News, Notes & Observations Collected While Covering The Western New York Labor Community Over the Past Several Days:

We're proud to report that WNYLaborToday.com has now passed the 900 story mark on your Regional, On-Line Labor Newspaper.  We're heading towards 1,000 as we get closer to celebrating the kick-off of our third year of covering and reporting on the Western New York Labor Community in mid April.  As we've been saying all along, there's no other place in all of Western New York that Labor Unions & Organizations, Labor Leaders and Union Members can go to get the kind of Labor News WNYLaborToday.com regularly publishes.  On that note, keep an eye on our site in the coming weeks as we begin to offer our readers a variety of local Labor Video News, as the WNYLaborToday.com news team hits the road to cover a variety of issues and stories important to the Western New York Labor Community.

On that note, WNYLaborToday.com would like to welcome aboard the newest supporter/subscriber of your Regional, On-Line Labor Newspaper: The International Association of Heat & Frost Insulators and Allied Workers Local 4 (formerly known as the Asbestos Workers).  We'd like to thank Local 4 Business Manager Bob Hess (pictured above in the Union's Training Facility) and the Union's executive board, as well as its nearly 170 active and retired members, for making the decision to support WNYLaborToday.com.  In case you didn't know, the Heat & Front Insulators - headquartered locally on Seneca Street on the border of Buffalo and West Seneca - applies all types of insulation, mastics, sealants, coatings and jacketing (such as metal, PVC, canvas, fiberglass cloth, tar paper and tedlar paper) to heating and cooling systems, ductwork, plumbing systems, tanks and vessels in plants, factories, schools, hospitals and office buildings.  On its web site, Local 4 Business Manager Hess states: "The Union has strived to preserve and protect the rights of insulation mechanics, representing their interests, in nearly every aspect of the trade.  These efforts entail ensuring worker health and safety, negotiating comprehensive wage and fringe benefit packages, and educating and training Union members in the most advanced insulation techniques."  WNYLaborToday.com is proud of the support provided to us by each of the 29 individual Labor Organizations that currently stand as our subscribers/supporters.  WNYLaborToday.com has come a long way in a very short period of time, and we could not have done so with the support and backing of these Labor Organizations - which we continue to appreciate.  Thank You All!

I'm wondering aloud as to when the National AFL-CIO is going to make the decision to start buying commercial time for its Employee Free Choice commercials to air within CBS-TV's Undercover Boss program on Sunday nights.  Why?  Because it's literally become a 60-minute commercial for the need to provide workers with the right to decide for themselves whether or not they want a Union in their workplace.  This program is making a tremendous case for Employee Free Choice each and every time it airs.  The latest example involved the CEO of White Castle restaurants going "undercover" to find out what was going on with his workers at several of his restaurants and production plants.  At one restaurant, he sat down and spoke to a female manager who said she came to work everyday "fearful of losing her job," as White Castle management had installed cameras inside the workplace to keep tabs on their employees.  In so many words, she told the White Castle owner that if you didn't strictly adhere to the company's many guidelines, any worker would be out of their job.  Just looking at the face of this stressed-out woman was enough to make anyone realize it must be extremely hard to not only do her job, but keep tabs on every other employee, whose individual work ethic could reflect badly on her job/management skills.  By the way, the CEO of White Castle also found that he himself could not do the jobs of many of his employees, including taking drive-in orders at one restaurant.  While working at a company bun-baking facility, he was unable to correctly pull plastic bags over dozens of boxed rolls that came off an assembly line and were to be shipped out to his many restaurants - wasting some 25,000 rolls in the process that had to eventually be thrown out.  It got worse when he traveled to another plant that shipped out frozen White Castle hamburgers to grocery stores across the country.  He had a very hard time placing individual slices of cheese on dozens of hamburgers that rolled by in front of him on a conveyor belt - all under the attentive and rolling eye of a quite perturbed manager.  While the Undercover Boss program should continue to open the eyes of many corporate types who don't think their employees are as important as they are to running a successful and profitable business, I have a feeling the shown respect and positive Labor-Management Relations just might come to an end once the show's cameras are gone.  In weeks past, those who've watched Undercover Boss have seen a female Waste Management worker in nearby Rochester stressed out to the point of not taking a restroom break and peeing into a can in order to keep up with a daily 300-home garbage pick-up schedule and female servers at a Hooters restaurant being forced by a manager to eat a plate of pork and beans off a plate with their hands behind their backs in order to compete for an afternoon off.  Degrading and appalling was all I could think of as I watched these stories unfold on TV.  What I don't understand - while watching this show - is all the negative, anti-Union sentiment that continues to percolate to the top when any story about Organized Labor is even mentioned.  Do people who are not Unionized truly believe it's a good thing to pee in a can rather than take a restroom break in order to meet a quota or be degraded by being forced by management to stick your face down into a plate of pork and beans in order to get an afternoon off?  That's why I believe the National AFL-CIO must take advantage of this tremendous opportunity.  It will be money well spent and will help present the benefits of being represented by a Union in what seems to be the most perfect of opportunities.  It will also underscore what happens to workers when you don't have a Union in your workplace.  Hopefully someone out there is listening...

And as a reminder, on Saturday, March 13th, a Memorial Service will be held at Teamsters Local 264's Union Hall in Cheektowaga to honor the late Jack Canzoneri, a long-time Western New York Labor Leader and Federal Labor Mediator who is remembered as a "tough, hard-working advocate" for those he represented and as an "extremely fair" mediator who made "a great commitment to the process and finding solutions" for Labor and Management.  Canzoneri was a long-time leader of Teamsters Local 375, says Ron Lucas, president of Teamsters Local 264 and Teamsters Joint Council No. 46: "He was an aggressive, popular advocate for our membership.  He started as a truck driver with a Union background and went on to having a successful career.  It was a pleasure having had a friendship with him.  He had a wonderful sense of humor and he made you feel good about yourself, because he was more concerned about 'you,' which made him a perfect mediator."  The Memorial Service, which is being called: "Celebrate a Life of Public Service," will begin at 11 a.m. at Teamsters Local 264, which is located at 35 Tyrol Drive in Cheektowaga.  For further information on the March 13th Remembrance Service for Jack Canzoneri at Teamsters Local 375 in Cheektowaga, contact either Mary Holl (Extension 10) or Richard Lipsitz (Extension 25) at 716-668-8007.