HAZMAT TRAINING — ONLINE
The George Meany Center-National Labor College offers hazmat awareness training programs through its website.
The goal of the online hazmat awareness training programs is to provide rail workers with an understanding of the roles, rights, and responsibilities of working with hazardous materials. The online course provides first responder training at the awareness and familiarization levels, which meets most worker training requirements of OSHA and DOT for hazardous materials in transportation — including emergency and post-emergency response.
Topics covered include: an introduction to hazmats and the role of the first responder, federal regulatory agencies; DOT’s Hazardous Materials Regulations; recognition and identification of hazardous materials in transportation; how to use the 2000 Emergency Response Guidebook; chemical properties; how to use online resources; NIOSH Pocket Guide, New Jersey Hazardous Substances Fact Sheets and Material Safety Data Sheets; and an introduction to toxicology.
To register for the online courses, go to: http://www.hazmatgmc.org.
For details, e-mail the Meany Center at: crodgers@georgemeany.org.
For more information, click here: http://www.georgemeany.org/~bcantrell/online.htm.
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Summary of Certification of Conductor Regulation
WELCOME TO HOEY & FARINA
Personal Injury Attorneys / FELA Lawyers
Summary of Certification of Conductor Regulation
Effective January 2012, the Federal Railroad Administration (“FRA”) issued a rule requiring railroads to have formal programs to certify conductors.
Please read the FRA Summary of Certification of Conductor Regulation. If you have any questions concerning railroad conductor certification regulations, please contact Hoey & Farina at 888-425-1212.
For the complete regulations, go to www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-11-09/pdf/2011-28175.pdf
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One Million Signatures to Recall Walker
Brothers and Sisters,
We did it! Over one million signatures have been collected to recall Gov. Scott Walker. Later today, these signatures will be handed in to the Government Accountability Board for validation. Together, union members and tens of thousands of grassroots volunteers have collected enough signatures to force special recall elections for Gov. Scott Walker, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, Sen. Pam Galloway, Sen. Terry Moulton, Sen. Scott Fitzgerald and Sen. Van Wanggaard.
That’s right, all targeted recall campaigns reached or surpassed their signature goals! This is a historic moment in Wisconsin history. The people of Wisconsin are taking charge of their democracy and taking back our government from a corporate politician.
Signature Totals
- Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch – 845,000
- Sen. Terry Moulton of Chippewa Falls – 21,000+
- Sen. Pam Galloway of Wausau -21,000+
- Sen. Van Wanggaard of Racine – 24,000
- Sen. Scott Fitzgerald – 20,600
The people have spoken loud and clear and we are ready to put an early end to Gov. Walker’s reign. Next, the Government Accountability Board will begin validating signatures. After the validating process is complete election dates will be determined. Today is a day for celebration; tomorrow we will continue to educate our friends and neighbors on the disastrous affects of Gov. Walker’s agenda.
In Solidarity,
Phil Neuenfeldt, President
Stephanie Bloomingdale, Secretary-Treasurer
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1/9/2012 Recall Update
I wanted to follow up to make sure you had key dates in this final week of petition gathering:
· Tues, Jan 10TH- Last day to mail your petitions into the recall committee (Po box listed in upper right corner of the petition)
· Fri, Jan 13TH - Last day to physically drop off petitions to a local field office. Most field offices are throwing a volunteer thank you party on that Friday to thank volunteers and as one final chance to turn in petitions before the offices close.
· Sat, Jan 14th- Jan 16th- Last day to physically drive petitions to Madison recall office to drop them off in person to: AFT-WI, 6602 Normandy Lane, Madison
Petition Download
If you are doing email communications with your membership, please make sure that you include the following link: http://grassroots.wisdems.org/page/s/petitions-afl-cio where they can go to download and print off petitions to circulate.
Union Hall Petition Pick-up/Drop-Off Locations
The following is a list of union offices where petitions can be picked up/dropped off. If your union is doing this, please let me know and I can include it on this list:
WEAC- Fox Valley- 921 W. Association Dr., Appleton
United Steelworkers- 1620 Shore Drive, Beloit
IUPAT District Council 7 -S68 W22665 National Ave, Big Bend From 8-4:30 mon-fri.
