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• Teachers Union's Objections Sink Smoking Ban in Pennsylvania  

The teachers at Pennsylvania's state colleges and universities have succeeded in doing what their students couldn't: overrule a statewide ban on smoking on campus.

Some students in the Keystone State raised a ruckus last September when the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education banned smoking throughout its 14 campuses, including all outdoor areas.

But the students' outcry went largely unheeded -- until their professors chimed in.

The Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties (APSCUF), the union that represents the 6,000 faculty members and coaches in the state school system, objected to the smoking ban -- and last month the state's Labor Relations Board overturned it, ruling that the education board had failed to negotiate with with the union.

The labor board ordered the education board to rescind the smoking ban for union members and to "cease and desist" from refusing to negotiate with the union. . . .

That leaves schools such as Clarion, West Chester and Kutztown Universities, among others, with tenuous holds on their smoking bans -- much to the delight of smokers like 21-year-old Clarion student Steven Dugan.

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• Pa. panel rules against state schools' smoking ban 

Pennsylvania's 14 state-owned universities cannot bar faculty members and coaches from smoking outdoors on campus, unless their unions agree to the restriction, a state labor panel ruled. . . .

The Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties, the union that represents 5,800 faculty members and coaches, filed an unfair labor practice complaint challenging the policy on grounds that any such change is subject to collective bargaining.

In a ruling last week, the state Labor Relations Board sided with the union. It ruled that the university system, like other public-sector employers, cannot impose such a ban on unionized employees without the consent of their collective-bargaining agents.

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• Tougher Smoking Policy Puts Union in Tight Spot 

The General Services Administration will no longer allow smoking lounges after June 19 in the 1,500 federal buildings it manages.

But a Federal Communications Commission facility in Columbia is not a GSA property, so its regulations do not apply to the small, nondescript room where FCC workers can go to scar their lungs.

The FCC wants to follow the GSA's lead and make those employees find other air to pollute, but it's not as simple as posting a no-smoking sign. The smoking room was negotiated with the National Treasury Employees Union and shutting it down requires negotiations too.

That puts the NTEU in a tricky situation. . . .

But what happens when those it represents feel they have rights that are in conflict? Should a union protect the right of unionized smokers when those smokers trample on the right of nonsmokers, also in the bargaining unit, to smoke-free air?

Research leaves no doubt that the nonsmoking side easily wins this debate.

Yet, the union that so forcefully stands up for its members in other ways is a bit weak in the knees when it comes to the smoking room.

"It is important that they [smokers] have a place to go that is away from other employees and safe for them as well," NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said in December. . . .

Galosky isn't alone in opposing the smoking room.

Evelyn Cherry, who was a local union officer in the 1990s, says only a few people at the FCC facility smoke. "Is it better to cut out the small room or jeopardize the majority?" she asked.

She wants the smoking room closed. "Even though they may have a room that they may call ventilated," she said, "it's still not ventilated to the extent that you can't inhale it but because you can still smell it."

By the way, the National Institutes of Health, where people know something about the ill effects of smoking, does not allow it anywhere, inside or outdoors, on its 311-acre Bethesda campus.

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• Beedi workers’ unions cry foul over Centre’s order 

HYDERABAD: Beedi workers' unions in the State are up in arms again with the Supreme Court clearing the Central government law making it mandatory to display pictorial warnings on tobacco packs from May 31.

Consequent to the implementation of Section 7 of the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, 2003, it will be compulsory to depict lungs for smoking forms of tobacco packages and scorpion for chewing and smokeless forms. . . .

M. Sirajuddin, president of All-India Beedi, Cigarette and Tobacco Workers Federation said the direction would cripple the beedi industry. Women who formed the bulk of the beedi workers were already feeling the pinch of insecurity said S. Rama, general secretary of AP Beedi and Cigar Workers Union. Two women beedi workers had already ended their lives in Nizamabad and Medak district, perturbed over their future.

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• MYERS: Smoking is a workplace issue 

"Bar and tavern owners, as well as customers, have expressed anger and confusion over the law since it was enacted," reported the Las Vegas Review-Journal last week.

Owners and customers. Is someone missing from that survey?

"I have to shower--really well, including shampooing--before my wife will let me into bed," says one Sparks Nugget dealer. . . .

"Tourists are in and out," said a Circus Circus worker. "I breathe that stuff all night."

Workers say the state anti-smoking law does them more good than it does customers, who are normally in a casino or restaurant for a relatively short time. Workers are there for a full shift--giving them extended exposure to involuntary inhalation of second-hand smoke.

Studies have shown that second-hand smoke can be a factor in asthma, heart disease, sudden infant death syndrome, cancer, stroke and premature death.

