Leno against union busting
Jay Leno is a pretty stand-up guy.

The Tonight Show host showed his union colors when he was willing to forgo a lucrative corporate gig and refused to appear before a June 5 Society for Human Resources Management meeting until the group dropped two planned seminars on union busting.

Birds of a feather flock together
It figures that Wal-Mart, which continues to stonewall any union activity in its stores, would embrace a company like Overnite Transportation.

The giant retailer named Overnite as its less-than-truckload Carrier of the Year. Overnite is battling the Teamsters on many fronts - in the courts, before the NLRB and at terminals across the nation as some 1,800 Overnite employees have been carrying on an unfair labor practice strike since last October.

There's proxy power in S&P 500 Fund
If you're going to invest in a Standard and Poor 500 Index Fund, why not help union clout while you're at it?

That was what the United Association of Plumbers, Pipe Fitters and Sprinkler Fitters were thinking on March 1, 2000, when they launched their own S & P 500 Index Fund, designed to reflect the price and performance of 500 large, publicly traded companies. Already, the UA reports the fund has $600 million in assets.

The fund, available to any investor, would fit into the portfolios of many workers looking for long-term growth. More than that, stocks held by the fund gives proxy voting rights to shareholders, and the bigger the fund gets, the more clout fund managers will have. Proxy votes made on behalf of a group of shareholders give them a collective say in how a company is operated.

Most shareholders hold comparatively miniscule amounts of stock and ignore their voting rights, but there's strength in numbers.

"The proxy voting process is an increasingly significant way for the UA to express the needs of the membership to the corporations and their management," said UA Secretary-Treasurer Thomas Patchell. "Virtually every day, we are able to use our position as stockholders in major corporations to get our voices heard in corporate boardrooms across America."

To get information about investing in the fund, call (800) 766-8043 or visit the fund's site at www.uafund.com.

Comfort station open for business
Huron Valley Council Girl Scouts no longer have to walk 40 minutes to use a restroom at Camp Linden.

Thanks in good part to building trades union members and their contractors, a new comfort station was built in the remote meadows area of the camp, providing toilets, running water and a shower house for the girls who use the facility.

More than 45 area organizations and businesses joined forces to build the structure. A luncheon was held last week to mark the opening of the shower house.

The Girl Scouts of the Huron Valley Council serve more than 15,000 girls between the ages of 5 and 17 years.