People Before Profit blog

Unions mark gains under Obama

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:06:00 +0000

Union leaders and members are saying that eight months into the Obama administration it is clear that labor’s unprecedented investment in the effort to support the election of the president and a 60 vote Democratic majority in the Senate is paying off.

From executive orders that help construction workers to a new law that restores the right to sue employers for pay discrimination based on sex, race, religion or other factors, they are happy about a long list of what they see as first steps that help working men and women.

Having said that they are ready now for what they see as some bigger tasks and challenges.

Unions are pleased with the president’s strong verbal support for their top cause, the Employee Free Choice Act but they want to see that translate into active lobbying by the administration for labor law reform.

Labor is also pushing now for a second massive economic stimulus bill, something the administration is not yet ready to support. The first stimulus bill was too small, according to AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Richard Trumka.

In the area of health care labor and the administration are in agreement, provided the reform undertaken includes a strong government-run public health plan option.

The unions’ original hope to get the Employee Free Choice Act onto the president’s desk by Labor Day faded because of the delay in seating the potential filibuster-breaking 60th Democratic senator, Al Franken of Minnesota, and the explosive debate on health care that followed almost immediately.

An aide to Communications Workers President Larry Cohen, one of a group of labor leaders who met with Obama at the White House in July, said in a phone interview at that time that the president had promised to do “what he could” to pass labor law reform, but was not specific.

American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees President Gerald McEntee said, also that day, “Some people wanted the president to move faster on the bill,” but given the economic crisis Obama faced upon entering office, “I don’t see how he could.”

Opposition by some Blue Dog Democrats and others to the majority sign up provision of the Employee Free Choice Act forced the bill’s lead sponsor, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, to entertain alternative ways of achieving the intent of the provision, with no agreement yet reached.

Outright disagreement between labor and the administration arose on only one issue during the past eight months.

The president plans to cap production of the F-22 fighter plane at the present 187 ordered, not including seven more that many senators, and the Machinists, want at a cost of $1.75 billion. The union is concerned that not building the extra planes will mean layoffs of thousands of union workers.

With the exception of these concerns labor has a great deal of praise for what the president is doing.

“The number one thing he’s done for workers is taking on the economy and being bold with the stimulus package to create jobs for workers,” AFSCME President Gerald McEntee said about the president in a recent telephone interview.

McEntee, who chairs the AFL-CIO Political Committee, played a key role in organizing labor’s election effort for Obama and Congress. “And the fact that the president is willing to take on a number of critical issues, especially health care, is vital,” McEntee adds.

It didn’t hurt his relations with labor when the President invited labor leaders into the White House on July 13 to discuss the Employee Free Choice Act, health care, the economy and pensions or when he signed legislation restoring the right of women and minorities to sue employers for paycheck discrimination.

The president’s record on labor issues is drawing a sharp contrast with the record of his predecessor in that office:

The president has overturned a whole series of Bush anti-worker executive orders, substituting for them his own pro-worker orders: These include restoring project labor agreements on federally funded construction, ordering federal agencies to post notices in workplaces that inform workers of their rights, including the right to join unions, and ending the Bush policy of contracting work out to private companies.

The president has issued another executive order that bans any entity receiving federal funds from using those dollars against union organizing.

The pro-labor tone was set right from the beginning. The first law the Democratic-run Congress passed and Obama signed was the Lily Ledbetter Act, named for an Alabama grandmother who sued Goodyear for pay discrimination based on sex. She had won in lower courts but lost in the Supreme Court, 5-4, in 2007. The justices said suits could not be filed after 180 days on the job.

Ledbetter, a supervisor, had been with Goodyear 19 years before she found out she was the victim of discrimination.

“Wage discrimination has a tangible and negative impact on women and families. When women receive less than their deserved compensation, they take home less for themselves and their loved ones,” the president said when he signed the law.

Posts in the Obama administration have been filled with labor allies. The president nominated incumbent Democrat Wilma Liebman to chair the National labor Relations Board and intends to formally nominate two pro-worker attorneys to be board members.

The president named Jordan Barab, a longtime job safety and health advocate, to be deputy Occupational Safety and Health Administration administrator. Barab intends to revive the agency’s now-dead ergonomics rule and he’s begun work on two important safety rules.

One limits worker exposure to diacetyl, a food additive that causes lung disease.

The other would control explosive, factory floor “combustible dust.” The dust caused a blast at Imperial Sugar in Georgia, killing 14 workers in Feb., 2008. OSHA, under Bush rule, did nothing.

The president has nominated former Airline Pilots Association President Randy Babbitt to head the Federal Aviation Administration. Babbitt has already signaled his desire to sign a new contract with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, a contract trashed by the Bush administration.

The president has named former Association of Flight Attendants President Linda Puchala to sit on the National Mediation Board, which oversees labor-management relations in airlines and railroads and has nominated Joe Szabo, the legislative director of the United Transportation Union in Illinois as the first unionist to head the Federal Railroad Administration.

Obama has supported labor backed changes in college student loan availability that eliminate the role of banks as middle men in the system. Together, the administration and labor leaders worked with House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Calif., to introduce legislation that will accomplish this.

The bill caps repayments from graduates at a maximum of 15 percent of yearly income. If a graduate signs up for public service, including police, fire and other public work, the loan is forgiven altogether.

The president has supported the Steelworkers campaign for “green jobs” to revitalize U.S. manufacturing. They are a key part of the $787 billion stimulus package.

Labor journalists to look behind the scenes before G-20

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 05:06:00 +0000

Two weeks before the G-20 summit opens in Pittsburgh to discuss the global economic crisis, labor journalists from across the country will be in the Steel City to document what’s really going on with workers without the hype.

