins called the Executive Board to order at 6 p.m. Four members were absent and five were present.

Wiggins summarized correspondence: 3 newsletters, 5 mass mailings and 6 letters-of-attention. He said he emailed the March newsletter and meeting notice.

Wiggins read a fact sheet from the national AFL-CIO about health and safety under the Bush administration. He announced that Bonnie Edwards had resigned from AIM-UNITE! Chapter 22 and also had stepped down as a council delegate and trustee and as a member of the Western Kentucky Labor Day Committee Executive Board.

Wiggins also announced the nominees for the 2009 W.C. Young Award: Benny Adair, IAM; Kip Phillips, USW; and Charles Williams AFSCME.

With regard to Edwards, Wiggins read Article 6, Section 7 of the council constitution on filling vacancies. After a motion to adjourn was made and approved, the Executive Board meeting ended at 6:36 p.m.

Wiggins called the regular council meeting to order at 7 p.m. After Wiggins led the pledge of allegiance and a prayer, the roll call of officers again showed four members present and five absent. But a quorum was met.

Wiggins outlined the correspondence he summarized in the E-board meeting.

A motion was made to suspend the reading of the February meeting’s minutes. It was approved.

Motions were made and approved to concur with the Executive Board report and the Financial Report as read.

Howard “Bubba” Dawes made the COPE report. Joe Villines reported on the USW “Buy American” resolution.

Wiggins announced that the Western Kentucky Labor Day Committee will meet March 9 at 6 p.m. The group needs volunteers and funds.

He also announced that the California Nurses Association is sponsoring a national campaign for a single payer healthcare package. In addition, he said the University of Louisville is offering labor-management classes.

Under new business, Wiggins asked for other nominations for the W.C. Young Award. Wayne Chambers nominated Frances Willey.

Wiggins read the AFL-CIO fact sheet on the Bush administration and health care and announced Edwards’ resignations. He also re-read the council constitution on how to fill vacancies.

In addition, Wiggins reported on AFSCME’s negotiations with the city.

Further, he swore in Dawes, Chambers and Brandon Duncan as E-board members.

After a motion not to have a COPE meeting, the March council meeting adjourned at 7:40 p.m.

At 7:45 p.m., the E-board reconvened to select the W.C. Young Award recipient from the four nominees. Willey was nominated at the meeting adjourned at 8:08 p.m.

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From the national AFL-CIO website:

The Employee Free Choice Act is going to get some major “face time” with the American public in the coming weeks.

A new grassroots campaign, “Faces of the Employee Free Choice Act,” gets under way next week and coincides with stepped-up mobilization action planned for the upcoming congressional Easter recess.

The “Faces” campaign features new billboards and building banners that will be displayed throughout Washington, D.C., and in states across the country. The billboards and 50-foot-tall building banners feature union members, along with a quote from the workers about why the Employee Free Choice Act is vital for all workers to restore their freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life.

In the banner adorning the AFL-CIO building in Washington, D.C., Chinazo Okolo, a member of Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 3403, says she wants the Employee Free Choice Act to become law because I want the economy to work for everyone.

Next week, the workers featured on the banners and billboards will join union leaders, Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), “West Wing” actors Martin Sheen and Bradley Whitford on Capitol Hill to highlight the new campaign.

Meanwhile around the country, activists are gearing up for the April 6-17 congressional recess, arranging visits with their lawmakers in their home offices and planning events to build support for the Employee Free Choice Act. Be sure to check back for updates on those grassroots actions.

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African Americans Win With Unions

By Edgar Moore

For any people to be able to exercise their rights effectively, they must have certain preconditions—a job, physical safety, education, adequate housing and medical care. Without those preconditions, those formal rights are a dead letter. They can’t be exercised. Labor unions have done more to provide those conditions for African Americans than any other social institution in the United States.

According to John Schmitt of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a higher percentage of African American workers (16.2 percent) belong to unions than the rest of the population (13.5 percent) for good reason. Unions serve the African American community well. It is true that unions, like the rest of American society, delayed opening their doors to African Americans for too long, but enormous progress has been made since it happened.

Union membership benefits both male and female African Americans. Black men earn more if they are in a union ($18.15 per hour) as opposed to only $13.50 for nonunion men. Unionized African American men are more likely to have health insurance (76.7 percent) than nonunion black men (65 percent). The same holds true for health insurance and pension coverage.

Black women in unions earn more ($17.20 an hour) than nonunion black women ($12.00), and are much more likely to have health care coverage and a pension.

For African American workers, the union advantage with respect to health insurance and pension coverage remains large, even after considering differences in workers’ characteristics. Unionized African American workers are about 16 percentage points more likely to have health insurance and about 19 percentage points more likely to have a pension than nonunion workers.

Even in low wage occupations, African Americans in unions earn more than nonunion African American workers in the same occupations and are more likely to have health insurance and a pension plan.

But African American workers also benefit the union movement. Dr. Everett Freeman, president of Albany State University in Albany, Ga., concluded in a study of blacks in leadership positions

that there are more African Americans in leadership positions in labor unions than in any other social institution in America, except the black church.

That’s why the Employee Free Choice Act is important for African American workers. Union membership has been a passageway to the middle class for generations of African American workers. But the recession of the past decade has caused a depression in the black community. According to a 2007 study, 55 percent of the union jobs lost in 2004 were held by black workers, and African American women accounted for 70 percent of the union jobs lost by women in 2004.

