That Union Thing

Starbucks Managers Sue for OT

Managers at Starbucks locations in Boca Raton and Deerfield Beach have filed a lawsuit seeking class-action status for Starbucks managers who have worked more than 40 hours a week. The managers claim that little of their time is spent on managerial tasks and that Starbucks is violating federal law by denying them overtime pay.

Source: Yahoo! News

AFTRA Eyes Restructure

The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists has initiated restructure that it hopes will save the union $4 million per year. The changes, which must be approved by its 2005 national convention, would move its headquarters from New York to LA, reduce the size of the national board, and place both national and local staffs under the direction of a national executive.

Source: backstage.com

From AFL-CIO Work in Progress

BFI WORKERS PICK UP VICTORY�Some 64 drivers and other workers at Allied Waste/BFI in Pensacola/Fort Walton Beach, Fla., voted to join Teamsters Local 991 July 23.

FLORIDA VOTE SNAFU, PART I�Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) defied a Florida appeals court order requiring the state to supply newly released felons with the paperwork and assistance necessary to regain their right to vote. The Miami Herald reported July 23 that Bush had scrapped the paper form and now requires applicants to contact the Office of Executive Clemency to file for hearings to have their rights restored. The court found at least 125,000 inmates who had completed their terms between 1992 and 2001 had not even been notified of their right seek restoration of their voting rights. About 50,000 people a year are released from prisons in Florida, one of seven states that does not automatically restore voting rights to people who have completed their terms.

FLORIDA VOTE SNAFU, PART II�A computer crash erased detailed records from the first election held in Miami-Dade County using touch-screen voting machines, county officials admitted recently. The vote disappearance was made public after the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition won the release of data from the 2002 gubernatorial primary. Had the election been disputed, voting rights activists said, there would have been no way to conduct an accurate recount because no paper records of the votes are kept. �This a disaster waiting to happen,� Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, chair of the coalition, told the Associated Press (AP). The AP also reported that in June, state officials acknowledged that touch-screen systems used by 11 counties contained a bug that would make manual recounts impossible.

VICTORY AT PAN AMERICAN�The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) last week certified SEIU District 1199Florida as the bargaining representative for the 750 workers at Pan American Hospital in Miami. The workers voted overwhelmingly for the union in January, but hospital officials filed several objections, which the board threw out.