More than 100 labor journalists are expected to form a team to create a 48-hour media center Sept. 10-12 to serve as the nerve center of a special project. The project will focus on Pittsburgh’s workers, their organizing and bargaining campaigns, their victories and how their stories illustrate the deep economic shifts sweeping the nation and the world.

The effort by the journalists will be made during the biennial convention of the International labor Communications Association, the group to which the participating labor newspapers, including the Peoples Weekly World, belong.

After a full day of training and a morning of briefings by Pittsburgh activists, the journalists will form teams and fan out over the city to cover workers’ stories.

When they return, they will use the media center to write and post stories, blogs, photo galleries and other media.

ILCA President Steve Stallone says the convention’s slogan, “The Power of Labor Journalists United,” demonstrates the collective power of the labor media when it works together to tell workers’ stories.

“ILCA’s Labor Media Center project will not only show how we can use technology to tell workers’ stories ourselves,” said Stallone, “but also demonstrate the collective power of labor media to both the journalist participants and other unionists. We are the largest alternative media in North America and we need to start having the influence commensurate with that.”

The ILCA organized its first Media Center at the group’s October 2007 convention in New Orleans. There the labor journalists saw firsthand the devastation and impact of Hurricane Katrina on the lives of workers. Their work in articles and pictures disputed the popular media impression that the city had “come back” and made it clear that right-wing social and economic policies were behind the continuing disaster.

Some high-profile newsmakers and speakers will be with the labor journalists when they gather in Pittsburgh. Among those who will address the reporters are United Steel Workers President Leo Gerard and American Prospect editor and Washington Post columnist Harold Myerson.

The journalists plan to honor the best among themselves with a 2009 Labor Media Contest Awards ceremony. The top prize, the Max Steinbock Award, will go to Dania Rajendra, an assistant editor for the Clarion, the publication of the Professional Staff Congress at City University of New York /American Federation of Teachers Local 2334, for her story, “At CUNY, Adjunct Health Care is Broken.”

In her article Rajendra tells the story of six CUNY adjunct workers whose health was jeopardized because of arbitrary decisions by the health care provider and the college based on the bottom line at the expense of the workers.

‘Young workers: A lost decade’

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 07:09:00 +0000

Original source: AFL-CIO Now

Something bad happened in the past 10 years to young workers in this country: Since 1999, more of them now have lower-paying jobs, if they can get a job at all; health care is a rare luxury and retirement security is something for their parents, not them. In fact, many—younger than 35—still live at home with their parents because they can’t afford to be on their own.

These are the findings of a new report, “Young Workers: A Lost Decade.” Conducted in July 2009 by Peter D. Hart Research Associates for the AFL-CIO and our community affiliate Working America, the nationwide survey of 1,156 people follows up on a similar survey the AFL-CIO conducted in 1999. The deterioration of young workers’ economic situation in those 10 years is alarming.

Nate Scherer, 31, is among today’s young workers. Scherer lives in Columbus, Ohio, where he shares a home with his wife, his parents, brother and his partner. He spoke at a media conference at the AFL-CIO today to discuss the report.

After getting married, my wife and I decided to move in with my parents to pay off our bills. We could afford to live on our own but we’d never be able to get out of debt. We have school loans to pay off, too. We’d like to have children, but we just can’t manage the expense of it right now…so we’re putting it off till we’re in a better place. My [work] position is on the edge, and I feel like if my company were to cut back, my position would be one of the first to go.

During today’s press briefing, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka summed up the report’s findings this way:

We’re calling the report “A Lost Decade” because we’re seeing 10 years of opportunity lost as young workers across the board are struggling to keep their heads above water and often not succeeding. They’ve put off adulthood—put off having kids, put off education—and a full 34 percent of workers under 35 live with their parents for financial reasons.

Just last week we learned that about 1.7 million fewer teenagers and young adults were employed in July than a year before, hitting a record low of 51.4 percent.

As AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said:

Young workers in particular must be given the tools to lead the next generation to prosperity. The national survey we’re releasing today shows just how broken our economy is for our young people…and what’s at stake if we don’t fix it.

Some of the report’s key findings include:

* 31 percent of young workers report being uninsured, up from 24 percent 10 years ago, and 79 percent of the uninsured say they don’t have coverage because they can’t afford it or their employer does not offer it.
* Strikingly, one in three young workers are currently living at home with their parents.
* Only 31 percent say they make enough money to cover their bills and put some money aside—22 percentage points fewer than in 1999—while 24 percent cannot even pay their monthly bills.
* A third cannot pay their bills and seven in 10 do not have enough saved to cover two months of living expenses.
* 37 percent have put off education or professional development because they can’t afford it.
* When asked who is most responsible for the country’s economic woes, close to 50 percent of young workers place the blame on Wall Street and banks or corporate CEOs. And young workers say greed by corporations and CEOs is the factor most to blame for in the current financial downturn.
* By a 22-point margin, young workers favor expanding public investment over reducing the budget deficit. Young workers rank conservative economic approaches such as reducing taxes, government spending and regulation on business among the five lowest of 16 long-term priorities for Congress and the president.
* Thirty-five percent say they voted for the first time in 2008, and nearly three-quarters now keep tabs on government and public affairs, even when there’s not an election going on.
* The majority of young workers and nearly 70 percent of first-time voters are confident that Obama will take the country in the right direction.

Trumka, who is running for AFL-CIO president without announced opposition at our convention later this month, is making union outreach to young people a top priority. He said one of the report’s conclusions is especially striking:

Young people want to be involved but they’re rarely asked. Their priorities are even more progressive than the priorities of the older generation of working people, yet they aren’t engaged by co-workers or friends to get involved in the economic debate.