Southern Lakes United Educators-616 Droster Avenue, Burlington
Eau Claire Labor Temple-2233 Birch Street, Eau Claire
Green Bay Labor Temple-1570 Elizabeth St., Green Bay Mon-Fri, 7am to 7pm
Contact Tony Vanderbloemen at ggblcouncil@sbcglobal.net to help staff the location
Teamsters Local 662 Union Hall -1546 Main St, Green Bay Mon-Fri, 8am to 4:30pm
Ironworkers District Council Office-403 E. Lake Street, Horicon
UAW 95-1795 Lafayette Street, Janesville
Machinists Union Hall-1307 Market St, La Crosse
Madison Labor Temple-1602 S. Park St, Madison
AFT Wisconsin-6602 Normandy Lane, Madison
Boilermakers Hall/ M/M Labor Temple,-71 W. Hosmer Street, Marinette Mon/Tues/Wed/Fri 12pm-5pm Thursday 12pm-7pm Saturday 9am-12pm
USW District 2 Office-1244A Midway Rd., Menasha Mon-Fri 8am to 5pm
Contact Mike Pyne at 920.216.4348 to help staff the location
Milwaukee Area Labor Council-633 S. Hawley Road, Milwaukee
Neenah/Menasha Labor Temple-157 Green Bay Rd., Neenah Time: Tues-Sat, 12pm to 7pm
Contact Nancy Beis at nancybz@att.net to help staff the location
Racine Labor Center-2100 Layard Avenue, Racine
Sheboygan Buildings & Trades Hall-1104 Wisconsin Ave., Sheboygan Mon-Fri from 10am to 6pm Sat from 10am to 2pm
Contact Barb Felde at bfel@att.net to help staff the location
Emil Mazey Hall (UAW 833)-5425 Superior Ave., Sheboygan Mon-Fri, 6 AM to 5 PM
Call (920) 458-2173 or email daveboucher@charter.net to help staff the location
Painters Training Center-1571 Ivory Drive, Sun Prairie
WSEU Office-1701 Main Street – Lower Level, Union Grove HOURS: Monday 12:00 to 5:00pm Saturday 6:00 am to 12:00pm
Wisconsin Federation of Nurses & Health Professionals-9620 W. Greenfield Ave, West Allis
Teamsters Local 344-10020 West Greenfield, West Allis
Steve Kwaterski
AFL-CIO
O: 414-771-0700 x17
C: 414-975-8650
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Defend Wisconsin
Efforts to recall Walker on track
– January 3, 2012Posted in: Mass Media, Press
Democratic Party Chairman Mike Tate said Tuesday that they are on track to get 720,000 signatures to recall Walker. Petitions will be turned in to state election officials on Jan. 17.
Read more at the Wisconsin State Journal (AP).
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Home Uppity Wisconsin Progressive News from the Cheddarsphere
2011 Entreprenuer of the Year Says Walker Destroying Wisconsin Breweries
Submitted by Jud Lounsbury
For those of you that have been living under a rock for the last fifteen years, Deb Carey is President, Founder and Owner of the wildly successful New Glarus Brewing Company– a company that she started from the ground-up with her husband in 1993 and has grown exponentially each year, reaching the 100,000 barrels-a-year mark in 2011.
Deb Carey, President and Owner of New Glarus Brewing Co.Deb Carey, President and Owner of New Glarus Brewing Co.
She’s also the 2011 Ernst and Young Entreprenuer of the Year for the Upper Midwest and creator of lots and lots of jobs in Green County… exactly the kind of “job creator” that Scott Walker should be listening too as he tries to stop Wisconsin from hemoraging jobs faster than any other state.
Unfortunately, Walker hasn’t been listening to Carey. In fact, Carey said she and other breweries around the state have been getting “worked over” and “fighting” Walker just to stay viable in Wisconsin. Carey also sarcastically dead-panned, “great way to encourage business investment.”
Here’s all of what Carey said in a recent back-and-forth with me on her facebook page:
JL: So sorry to see what Walker and Co. are doing to great breweries like NG. Keep up the good fight!
DC: Thanks, still fighting. Funny thing now that the rules are being inacted we see how brewers got worked over in the budget. Bull Falls, along with many other small brewers, just lost it’s Wholesaler License. Furthermore, Horny Goat and Esser’s, among others are technically shut down, but have been granted a grace period to continue business, while they search for a fix. Great way to encourage business investment. We are expanding our Giftshop and Visitor Courtyard but will not be allowed to serve Wisconsin wine or have a pub with drinks and champagne because we weren’t doing so before this summer. No new brewers will be able to either.
This is, of course, not the first time that Carey has waded into political waters. Just a few monts ago, she went to the White House to support President Obama’s American Jobs Act and was featured in a video released by the White House of business owners advcocating for passage of the bill. (It is also rumored that she provided the President a case of Spotted Cow.)
Hmmm… Imagine what a time Walker would have running against a real job creator like Deb Carey!
