This week’s live webcast of Activate L!VE featured IAM Addiction Services Director Vinny Ceraso discussing how to help deal with stress, illness and loss. Ceraso gives us some coping mechanisms to help us get through these difficult times.
Activate L!VE streams every Wednesday at 3 p.m. EST.
If you can’t join us live, watch it or previous shows anytime on:
Dorothy “Dottie” Ellsworth-Gannon, a longtime fixture on the IAM’s legislative and political team, passed away on February 20, 2020. Ellsworth-Gannon, 91, worked for the IAM for 22 years.
Her IAM career began in 1977 when Ellsworth-Gannon was hired as a legislative representative. From 1981 until her retirement in 1999, Ellsworth-Gannon served as assistant director for the IAM’s Legislative Department and the Machinists Non-Partisan Political League (MNPL).
Ellsworth-Gannon was extremely proud of legislation she advocated for on behalf of working people, including the Disabilities Act, the Clean Water Act, and changing the federal voting age to 18.
Before her IAM career, Ellsworth-Gannon worked in the offices of several members of Congress and for many political campaigns, helping to foster her interest in research about how what happens in Washington, DC affects working people. She joined the labor movement in 1963 as an executive secretary for the Seafarers International Union and in 1966 moved to the Brotherhood of Railway-Airline Clerks as a member of the legislative staff.
After her retirement, Ellsworth-Gannon moved to Denver to be closer to family, where she volunteered with the Colorado Senior Lobby, working on bills and policies to help seniors.
“Sister Dottie was an extremely kind woman who fought tirelessly for our membership,” said IAM International President Robert Martinez Jr. “We join many others in sending our thoughts to her family and friends. Her legacy will live on as we continue the fight for justice on the job for working people everywhere.”
A federal complaint has been issued against the Boeing Co. for unlawfully firing and disciplining IAM supporters at the company’s North Charleston, SC plant. The National Labor Relations Board is moving forward with charges that Boeing wrongly fired five flight line employees and disciplined union supporters more harshly than other workers.
The complaint comes eight months after an NLRB regional director had found merit in the IAM’s cases. A group of 176 Flight Line Inspectors and Technicians voted nearly 2-to-1 in May 2018 to join the IAM and had to deal with threats due to their union support.
Relief under the terms of the complaint may include back pay and reinstatement for terminated employees and requiring public statements be read by Boeing management to the flight line.
Boeing has until April 23 to respond to the complaint.
Boeing is facing charges for unlawfully firing and disciplining union supporters at its North Charleston, S.C. plant https://t.co/Voglro3tcp
“The demographic of the veterans home is high risk,” said Caregiver and IAM Local 4 shop steward Katina Mason. “It’s very important to us to make sure that the residents are safe, and free of what’s going on outside.”
New restrictions and procedures have arisen to keep the veterans safe from COVID-19, and caregivers find themselves playing increased roles in the lives of their residents.
“It’s different here because we’re not allowed to have any visitors, so the residents don’t have their family members coming, or friends,” said Caregiver and IAM Local 4 shop steward Bonna McCarthy. “That’s who we are to them too. We’re all they have at this point.”
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the IAM will remember members who have died on the job during a virtual ceremony on Tuesday, April 28, 2020. Unions in the United States and Canada observe Workers’ Memorial Day to commemorate the thousands of workers killed, injured or sickened on the job each year.
Stay tuned to the IAM’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages for a special remembrance on April 28.
The names of IAM members who have died on the job will be memorialized with their name, lodge and date of death with a brick at the IAM’s Workers’ Memorial at the William W. Winpisinger Education and Technology Center in Hollywood, MD.
The IAM Workers Memorial was completed in 2001. It was dedicated to the remembrance of those who lost their lives while on the job. The bricks surrounding the Memorial bear the names of fallen members along with bricks donated from lodges and proud members of the IAMAW.
On April 28 each year a ceremony is conducted to remember those who lost their lives and rededicate ourselves to the prevention of on the job injury and death to workers.
(@MachinistsUnion)