Currently, 18-to-35-year-olds make up a quarter of union membership. And at the AFL-CIO Convention, we will ask Convention delegates to approve plans for broad recruitment of young workers, as well as plans for training and leadership of young workers who are currently union members. And that’s just the beginning of a broad push towards talking and mobilizing young workers in the coming months and years.

According to the report, more than half of young workers say employees are more successful getting problems resolved as a group rather than as individuals, and employees who have a union are better off than employees in similar jobs who do not.

LA car wash workers score NLRB victory

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 05:18:00 +0000

Los Angeles car wash workers fired recently for union activity won more than $50,000 in back pay today in a formal settlement of their National Labor Relations Board complaint against Vermont Hand Wash, a notorious anti-worker establishment.

The NLRB issued the complaint in late May alleging that Vermont’s management targeted and then fired three workers who tried to form a union.

According to the complaint Vermont’s management cut the hours of union supporters, assigned them less desirable duties and unplugged the time clock when union supporters picketed the car wash, causing workers to lose wages.

The complaint singled out one manager, Manuel Reyes, who, it said, threatened workers on numerous occasions with bullets, a machete and a combat knife. The NLRB also said Reyes threatened two union organizers with a side-handle billy club in front of car wash workers.

After the full NLRB’s expected approval of the settlement, the decision will have the same effect as a board order and will be backed by an enforcement decree from a federal appeals court. The company’s owners, the Pirian brothers, could face jail time if they violate the settlement.

The agreement prohibits Vermont Hand Wash from committing any of the violations they have already committed, as well as any other violations of the National Labor Relations Act.

Pedro Guzman, a Vermont Hand Wash worker who will receive $1,650 back pay under the deal, told supporters at a rally last week about how the intimidation and harassment worked. “He took us into his office and interrogated us about our union activities. And he even offered to compensate me if I would work on his side against the union and my compañeros. But I would never do that. Our struggle continues with the incredible support from unions, students, faith groups, old people, and young people, all of them willing to come out and sweat under the sun to show us their solidarity.”

Just before the rally, the company’s owners convinced a billboard company to take down a sign that carried the message: “Wash Away Injustice! Support Car Wash Workers.”

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney told the crowd at the rally that the struggle of the car wash workers was “a perfect example of why the Employee Free Choice Act is needed. These workers have gone through hell trying to win just living standards.

“No worker should face that treatment in this country we share. In America, every worker should enjoy freedom of speech and freedom of association. In America, every corporation should be held accountable to the law. In America, every worker should be free to join a union and bargain for a better life.”

Last year the car wash workers, most of who are immigrants, formed a city-wide Car Wash Workers Organizing Committee (CWOC) to raise their standard of living, secure basic workplace protections and address the serious environmental and safety hazards in their industry. In March 2008, CWOC joined with the United Steel Workers and became part of the CLEAN Carwash Campaign, a broad-based coalition of groups fighting for the rights of car wash workers all over the city.

Workers forced to strike for health care

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 04:56:00 +0000

CHICAGO — Every month Norma Trinidad gets her medication refilled. In her last trip to the pharmacy she was told her health insurance had been terminated. Ordinarily Trinidad pays about $48 each refill. Yet now she was being charged $400. It was at that point she found out the company she’s worked at for the last 23 years had abruptly canceled her health insurance.

Trinidad and her union, Teamsters Local 743, voted unanimously to strike Aug. 24 against their company, SK Hand Tool Corporation, on the city’s southwest side.

The company, which also has a factory in McCook, Ill., makes metal tools. It has been in business for 88 years and employs more than 70 workers at both locations.

The workers have been picketing in front of the Chicago and McCook factories.

Trinidad said she and her co-workers were never notified about the company’s decision to unilaterally pull their health coverage until three weeks after it was cut off.

Many say Trinidad’s story, like millions across the country, is a perfect example of why the fight for health care reform is extremely critical for working families.

“President Obama is leading a national debate about how to protect hard-working Americans from callous employers like SK Hand Tools,” said Richard Berg, Teamsters Local 743 president, in a statement. The company, he said, “has left us no choice but to strike for our basic needs – health care.”

Trinidad, a machine setup operator, stamps products such as sockets, ratchets, screwdrivers, extensions, pliers and other mechanical tools.

“We built this company and we think what the owner is doing is totally unfair. We want our insurance back,” she said.

“The company just continues to kick us when we are already down,” she said on the picket line. “We are not striking because of money, we are here due to unfair labor practices.”

Trinidad said she and her union brothers and sisters are taking shifts outside the Chicago factory and plan to be there 24/7. And they don’t intend to back down any time soon.

“Rain or shine, we plan on having people out here for as long as it takes,” she said.

John Oprzedek has worked at SK Tools for 13 years. It’s been over a year since he had a major kidney transplant that now requires daily medication. Since the company stopped his health insurance Oprzedek said he has paid roughly $1,200 out of his pocket for his medicine.

“I am really scared for myself and my family,” he said. “Without health insurance I don’t know what’s going to happen now.”

Trinidad, Oprzedek and others are struggling to pay for their health care needs with no insurance. The wife of one worker is on a special pump for diabetes, said Trinidad. He’s worked at the company for 37 years, she notes.

Whether it’s paying for high blood pressure pills, a colonoscopy exam, or a $20,000 hernia operation, they are all left out in the cold, the workers say.

Gina Alvarez, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 743, said, “These are loyal members and some have been working here for more than 30 years. Since the new owner acquired the company he has not stopped asking for concessions and now he has violated the contract.”

In 2005, SK Hand Tool Corporation was bought out by its management and is now independently operated by two shareholders. In 2008, Claude Fuger, was elected president and CEO of the company.

Alvarez said the health and welfare of the workers has been a part of the union contract for more than 30 years. “When they took away their health insurance with no notice — no nothing, it was a complete shock to our members,” she said.