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THE NATION Can Paul Ryan—and His Agenda—Be Beat? It’s Possible
John Nichols on December 14, 2011 – 12:51pm ET
House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, is the poster boy for the assault on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. His budget plan, which laid the groundwork for the undermining of those essential programs and their eventual privatization, speaked a national outcry earlier this year. A historically Republican Congressional seat in western New York fell to the Democrats in a special election that turned largely on the question of Ryan’s austerity agenda.
But could Ryan himself be beat in 2012?
It’s possible. His southeastern Wisconsin district has elected Democrats in the past. It voted for Barack Obama in 2008. And even after a Republican-friendly redistricting, it is still home to traditionally Democratic towns such as Racine, Kenosha and Janesville.
Ryan faces a determined challenger in Democrat Rob Zerban, a local elected official in Kenosha who has been running hard all year. And a new poll suggests that Zerban, who has made the defense of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid the core theme of his campaign, poses a genuine threat to the Republican incumbent.
Pollster Paul Maslin writes, on the basis of his survey of 405 voters in Ryan’s district, that the fight over Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid has “weakened incumbent Paul Ryan, who used to enjoy electoral and image majorities well over 60%. Ryan’s favorable rating has declined to 54% positive, his job rating is 55% and his reelect is 54%—all this before the beginning of an active campaign against Ryan. When voters hear positive information about Rob Zerban and Paul Ryan, Ryan’s support weakens further to 52%. Rob Zerban’s description receives a better than 3 to 1 positive reaction.”
Maslin adds that: “after respondents hear one additional paragraph description linking Ryan to the Republican leadership in Congress and describing his authorship of the House budget plan, his support falls below 50% and his favorable rating becomes like Obama’s and Walker’s—dead even at 46% positive and 46% negative. And… Rob Zerban trails Ryan by only six points after this very brief exposition of Ryan’s signature idea, 49-43%, with undecideds holding nearly unanimously negative views of Congress in general and more than 80% saying they have either a negative or neutral feeling toward Ryan at the end of the poll.”
Zerban, a Kenosha County supervisor, says: “This poll reflects what I knew in my heart—Paul Ryan will lose this race because he has failed this district and this nation in Congress.”
Zerban still faces a tough race. The political dynamics of 2012 are still being defined, in Ryan’s district and across the country. Ryan’s a serious and able campaigner. And he will have all the money that Wall Street can give. But it may just be that there is not enough money to defend the indefensible.
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John Nichols: Scott Walker’s ton of cash can’t counter people power
If money is speech, as the crooked courtesans of our high court would have it, then Gov. Scott Walker might imagine himself well-positioned for the recall election he is now all but certain to face.
Last Thursday the United Wisconsin movement announced that its thousands of volunteers had in less than a month gathered more than 500,000 signatures on petitions demanding that the agonizingly inept governor of Wisconsin be held to account for an agenda that just cost the state another 14,000 jobs. On the very same day, Walker was touting the news that his campaign had raised more than $5 million.
Surely, in the calculus of the corrupt, 5,000,000 dollars should carry 10 times the political power of 500,000 signatures.
But Walker is more of a fool than even his most consistent critics imagine if he thinks that money, especially money raised in substantial portions from out-of-state interests that see his governorship as an investment in anti-labor, anti-public education and anti-democratic policies, will be sufficient to trump a popular movement that has already attracted the support of half a million Wisconsinites.
Almost 10 percent of Walker’s money came from Texas — including a $250,000 check from Bob Perry, the Lone Star conservative who warped American politics by attacking Vietnam veteran John Kerry with “swift boat” lies.
Almost 10 percent more of Walker’s money came from Illinois.
To be fair, Walker did raise money in Wisconsin. But of his total take, $2,390,000 came from outside the state.
Wisconsinites know that those out-of-state interests are not sending money to Walker in order to help the people of Burlington or Beloit or Beaver Dam or Bayfield. They are giving Walker money because he is more interested in helping them than he is in doing right by Wisconsinites.
And that is why Walker’s money is unlikely to carry him to victory.
Money is a powerful force in our politics, to be sure. But it will take a lot more than millions of imported dollars to convince Wisconsinites they should vote for more job losses, more slashing of services and more cuts to education.
Indeed, if any additional evidence was needed to confirm that Walker has been spending too much time at the Reagan Ranch in California — his recent hangout — and too little time talking to Wisconsinites, it came when he tried to counter recall numbers with a cash count.
There are points in politics when doomed incumbents cannot seem to get anything right — think Herbert Hoover in 1932 or George H.W. Bush in 1992. It would appear that Scott Walker has arrived at one of them.
