[PEN-L:3881] Good News

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

New York Times Front Page
February 26, 1999

          In Biggest Drive Since 1937, Union Gains a Victory

          By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

              LOS ANGELES -- Winning the biggest unionization drive in
more than half a century, the Service Employees International Union
gained the right Thursday to represent 74,000 Los Angeles County
home-care workers who feed, bathe and clean for the elderly and
disabled.

          The organizing drive -- more than twice as large as any other
in decades -- shows the labor movement's new aggressiveness and its new
focus on recruiting low-wage workers, women and minorities.

          Los Angeles County's home-care workers earn $5.75 an hour, the
state minimum wage, and many said they voted for the union because they
wanted better wages and benefits long denied them: health insurance and
paid vacations.

          "It's something big for us," said Maria Alvarez, who
complained that after 14 years on the job she still earned $5.75.

          "I'm so happy about the union I feel like flying. They'll help
us win benefits, like health insurance and vacations. Right now, we
don't have nothing."

          State officials who counted the ballots, which were mailed in
over the past month, said Thursday night that 16,250 workers voted for
the union and 1,925 against.

          As a result, the Service Employees Union will represent the
county's 74,000 home-care providers, making it labor's biggest
organizing victory, Federal officials and A.F.L.-C.I.O. officials say,
since 1937 when 112,000 General Motors workers joined the United Auto
Workers, after a historic sit-down strike the previous  year.

Full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/home-health-workers.html