According to the one source, Fuger told the workers he could no longer afford both their health insurance and their pensions and threatened them with bankruptcy.

Meanwhile the National Labor Relations Board has issued an unfair labor practice complaint alleging the company has bargained illegally by canceling the workers’ health care coverage.

On top of stopping their health insurance the company is also asking for a pay reduction. The workers currently earn on average $14 per hour. The company is now asking for an additional $4 pay cut in the first six months, which would lower that average to just over the minimum wage. The workers’ wages have been frozen for the last six years.

Union steward David Biedrzycki said in a statement, “We are willing to make concessions to save the company but we can’t lose our health insurance.” He added, “They expect us to pay for our health coverage out-of-pocket when they’re also asking for a 20 percent pay cut — we can’t afford this.”

Trinidad notes the company hasn’t “given us a penny in over six years.”

Joe Truschke has worked at the Chicago factory for over two years. He’s worried about the well being of his family. “I have three kids that depend on my health insurance,” he said. “What’s going to happen if one of them gets sick?”

“Nobody wins in a strike, the workers lose and so does the company. We just hope we can find some middle ground,” he said.

Trinidad says she can’t sleep at night because she’s constantly thinking about how she is going to afford her health care expenses. Just last week Trinidad’s doctor told her she caught strep throat. She ended up paying for the doctor visit and her medication out of her pocket. The doctor gave her pills because she couldn’t afford the injection, she said.

Trinidad said she knows how important the fight for health care is, especially with the national debate taking place right now. She hopes people will understand why the strike she is leading is an important battle worth fighting.

“We’re not asking for a luxury,” she said. “We’re just asking for a basic necessity.”

Teamsters Local 743 represents 11,000 workers throughout the Chicago-land area working in manufacturing, health care, clerical, food service, warehouse and maintenance industries. The Teamsters local has represented the SK workers since 1968.

The company sells its merchandise through its website and through stores like Sears & Roebuck as well as on Amazon.com. SK also makes some of the Sears Craftsman products.

plozano @ pww.org

Workers demand Toyota keep NUMMI plant open

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 03:58:00 +0000

FREMONT, Calif. ― Hundreds of auto workers gathered outside their union hall, across from the New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI) auto plant, Aug. 20 to hear a parade of state and local elected officials and labor allies pledge support for efforts to keep the West Coast’s only auto plant open.

The NUMMI plant, a 25-year-old GM-Toyota joint venture, employs about 4,700 United Auto Workers members and holds the key to another estimated 35,000 to 40,000 jobs in the state. Its fate has hung in the balance since GM declared bankruptcy and said in June it was withdrawing from the plant. Toyota’s top management says it will announce by the end of the month whether it will continue to operate the facility.

“This plant is my livelihood,” NUMMI worker Ron Lopez said after the rally. Lopez, a trustee of UAW Local 2244, the union representing the auto workers, has been at NUMMI for 19 years― his second “long-term” job, he said. His wife has worked there nearly as long. “We’re buying our home; if the plant closes it will be devastating. We worry about how we would pay our bills.”

Lopez was concerned about more than just his own family. “If we close, they close. We’re three-quarters of their business,” he said, gesturing toward nearby stores, including suppliers such as Jesse Wingard Tires as well as neighborhood eateries and others.

Debbie Williams said she and her five sisters worked at the old GM plant that once occupied the NUMMI facility. They went through that plant’s closing in the early 1980s before NUMMI opened in 1984. In the 25 years since then, Williams said, the NUMMI workers have become among the industry’s most competent and productive, with the highest overall quality standards.

“It would be a tragedy to take this plant elsewhere; Toyotas sold in California should be built in California,” said Williams, now chair of the union’s Community Action Program.

During the rally that sentiment was repeatedly expressed, including by California Labor Federation head Art Pulaski, who pointed out that Toyota cars “are driven more in California than anywhere else in America,” and Teamsters Union leader Rome Aloise, who suggested that if NUMMI closes, a $500 or $1,000 surcharge should be levied on each Toyota brought into the state for sale.

Local president Sergio Santos emphasized the size of the problem as he reminded the crowd that the figures for jobs at and related to the plant “don’t include the family members that go with those jobs.”

Elected officials speaking at the rally included Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi, who urged that part of the federal aid to the auto industry be used to promote production of fuel-efficient cars at NUMMI, and Fremont Mayor Bob Wasserman, who highlighted the “very significant, very enticing” package of incentives a city, county, state and federal task force has sent to Toyota top management to keep the plant open.

The day before the rally, workers and their supporters held a lobby day in the state capital, Sacramento, to press for passage of three measures now in the state legislature, including a sales and use tax exemption for parts and machinery used in auto manufacturing, and creation of an enterprise zone.

Cheaper electricity rates and better transportation facilities are among other incentives being proposed.

Local 2244 workers have launched a petition to President Obama citing the plant’s outstanding track record and the devastating effect its closing would have on the regional economy. The petition urges his support for efforts to keep the plant open, including short-term federal financial aid.

mbechtel@pww.org

Health reform supporters take center stage

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 05:43:00 +0000

Much of the media continues to focus on details of the Obama administration’s health reform strategy, the role of a handful of senators who represent almost as many cows as people, and the bizarre tactics of right-wing extremists.

But union members and their progressive allies are mobilizing to win real health care reform with a strong public plan option.

Yesterday alone, hundreds of workers committed to a public option spoke out at a Clovis, N.M., town hall meeting with Sen. Jeff Bingaman. Hundreds did the same at Democratic Rep. Vic Snyder’s Little Rock, Ark., meeting. Another hundred met AFSCME’s Highway to Health Care tour bus as it pulled into Shreveport, La.