But extended exposure to second-hand smoke increases risks. . . .

In one unusual action, public officials opposed the law approved by the public. Officers of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority supported repealing the voter-approved law outright because it bars advertising tobacco products at trade shows as well as prohibits smoking at convention centers.

Casino workers declined to allow their names to be used in speaking for anti-smoking measures because their corporations are lobbying in the other direction. "I wouldn't have a job if they knew," one said. "I just hope the unions are taking this on."

Nevada AFL/CIO lobbyist Danny Thompson said his organization has not taken the issue on in part because it has not been pushed to do so by the membership and in part because members are on different sides of the issue.

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Scotland | North East/N Isles | Union against hospital smoke ban 

A union has urged NHS Grampian not to impose a smoking ban on its hospital sites, BBC Scotland can reveal.

NHS Grampian took a step towards banning smoking in its grounds with the recent launch of a consultation.

The local Unison branch said there were concerns about fairness to staff, patients and visitors.

Unison also said there were fears about people trying to evade such a ban, and the potential for this leading to a risk of fire.

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State high court hears lawsuit on police tobacco ban  

A state ban on smoking in most workplaces has taken much of the fire -- but not the smokeless tobacco -- out of a long-simmering dispute between a western Pennsylvania municipality and its police force.

Attorneys for Ellwood City, its police union and the Pennsylvania Labor Relations board argued before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Monday about whether the Lawrence County borough has a right to ban tobacco use on borough property, including by its officers working in the police station and patrol cars.

The high court heard the arguments because the police union appealed the Commonwealth Court's 5-2 decision early last year overruling the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board. The PLRB had found that Ellwood City committed an unfair labor practice when it subjected police to the August 2006 tobacco ban without submitting the issue to collective bargaining.

Chief Justice Ronald Castille interrupted the police union attorney, Eric Stoltenberg, by asking whether the Clean Indoor Air Act that took effect in September ''mooted'' the entire dispute.

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• Pa. Supreme Court hears police tobacco ban lawsuit  

A state ban on smoking in most workplaces has taken much of the fire--but not the smokeless tobacco--out of a long-simmering dispute between a western Pennsylvania municipality and its police.

Attorneys for Ellwood City, its police union, and the Pennsylvania Labor Relations board argued before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Monday about whether Ellwood City has a right to ban tobacco use on borough property, including by its officers working in the police station and patrol cars.

The high court heard the arguments because the police union appealed the Commonwealth Court's 5-2 decision early last year overruling the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board. The PLRB had found that Ellwood City committed an unfair labor practice when it subjected police to the August 2006 tobacco ban without submitting the issue to collective bargaining.

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IMAGE: Worker strike at R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, 1947. 

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The Piedmont Leaf Tobacco Plant Strike, 1946 

In the 1940s, the CIO launched a wide-ranging attempt to unionize workers in the South. This movement was known as Operation Dixie, and some of its key battles were fought in Forsyth County.

In 1946 the local United Tobacco Workers (CIO) union was involved in contract negotiations with R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Philip Koritz, head of the UTW Local 22, had won key concessions from RJR, including a 60-cent minimum hiring wage for workers, three paid holidays per year, and a graded system for wage increases (which had previously been determined by the whims of the foremen). However, most of these benefits did not extend to seasonal workers at the "leaf houses", where the tobacco leaves were prepared for processing

Jobs in the tobacco industry at the time were segregated by race and gender. Managers, foremen, and supervisors were invariably white men. African-American workers were largely relegated to the jobs that were the most unpleasant, dangerous, or physically demanding. The lowest-paid workers were the "stemmers" who worked in the leaf houses removing tobacco leaves from their stems by hand. 80% of the stemmers at RJR affiliated plants were African-American women, whose starting wage was 54 cents per hour.

Philip Koritz and Local 22 had met with resistance in their demand for a raise to a 65 cent minimum wage for stemmers and other workers at the Piedmont Leaf plant in Winston-Salem.

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• Strike: When workers broke Camel City  

His sins were many, under the law of the land, and his penance, severe.

For organizing the Piedmont Leaf strike of 1946 at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., a labor action that cast a long shadow on civil rights in the South, Philip Koritz was to be banished from North Carolina for life.

Still, just to be certain, the judge who set Koritz's penalty for a charge of resisting arrest on a picket line first sentenced the Local 22 director to six months' hard labor on a chain gang in Sparta, near the Virginia line. . . .

So when Koritz picked up his Unsung Hero award a month ago at the black-tie Sit-In Movement Inc. banquet in Greensboro, even an ageless Harry Belafonte confessed to doing a double-take: The erect, sturdy Koritz looks, and holds forth at 91, more like a man of 71. . . .

