A new study by the University of California's Berkeley Labor Center shows that non-union members would be equally hit by a health care excise tax.

Based on data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, the analysis finds that at least 80 percent of the workers who would be hit by the tax in 2019 would be non-union employees. However, non-union members, like union members, would benefit from changes that union leaders negotiated with the White House and congressional leaders last month.

More than 20,000 members of ver.di at T-Systems in Germany, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, are mobilizing for job actions following management's failure to resolve workers' bargaining issues after three rounds of negotiations. In the last few days, about 2,000 workers have participated in partial strikes at different locations.

Some 2,000 ver.di members in Germany have participated in partial strikes at the DT subsidiary, T-Systems.
Workers at DT in Germany and the DT owned T Mobile USA have joined together to form TU, jointly affiliated with ver.di and CWA. There are 20,000 T Mobile workers in the U.S.

TNG-CWA Local 31003 filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board over Thomson Reuters Corp.'s illegal and unilateral pay cuts that drastically cut the compensation of journalists, technicians and other employees by 10 percent.

For more on the fight for fairness at Reuters, go towww.reutersexposed.com.

Thomson Reuters falsely claimed that bargaining was at impasse, said Local President Bill O'Meara. "This dispute is really about saving quality journalism in this country. If a healthy company like Thomson Reuters, whose CEO made almost as much in 2008 as our 420 members' annual salaries, cuts pay, it will cause less healthy news organizations to cut even more. Soon, many of the journalists our democracy depends on won't be able to afford to stay in the business."

Seeking a voice on the job and an end to unfair work policies, 170 medical technicians at St. Mary's Regional Medical Center in Reno, Nevada, voted to join CWA last week. The workers, members of CWA Local 9413, voted for a union voice by a 57 to 43 percent margin.

A key issue for the respiratory therapists, radiologists, CT scan operators, and other workers is the restrictive paid time off leave policy that eliminates sick leave altogether and provides workers with a fixed number of days that includes vacation, sick leave and holidays. Another big issue is a hospital policy of forcing workers to take leave without pay when the patient load falls below a certain level.