In Rutland, Vt., hundreds of workers carrying red placards and wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the words “Healthcare is a Human Right” took part in that town’s second town hall meeting in just over a month. They shifted the debate 180 degrees from the earlier meeting. The crowd, many of them members of the Vermont Workers’ Center run by Jobs with Justice, made sure their voices were heard this time, drawing a sharp contrast with the “tea party” pushed by right-wing radio talking heads weeks before.

Today, union members and allies will be rallying for health reform outside President Obama’s town hall meeting at Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington. They aim to overwhelm the planned corporate-backed right-wing demonstrators also expected to gather there.

Stewart Acuff, special assistant to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, charged in the Huffington Post that the radical right is attempting to shut down health care reform and change, by intimidation and force and the power of Big Lies. He said union members and their allies are fighting for “a health care system that ensures quality health care for all and checks the insane greed of the insurance industry.”

In a phone interview, Acuff clarified what he meant by the “fight” for health care.

“I don’t mean the thuggishness used by the right,” Acuff said. “I mean peaceful, nonviolent mobilization that counters the Big Lies of the right, gives cover to weak Democrats and demonstrates convincingly that our ideas and policies are in the interests of a stronger, healthier, freer and fairer America.”

The increased mobilization of the progressive majority is having its impact as elected officials who support reform increasingly challenge extremists who show up at their forums.

Leading the way was Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., when a woman at his Dartmouth, Mass., town hall meeting waived a photo of President Obama defaced with a Hitler mustache and claimed the president supports a “Nazi policy.”

Frank replied, to cheers and applause from the crowd: “On what planet do you spend most of your time? Ma’m, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.”

National leaders in the health care reform movement, meanwhile, are becoming increasingly outspoken in their support for real reform with a robust public option.

Howard Dean, former chair of the Democratic National Committee, said yesterday, “This vote is not about Democrats versus Republicans and conservatives and liberals and all that stuff. This is about whether you’re going to vote for the people who donated to your campaigns – the health insurance industry – or you’re going to vote for the people who pay your salary. And we’re going to be watching, because there are going to be 535 people casting that vote.”

Several new polls show strong support for the public health insurance option.

In its latest August survey, Quinnipiac found 62 percent of respondents backed a public option that would allow working families to choose between a private plan or a public plan.

The latest New York Times/CBS poll shows 66 percent support for the public option while 56 percent of respondents told Time, in its poll, that they backed the public option.

Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, a researcher with the Economic Policy Institute, said a public plan option “will inject some badly needed competition into the system and force private insurers to compete on efficiency and quality rather than the way they currently compete for business: enrolling the lowest-cost workers and businesses.”

Labor and its allies have shown no enthusiasm for the idea of health care “cooperatives,” which has been pushed by some as an alternative to a public option.

“The so-called health care cooperative alternative is severely flawed and unworkable,” said Rick Bender, president of the Washington State Labor Council. “Creating a patchwork of state or regional cooperatives where none exist just seems like an extremely costly and very bad idea. What you end up with, if you could even create one at all, would be a series of fragmented risk pools and duplicative administrative structures around the country. The only way to force competition on the insurance companies is a strong public plan option.”

jowjcik @ pww.org

Unions go global to tell truth on British health service

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:42:00 +0000

Original source:

A three-million strong global union has launched a campaign to counter lies being spread by some opponents of the White House's health reform plans.

US rightwingers assert that US President Barack Obama's drive to guarantee affordable universal health-care amounts to a 'socialist' takeover of the private insurance industry.

But the Workers Uniting union, a partnership between British union Unite and the US-Canadian United Steelworkers (USW), observed that the establishment of 'an egalitarian health-care system' is 'about human and civil rights.'

At present, 46 million US citizens who cannot afford private health insurance have to fend for themselves if they fall ill.

Mr Obama's plan, which would cost up to £900 billion, would require employers to either furnish 'meaningful coverage' for employees or contribute to a new public plan.

Republican and rightwing groups, backed by healthcare privateers, assert that the introduction of a universal insurance system would unfairly compete with private-sector plans.

And failed Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has implied that introducing 'socialised health care' would entail the establishment of euthanising 'death panels'where the elderly and infirm would be obliged to plead with faceless bureaucrats for their life.

Workers Uniting has used its website and popular social networking sites to expose this right-wing 'nonsense.'

In a message to members, USW international president Leo Gerard pointed out that the debate in the US 'has been unfairly focused on the many myths and mistruths being circulated by opponents, including those about the universal health-care system in Britain.'

He hailed 'our sisters and brothers in Britain who know the truth and are helping set the record straight.'

Unite joint general secretary Derek Simpson described the NHS as 'the pride of Britain' branding attempts to 'represent the NHS as inefficient as outrageous.'

Fellow joint general secretary Tony Woodley vowed that Workers Uniting will 'work to promote the principles of universal health-care provision for all, free at the point of delivery.'

Mr Woodley said that the internet campaign 'will show workers in the US how an egalitarian and effective health-care system must be an aspiration for every fair and decent society.'

He slated claims that a national health-care system will fail the old, or judge the lives of some as unworthy of treatment as 'total nonsense.'

Public option non-negotiable, says top labor leader

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 05:48:00 +0000

If Senate and House members vote against a public health insurance option they will lose the support of organized labor in the next elections, said AFL-CIO Secretary –Treasurer Richard Trumka on national television last night.

Trumka issued the warning in an interview with Rachel Maddow of MSNBC News as unions, progressive groups, members of Congress and the Obama administration itself all re-iterated their support for a government-run public health plan that will compete with private insurance companies to keep costs down. His remarks came also on the heels of a move by lawmakers that insures no health care reform measure can pass in Congress unless it includes the public option.

“We’ll look at every one of their votes,” Trumka said. “If they’re against a public option, if they’re against the Employee Free Choice Act, they will not get support from working people or their unions.”