John Nichols is associate editor of The Capital Times. jnichols@madison.com
Read more: http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/john_nichols/john-nichols-scott-walker-s-ton-of-cash-can-t/article_827c583a-2b1f-11e1-9bbe-0019bb2963f4.html#ixzz1h79rYvBl
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WisPolitics: Kleefisch questions state’s job numbers on ‘UpFront’ 12/19/2011
Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch is questioning numbers that show Wisconsin has lost jobs for the past five months.
Kleefisch told “UpFront with Mike Gousha,” produced in conjunction with WisPolitics.com, the numbers are based on surveys a small number of businesses. That leads to a large margin for error, she said, adding the jobs numbers have been “way off” and adjusted eight different times this year.
“That’s kind of crazy when you talk about business owners taking those numbers to heart and deciding whether to invest in their workforce based on our labor department numbers,” she said.
The Walker administration was quick to tout June figures that showed Wisconsin added jobs. But Kleefisch said since then national forces have thrown “a wet blanket on the upper Midwest.” Gousha pointed out Illinois and Minnesota have added jobs, but Kleefisch responded that Illinois raised taxes and Wisconsin is attracting companies from that state.
Kleefisch also said she respects those that want to recall her and the guv.
“Do I think it’s fair? Well, sure. I ran for office and they are upset at what has happened,” she said.
But she adds she’s concerned about the reasons recall organizers have offered because “the reforms are working.”
She said the guv’s collective bargaining changes have helped municipalities with a “tidal wave of savings.”
Separate petitions have to be circulated to recall Gov. Scott Walker and Kleefisch, and each would run independently if there are recall elections.
Gousha asked Kleefisch if she’d continue to serve under a Dem guv if she wasn’t recalled.
“It’s not going to happen,” she answered. “At the end of the day, when we go on the ballot, we will win.”
Also on the show, Dem state Sen. Tim Cullen of Janesville said he wants to reunite the state by running against GOP Gov. Scott Walker if there’s a recall election next year.
And Sheboygan Mayor Bob Ryan, facing a recall election Jan. 17 over public drunkenness, says his behavior has not been acceptable, but his performance of his mayoral duties have been “beyond reproach.”
Watch the show here.
- By WisPolitics Staff
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John Nichols: Bargaining rights are human rights
Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch is leading the attack on collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin — claiming in a new video ad that collective bargaining by unions represents some sort of threat to taxpayers or communities or — though this remains unspoken — the out-of-state special interests that are trying to keep her in office.
What Kleefisch does not recognize, however, is that collective bargaining is not some evil that must be wiped out. In fact, the right of workers to organize and to have a voice in the workplace and in our politics is universally recognized as a fundamental underpinning of a free society.
Claiming that collective bargaining rights must be swept away in order to balance budgets is like claiming that free speech rights, the right to privacy or the right to bear arms must be eliminated in order to address fiscal challenges.
It is a trade-off that is never acceptable.
States and municipalities can bargain hard with unions. Wisconsin certainly has done this over the years. In tight budget years, for example, state workers have often had their wages frozen and even cut through the use of mandatory furloughs.
But states cannot take away basic rights because those rights happen to inconvenience governors or lieutenant governors — or the political paymasters of those officials.
Over 30 years ago, Ronald Reagan, on the eve of being elected president of the United States, spoke of the emergence of the Solidarity organization in Poland, saying, “(The brave workers in Poland) remind us that where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost. They remind us that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. You and I must protect and preserve freedom here or it will not be passed on to our children.”
“There are real financial constraints on states, but that is no excuse to seek to eliminate fundamental rights,” says Alison Parker, U.S. program director at Human Rights Watch. “State governments can negotiate cost savings with workers without violating their rights in the process.”
Parker is right about that. And she is right to note that international law on the right to bargain collectively applies in both private and public workplaces.
The United States played a critical role in developing the International Labor Organization’s 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. As an endorser of that declaration, the U.S. — and, by extension, American states — has pledged “to promote and to realize … fundamental rights … (including) freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining.”
Parker notes, as well, that the United States is a party to and bound by its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. That covenant guarantees that all people have the right to protect their interests through trade union activity.
The Human Rights Committee notes the obvious: “Denying the right to collective bargaining would violate this international treaty.”
That Kleefisch does not get this provides one more argument for her recall and removal from office.
John Nichols is associate editor of The Capital Times. jnichols@madison.com
Copyright 2011 madison.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Posted in John_nichols on Sunday, December 18, 2011 5:15 am Updated: 4:01 pm. Rebecca Kleefisch, Collective Bargaining, Wisconsin, Civil Rights, Human Rights Committee, Ronald Reagan
Read more: http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/john_nichols/john-nichols-bargaining-rights-are-human-rights/article_b0ef23ae-5341-5d33-82c8-23f71c335ec6.html#ixzz1h789scFV
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