Contracts covering nearly 100,000 AT&T workers represented by the Communications Workers of America expired at midnight April 4, with many important issues — including employment security and health care — not resolved. The contracts will not be extended.

For now, employees will continue to report to work, although that can change at any time. Workers are keeping their option to strike open. For workers, the terms of the contracts will remain in effect, meaning that wages, working conditions and benefits like health care will continue unchanged, with the exception of arbitration for grievances.

CWA has made it clear to AT&T that it is ready to bargain at any time to resolve the issues and negotiate quality contracts. Unfortunately, AT&T has shown little willingness to move forward and reach settlements. There has been little progress in the areas of health care, retirement security and employment security, among others.

“The CWA bargaining teams are very frustrated by AT&T’s slow pace in negotiations. Instead of working toward quality settlements that will benefit workers and the company, AT&T negotiators chose to drag out negotiations without a plan for settlement,” said CWA Executive Vice President Annie Hill.

The National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) has announced that the nation’s largest food drive to combat hunger will be conducted this year on Saturday, May 9. On that day, letter carriers will collect non-perishable donations from homes as they deliver mail along their postal routes.

The 17th annual NALC National Food Drive to “Stamp Out Hunger” is the largest one-day food drive in the nation. Carriers collected a record 73.1 million pounds of food in last year’s drive. The drive is held annually on the second Saturday in May in over 10,000 cities and towns in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

Kansas Workbeat talked to Larry Gunkel a stafffer at Wichita’s former President of Wichita NALC local and a former President of Wichita’s NALC local. Gunkle said, “We’ve had a 30 percent increase in need over last year. The summer months are always a time of big demand with children not having access to food provdided at school.”

Mario Cervantes, United Way of the Plains labor liaison, told us that “Most of the food that will be raised during this year’s NALC Food Drive will go too laid off workers through the Help Center for Laid-Off Workers. I will be looking for volunteers for Saturday May 9th at 7 post office locations. I’m also going the Machinists and other locals to ask them to bring a can food item to their April meetings.”

(April 7) The AFL-CIO, Change to Win and the National Education Association announced today the creation of a National Labor Coordinating Committee to consult among their affiliated unions and to act nationally on the critical issues facing working Americans.

“Recognizing the historic moment we face, the American labor movement must unify to restore the American dream for working families,” said David Bonior, who continues as Chair of the unification effort.

“I am very pleased with our progress. The Committee pledged to complete its consultations and other work on unification plans over the coming months. A unified labor movement is the way to ensure that the vast majority of Americans who want a union are able to join one.”

The members of the National Labor Coordinating Committee are the Presidents of:

AFL-CIO, Change To Win, National Education Association, American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, American Federation of Teachers, Communications Workers of America,International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Laborers International Union of North America, Service Employees International Union, Unite Here, United Auto Workers, United Food and Commercial Workers, and the United Steelworkers of America.

The EFCA is a bi-partisan bill, introduced in 2008 in the House by Rep. George Miller with 233 co-sponsors, and introduced in the Senate by Senator Ted Kennedy and 46 co-sponsors, which would allow workers to form Unions through majority sign-up, help employees secure labor contracts with their employers in a reasonable amount of time through negotiation, mediation, or binding arbitration, and toughen penalties against employers who violate workers rights.

The bill passed the House by a 241-185 margin but was stalled in the Senate by a cloture motion  where it sat alongside the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Employment non-Discrimination Act, the Student Loan Sunshine Act, and a hundred other acts and resolutions that have no scheduled hearings. It has been re-introduced in the new Congress with strong support not only from the labor movement, but from progressives and the the civil rights community.

The NAACP supports the Employee Free Choice Act. We recognize that union workers currently earn 26% more in median weekly wages than non-union workers; unionized women earn 31% more than their non-union counterparts, and black union workers earn 29% more than non-union African Americans. Furthermore, 75% of union workers have health benefits, compared to 49% of non-union workers. 69% of union workers have short-term disability coverage, compared to 30% of their non-union counterparts. Finally, 82% of union workers get life insurance, compared with 51% of non-union workers.

The impact of unions – ensuring that all working Americans are treated well and share in the prosperity – cannot be overstated. Despite the continuing strength and advocacy power of unions, however, some employers continue to treat workers poorly, not paying them a fair wage or providing them with necessary benefits: the purchasing power of workers’ wages is 5% below where it stood 30 years ago. CEO pay has continued to rise and is currently more than 1,000 times the earnings of the average worker. The richest 13,000 US families have nearly as much income as the poorest 200 million combined. And some employers continue to fight the legitimate organization of unions. 70% of American employers in manufacturing threaten to close the plant if workers choose a union. Furthermore, in the 1950’s, when 30% of workers belonged to unions, only a few hundred workers suffered retaliation for trying to organize a union; in 1969, the number or workers suffering retaliation was just over 6,000 and by the 1990’s more than 20,000 workers each year were victims of discrimination when they tried to organize a union.