When Maddow pressed him on whether it was worth insisting on the public option even if that meant no bill would be able to be passed, Trumka said, “Absolutely. Without a public option there is no reform. In fact it’s worse than no reform because you have the private insurance companies getting handed even more than what they got before. The only way to force real competition on the insurance companies is a strong public plan option.”

Sixty Four House members who are strong backers of health care reform have signed on to a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius pledging that, without a public option, they will not vote for a health care bill. In the letter they said, “Americans deserve reform that is real – not smoke and mirrors. We cannot rely solely on the insurance companies’ good-faith efforts to provide for our constituents. A robust public option is essential, if we are to ensure that all Americans can receive health care that is accessible, guaranteed and of high quality.

“To take the public option off the table would be a grave error; passage in the House of Representatives depends upon inclusion of it,” the statement concludes.

Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., who co-hairs the Middle Class Caucus and sits on the Energy and Commerce Committee, said yesterday that the number of lawmakers who would vote “no” unless there is a public option was “more than 100.”

Weiner led the effort to secure an up or down vote on a single payer plan on the House floor. The vote will take place when the House considers health care reform this fall.

“Leaving private insurance companies to the job of controlling costs of healthcare is like making a pyromaniac the fire chief,” Weiner declared yesterday.

Many observers say that Republicans may have over played their hand in their resistance to health care reform.

Unions and their progressive allies have been able to turn many town hall meetings from the anti-Obama propaganda sessions right wingers were orchestrating into productive and meaningful discussions of the issues.

Recent statements by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R., Iowa, have exposed the party’s real intention of opposing not only the public option but any type of reform whatsoever. Polls released today indicate a 62 percent disapproval rating by the public for the way Republicans have handled the issue of health care reform.

British National Health Service - The Truth!

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 03:38:00 +0000

Opponents to President Obama’s health care reform plan have circulated a number of serious lies and gross distortions about the UK’s National Health Service to defend their own interests and scupper plans that will help the 47 million Americans currently without health care cover.

What is the NHS? The UK’s National Health Service provides a wide range of healthcare services - everything from antenatal screening and routine treatments for coughs and colds to open heart surgery, accident and emergency treatment and end-of-life care to the whole UK population of 60million people.

Most importantly it is free for people to access health care and 1 million patients are seen every 36 hours.

The NHS funded by general taxation and is organised and run at a local, regional level. It is one of the most efficient, most egalitarian and most comprehensive in the world, looking after everyone from their birth to their death. It is an institution supported by every major political party in Britain and the British population, who have been responding to the Republican attacks on the NHS on Twitter, at #welovetheNHS by posting their own stories of how the NHS has saved and improved the lives of them and their loved ones, for free. LIE 1: that older people do not receive treatment on the NHS

Ted Kennedy, 77, would not be treated for his brain tumor if he was in Britain because he is too old (Charles Grassley, Republican senator from Iowa)

In England, anyone over 59 years of age cannot receive heart repairs, stents or bypass because it is not covered as being too expensive and not needed, (an anonymously authored, but widely circulated, email).

THE TRUTH There is no ban on anyone of any age receiving any treatment – indeed, it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of age when providing services. Professor Peter Weissberg, the medical director of the British Heart Foundation, an independent charity, says that “Growing numbers of patients over 65 with heart conditions are having surgery, including valve repairs and heart bypass surgery”. Additionally, the average age at which people have a bypass operation has risen from 58 in 1991 to 66 in 2008.Decisions over whether to recommend and perform surgery or prescribe drugs are clinical decisions, taken on a case by case basis on what is best for each patient. LIE 2: officials decide the ‘worth’ of each person’s life, denying treatment to those who are deemed ‘worthless’.

People such as scientist Stephen Hawking [who has Motor Neurone Disease, a degenerative illness] wouldn't have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.' (Investors Business Daily)

Government health officials in England have decided that $22,750 (£14,000) is what six months' life is worth. Under their socialised system, if a medical treatment costs more, you're out of luck (Club for Growth)

THE TRUTH Professor Stephen Hawking lives and works in Britain and received NHS treatment as recently as April 2009. He has responded to the above claim by saying that he “wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS. I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived”.

In Britain, the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) decides whether new drugs represent value for money for the NHS. There has been a gross misrepresentation of its role; Nice assesses new drugs by looking at the amount and quality of extended life it is hoped the patient will gain by looking at the medical evidence. The current ceiling is £30,000 for a full course of treatment but exceptions are made. LIE 3: rationing means people are not able to access the treatment they need for serious conditions.

In Britain, 40% of cancer patients are never able to see an oncologist; there is explicit rationing for services such as kidney dialysis, open heart surgery and care for the terminally ill. (Conservatives for Patients' Rights)

The British NHS 'does not allow' women under 25 to receive screening for cervical cancer (Jim DeMint, Republican senator from South Carolina)

THE TRUTH There is no ‘rationing’ for services such as kidney dialysis, open heart surgery or end of life care.

The above claim about cancer is from an out of date, 15 year old study. In 2000 a 10 year programme was launched, setting key targets for improvement. The National Audit Office, which is responsible for analyzing how effectively the government spends money, reported in 2005 that 99.2%of people who are referred by their doctor with suspected cancer see a specialist within 2 weeks and 89.9% of patients diagnosed with cancer begin treatment within 31 days.

There is an ‘End of Life Care Strategy’ that “aims to improve access to high quality care for adults approaching the end of life. This care should be available wherever the person might be, ie at home, in a care home, in hospital, in a hospice, or somewhere else.”

All women over 25 are routinely and regularly invited for a cervical smear. Any woman, at any age, who presents symptoms of cervical cancer will receive a smear test if their doctor thinks it is appropriate.