Between 1983 and 2006, the percentage of African Americans represented by unions fell from 31.7 percent of all black workers to 16 percent, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Yet, African Americans still are among the most likely to join unions. If the freedom to join unions is increased, African Americans, like many other struggling American workers, will be able to increase their union membership and make even greater economic strides in the future

Edgar Moore is an instructor at the University of Nebraska—Omaha’s William Brennan Institute for Labor Studies.

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By Don Coburn

I Am Union. I Am Sportsman.

“I Belong"

It's a tangible, meaningful message that there is more strength in numbers and a common cord in each union sportsman that does not separate the union member from the sportsman.

The Union Sportsmen's Alliance (USA) is a hunting and fishing club of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP), and its AFL-CIO trade union partners representing more than 4.5 million union workers and 10,000 locals across the United States and Canada. Prior to launching the USA, an independent scientific survey revealed that 70% or 3.2 million union members among TRCP's partner unions hunt, fish and enjoy the outdoors.

Following this survey, the TRCP staff worked closely with union leaders to develop the Union Sportsmen's Alliance (USA), which opened its doors to union members, retirees and their families in July 2007. The purpose of the USA is to actively engage union hunters and anglers in the ongoing fight to create a better future for hunting and fishing, while creating their own outdoor club to extend union member benefits beyond the workplace to the woods and water.

The USA is ramping up membership in 2009, and Don Coburn, a USA Regional Coordinator covering the Great Lakes region and Kentucky, believes in the words I am Union. I am Sportsman. I Belong. "To me, the words ‘I belong’ are not just the fundamental mantra or slogan of this union-dedicated program. My goal as Regional Coordinator is to instill that feeling in USA members twelve months a year. No other club or organization I have been associated with as a member volunteer or as a paid employee has kept the membership excited all 12 months. Absolutely, no other club or organization offers their membership the opportunity to experience

their hunt of a lifetime on TV."

In addition to the basic USA membership package which includes a Buck knife, this union-

dedicated club offers exceptional benefits like discounts on gear, a chance to win a gun every month along with other giveaways, a member's website (www.unionsportsmen,org) to connect with other USA members, and local opportunities to participate in activities in the woods or on the water. Also, USA members automatically become TRCP partners and can do their part to help preserve America's hunting and fishing heritage.

"The USA is a unique club that offers many tangible benefits you will find in no other hunting and angling organization says Coburn. I want this club to grow at a steady pace and on a solid foundation of USA members."

So if you are union. If you are Sportsman. You belong. In the near future, when union members see the circular red, white and blue USA decal on a car, truck, hard hat or lunch box, they will feel the pride in being union, being sportsmen, and belonging to the Union Sportsmen's Alliance.

Contact Don Coburn at 614.441.9013 (office), 614.787.1354 (mobile), or dcoburn@trcp.org to learn more about your Union Sportsmen's Alliance, the Union Partner Program, USA Chapter Development and events planned in your state. Join the USA today!

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Ten Truths for 2009

By John J. Sweeney

Read more from President Sweeney.

We all know there are tough times ahead—but 2009 gives us a jolt of hope for the change we need. Here are 10 simple truths to guide our work—and our elected leaders' work—every day of 2009.

1) We can't fix the economy by hurting workers. Workers didn't tank the economy. We built it. Working families are the economy.

2) Rescuing the economy will require investments—in jobs, infrastructure, health care and more. We can't get out of a hole this deep without building a big ladder.

3) Rebuilding our broken economy gives us the opportunity to get it right this time. We've seen that an economy built on debt and speculation won't work. Rampant deregulation won't work. Corporations and anti-worker leaders have kicked the legs of government and wages out from under the economic table. No wonder it collapsed. Replacing the economic "legs" of family-supporting wages and benefits and responsible rules will work.

4) We need to stop pretending that American employers can or should compete with companies in countries that subsidize industry, pay for workers' health care or trample labor and environmental protections. America's employers need a level playing field created by raising standards here and abroad, not lowering standards in a global race to the bottom.

5) It's time for change. America voted for it. America needs it. We demand it. For too long our country has been headed in the wrong direction. It's time to turn around America.

6) Progressive, pro-working-family candidates won resoundingly in the 2008 elections. If we allow a minority of Senate Republicans to block our priorities or impose their unpopular will on the majority, we have had our votes stolen.

7) Corporate officials who through fraud, negligence or greed cost workers and retirees their jobs, savings, home equity and retirement security should get jail terms, not government handouts.

8) Economic injustice and inequality are intolerable and should not be allowed to survive this new year. The average CEO makes $40,556 every working day, more than $10,000 over what the average worker makes in a year. A woman earns less than 80 cents for every dollar a man earns. African Americans' median weekly earnings are $150 less than those of white workers; for Latinos, the difference is $210 a week. The richest 10 percent of U.S. households have 71 percent of our wealth. Income and wealth inequality are gaping, growing and they are tearing apart what should be one nation.

9) U.S. labor law doesn't say corporations and the government must tolerate workers forming unions. It doesn't say corporations and government must allow unions if after using every trick in the books they can't stop them. The National Labor Relations Act explicitly says this nation's policy is to encourage collective bargaining and union representation for workers. You wouldn't know that from seeing what corporations do—and what the government has been allowing them to do—to workers who try to form unions and bargain for a better life. Let's restore the law of the land by enacting the Employee Free Choice Act.

10) America is meant to be "of the people, by the people, for the people"—all the people, not the few. We can renew America's promise by renewing national commitment to our founding values.

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