But it wasn't until Koritz beheld the downtown skyline and the headquarters of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. - a 20-story scale version of the Empire State Building, designed by the same architects - that the New York City-born union organizer understood what lay ahead.

"I knew this was formidable," Koritz recalls of what was then the world's largest tobacco company, booming at the height of World War II. "I knew we were in for a fight."

As did his parents, Russian-born Jewish sweatshop organizers and activists before him, and both his sons, union organizers in his footsteps, Philip Koritz arrived on the scene of a fight that had already started.

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• Casino smoking bill seen lacking 

Saying a bill to regulate smoking at the state's tribally owned casinos doesn't go far enough, unionized table-games dealers from Foxwoods Resort Casino and antismoking advocates voiced support Friday for Attorney General Richard Blumenthal's plan to phase in a complete ban on smoking at the casinos by October 2011.

In testimony before the General Assembly's Public Health Committee, members of UAW at Foxwoods, which is negotiating its first contract with the casino owned by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe, said the bill offered by the legislature's southeastern delegation "falls woefully short," largely because it specifies no date for a total ban on smoking at the casinos, which many believe is inevitable. The bill, incorporating the terms of an unofficial deal the Mohegan Tribe, owners of Mohegan Sun, reached with Gov. M. Jodi Rell, calls for the tribes to enter into an agreement with the state "governing the reduction, removal and monitoring of secondhand smoke."

Blumenthal, who appeared before the committee early in the day, has proposed amending the bill to prohibit smoking in the casinos' nongaming areas and in no less than 20 percent of their gaming areas by October 2009, in no less than 50 percent of their gaming areas by October 2010 and in all areas by the following year.

"Very importantly," Blumenthal told the committee, "my proposal exempts federally recognized tribes that enact a similar law through their tribal statutes. ... My amendment achieves the goal of smoke-free casinos while respecting tribal sovereignty by exempting tribes that enact their own laws or enter into a compact with the state of Connecticut."

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• Public health committee hears casino smoking complaints  

Casino workers Friday told the state Legislature's Public Health Committee that a bill limiting smoking in casinos does not go far enough to protect them, while the owners say the bill is not necessary because their own voluntary measures are sufficient.

The bill would increase nonsmoking areas at Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun from 10 percent to 20 percent of the gaming floor. Owners and their supporters said ventilation methods already exceed levels agreed to with the state. They said the ban could have a negative impact on their business.

Workers, including members of the United Auto Workers union, which represents table dealers at Foxwoods, prefer an amendment proposed by Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, which would phase out smoking in Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun over three years.

"The problem is you can't get away from second-hand smoke on the casino floor," said Jack Edwards, a dealer at Foxwoods for nearly 13 years. Edwards said 10 percent of the floor now is designated smoke-free. He said House Bill 5608 would raise that to 20 percent.

"But your just forcing more smokers into a smaller area," he said. "And there's no end date." Chuck Bunnell, spokesman for the Mohegan Tribal Nation, said ventilation systems and air quality checks at Mohegan Sun already far exceed levels stipulated in an existing agreement with the state.

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Wage, duty hikes affect small cigarette producers 

Hundreds of workers at cigarette producer PT Cakra Guna Cipta in Pakisaji, Malang, went on strike Wednesday, demanding the company pay them the 2009 minimum wage and phase out the labor contract system, which they claim had weakened their purchasing power.

The protesters, rallying at the factory in Kendalpayak village, said they were still paid according to the 2008 minimum wage, which was lower than the new minimum of Rp 945,000 (US$85.90) per month that came into effect on Jan. 1, 2009.

"All cigarette producers in the regency should have paid their workers according to the new wage hike, but even now, our management still pays us Rp 900,000 per month, contrary to the regulation," said Misdi, protest coordinator and unit chairman of the Committee for Struggle of Indonesian Labor (SPBI).

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• Blumenthal Renews Bid To Ban Smoking At Casinos  

The state attorney general proposed a law Monday that would ban smoking at Connecticut's casinos by October 2011, an aggressive maneuver opposed by Gov. M. Jodi Rell.

Richard Blumenthal, who plans to run for a sixth term as attorney general in 2010, submitted a bill that would ban smoking in phases at Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun. The first phase would prohibit smoking in all non-gambling areas and in 20 percent of gambling areas by October 2009.

"The casinos can't be permitted to gamble with the public health," Blumenthal said at his office Monday while surrounded by Foxwoods employees, officials from the United Auto Workers union, which represents some of them, and public health advocates.

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