Texas labor takes back Town Hall forums

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 03:08:00 +0000

The AFL-CIO reports that pro-reform activists are overcoming the extreme tactics employed by the health insurance industry during this August congressional recess.

In North Texas, after initially being taken aback by shrill shouting tactics and threats of public violence, calm pro-reform activists are quietly making their point with double the turnout of those clinging to the status quo.

The first successes were reported in Houston, where the principal officer of the local AFL-CIO reported good public crowds with reasonable deportment.

Then the Texas federation reported a turnout of 450 for reform on their parking lot in Austin. In Dallas on the morning of August 17, 200 silent pro-reform activists more than doubled the rowdy crowd of 60 outside a town hall meeting featuring North Texas’ only Democratic Congressperson, Eddie Bernice Johnson, and the pride of the Republican House Re-Election Committee, Pete Sessions.

Inside, Sessions blasted what he called “The Democrat Proposal for a Government-Run Health Care System.” His literature said that “119 million people would be displaced from their private health insurance and put on the ‘public option’ or government run plan.” Verbally, he said it would be 200 million. His literature contradicted Sessions by saying “free markets always provide the best distribution of goods and services.” If “free market” insurance is better, why would 119 or 200 million choose the public option?

Congressman Sessions, whose district now include the home of G W Bush, has his own suggestions to improve the health care. One of them, in his literature, would “Allow patients on current government plans (Medicare/Medicaid/SCHIP/VA) to take a defined contribution to purchase in the private insurance market.” In other words, he would destroy the successful programs now running, because insurance companies would “cherry pick” the least expensive patients!

Sessions said that the insurance industry could regulate itself, but Congresswoman Johnson and others asked why it hadn’t done so already. He said that proposed reforms were simply “socialized medicine.” Congresswoman Johnson replied, to great audience response, “Call it what you want to, it’s better than nothing!”

The Congresswoman also received a big response when she said she wanted to end a system where “profits come before people!”

Trumka to Netroots Nation: Keep telling the truth

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:07:00 +0000

One of the highlights of Netroots Nation was last night’s stirring keynote address by AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka, who delivered a call to action to the netroots.

Trumka won a standing ovation for his speech, which pointed out the critical role of the netroots in fighting corporate domination and amplifying the voice for progressive change:

God bless you for looking at power and saying, “We won’t back down.”

Acknowledging the need to educate a new generation of young workers about unions and why they matter, Trumka pledged to listen to the voices of younger people and to reach out to those who are entering a new kind of workplace in the 21st century. In this troubled economy, he said, the freedom to join a union and bargain was more important than ever. Giving workers bargaining power means giving them the buying power they need to keep our economy going.

You can’t borrow your way into the middle class. You have to bargain your way into the middle class.

The netroots have a vita role to play in countering the misinformation rampant in the mainstream media and particularly the lies and attacks that come from corporate-influenced outlets like Fox News and loud, deep-pocketed interests like the insurance industry. Their falsehoods need to be countered by reason and facts, he said.

The netroots are critical to the future of our democracy, Trumka said, because they can issue the strong call to action that’s needed on issues like financial reform, health care, and the Employee Free Choice Act.

You don’t win by sitting back. You win by getting up and fighting back…this is our moment, and together we will.

We can’t just replicate the old economy, where very few saw all the benefits and the vast majority paid the price, Trumka said. We need to rebuild a new economy and achieve the dream of a country where everyone has a seat at the table.

Trumka’s address is a great sign of the growing cooperation between the union movement and the netroots, and the positive response from attendees shows the strength and power of that relationship.

Thompson picks up endorsement of powerful NYC union

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 07:05:00 +0000

NEW YORK — In a development with big implications for New York’s mayoral race, AFSCME District Council 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts announced the union’s decision to endorse Democrat Bill Thompson for mayor.

The announcement came at the union’s Aug. 13 Political Action Committee meeting.

To cheers, echoing the Obama campaign, of “Yes, we can!” Thompson, currently the city’s comptroller, entered the room of 500 activists, surprising those in attendance.

This promises to be no paper endorsement. DC 37’s phone banking and get-out-the-vote operations have long been much courted by politicians, both Democrats and Republicans.

“New York City is at a crossroads,” Thompson said, describing what a third Michael Bloomberg term would mean. “We can continue in the direction we have been going over the last eight years, in a city where we can’t afford to live, with the working and middle classes pushed out, with jobs going to Wall Street and not working people, and housing we can’t afford. Or we can move in a different path for New York.”

“This is a great day, to receive the endorsement of the people who make the city work. I have a weapon in this fight money can’t buy,” he said, referring to Bloomberg’s astronomical $26 million already spent on media advertising in his campaign. “I have you!”

The announcement served as a stinging rebuke to the mayor’s pose as a “friend of municipal labor” in this campaign. Coming from New York City’s largest municipal union, with 125,000 active members and 55,000 retirees, it was a blow to the aura of inevitability carefully painted by the Bloomberg campaign around a third term.

Polls show a dramatic drop in support for Bloomberg since May. In the wake of labor’s role in electing Obama last November, DC 37’s endorsement also points the way toward much-needed labor electoral unity in New York state and city politics. This also happens in the context of the still unfolding economic crisis, as Mayor Bloomberg and the forces behind him seek to place the burden of the crisis on poor and working people, rather than taxing the rich.

The endorsement of Thompson also builds on DC 37’s recent grassroots mobilizations against Bloomberg’s union busting program of contracting out.

Stewards and rank and file members have fanned out this summer to communities around the city, spreading the message against a “shadow government” marked by $9 billion a year spent by the Bloomberg administration on outside consultants (out of a total budget of $60 billion). Leaflets have documented how city workers can do the job better and for less expense.

This grassroots mobilization followed the union’s effective media mobilization in May. This included a campaign of extensive radio and subway ads, showing municipal workers on the job for New Yorkers. It attacked the city’s use of outside contractors as an attempt to destroy the civil service system. It urged taxpayers to join the union in the fight to protect public services.

Many activists on DC 37’s Lobby Day in Albany this spring were struck by how many of the issues chosen were associated with Bloomberg policies. Lobbying efforts included defense of the present pension system against attacks by the mayor, opposition to the dictator-like “mayoral control” of the schools, and calls for curbs on privatization and contracting out of city services.

Almost immediately the Bloomberg campaign sought to spin DC 37’s endorsement its way, charging that Thompson won the endorsement by making a “secret deal” with DC 37. Thompson refuted these charges, countering that, far from involving any “deals,” the endorsement was based on his substantive responses to questions put forward by the union’s screening committee.

“I was asked questions about a city where members could live,” Thompson said. “I was asked about housing affordability. I was asked about a school system that is not just about standardized testing, but about competing on the highest level. I was asked questions about jobs being contracted out, which has accelerated tremendously under the Bloomberg administration.”

“New York City is at a crossroads,” Thompson repeated. “Do we want another eight years of this path? I want another path for New York.”

As DC 37 members chanted once again, “Yes, we can!” Thompson led the crowd of activists in a new slogan, building on the promise of the Obama campaign’s “Yes, we can!” with “Yes, we will!”

The meeting closed with an announcement that DC 37 would be the lead contingent in the Sept. 12 Labor Day march.

Labor seeks help from civil rights group

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 06:52:00 +0000

Richard Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, is urging the NAACP to help the labor movement organize workers – particularly African Americans – after the expected passage this year of the Employee Free Choice Act.

In his July speech to the NAACP convention in New York, Trumka expressed appreciation to the nation’s oldest civil rights group for its support of the legislation. He told cheering delegates that the bill is within “a hair’s breadth” of winning the needed 60 Senate votes to overcome a planned GOP-led filibuster against it.

Trumka made it clear that he wants the labor movement to start, as soon as the bill becomes law, organizing the millions of workers whom the bill would make easier to organize. “It’s there that the NAACP comes in,” Trumka declared, “because 4.8 million of those workers are poor African Americans.”

He said a successful joint effort by unions and the NAACP would help those workers enter the middle class and that such organizing would be a priority for him once he becomes AFL-CIO president in September.

Trumka admitted that the labor movement has not always done as much as it should have, when it comes to organizing African-Americans.

“The challenge we face isn’t only passing the Employee Free Choice Act. It’s taking full advantage of it once we do. That begins by reaching out to organize workers the labor movement left behind. Who are they? A lot are African Americans.”

Trumka said the history of African Americans in the labor movement has been a “long one of proud accomplishment” and he praised the NAACP for its “crusade, starting 80 years ago, to end segregation within organized labor.” He said that without the group’s success labor would be much weaker.

“We can’t change the sins of the past. But we can learn from them – and build a new kind of labor movement for the future, a labor movement that goes beyond gestures, beyond rhetoric and tokenism.

“We can’t just talk the talk. We have to walk the walk. We can’t only preach about change. We have to make change happen. And that means investing the time, the energy, the talent, and the resources it’s going to take to begin the work of organizing 4.8 million poverty-wage African American workers so they can have a paycheck, the benefits and the opportunities that can only come with a union contract.

“Is it possible?,” Trumka asked. “The labor movement can’t do the job alone, but together – with the NAACP – I’m convinced that we can. Together, a new alliance between the labor movement and the NAACP can begin the work of transforming poverty wage work into jobs with a future.”

'The biggest fight between labor and capital since 1947'

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:31:00 +0000

PITTSBURGH - 'We are on the verge of passing the most important piece of legislation in 75 years - the Employee Free Choice Act,' AFL-CIO director of organizing Stewart Acuff told a packed panel discussion here at the national Netroots conference August 13.

'This is the biggest fight between labor and capital since 1947, when big business pushed through the Taft-Hartley Act,' Acuff continued. 'But, if this was just labor's fight we would never win. The engagement of the netroots movement is incredibly important.'

According to Acuff, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) will accomplish three goals. First, it will streamline the process of forming a union. Second, it will provide real penalties for employers who violate the law. Third, it will provide real incentives to negotiate a first contract.

In its effort to pass EFCA, the labor movement has generated over 200,000 hand written letters, 100,000 phone calls and has delivered over 1,000,000 postcards to the hill - just this year alone.

Acuff added, 'The labor movement is the engine for social progress. All of us who believe in a different America have a stake in this fight.'

Jake McIntyre, from the Bricklayer's Union, said, 'We all recognize why unions are great. They bargain for better wages, pensions, health care and job protection. But,' he added, 'we have to appeal to the base of the democratic party who don't know that there is a direct connection between union members - union growth - and progressive voters.'

'More union members means more democratic and progressive voters. More progressive voters means electing more progressive politicians. More progressive politicians means winning progressive legislation,' McIntyre concluded.

A guest speaker, William Miller, also addressed the audience. Miller, who had worked for Am-Gard, one of the largest contract security companies in the U.S., was recently fired for trying to organizing a union. 'The bosses say I was fired for wearing my uniform in a picture used in a union flyer,' said Miller. 'But it was for joining the union.'

Miller who has worked for Am-Gard for six years and Victory Security for three, made between $8 and $9.50 an hour depending on which security bid got the contract at the garage he worked at. 'Every time a new security corporation came in,' Miller continued, 'my wages went down.'

'Unfortunately,' McIntyre added, 'Miller's story isn't rare. Half of all organizing campaigns include sever discipline, intimidation and firings.'

'Workers face constant abuse and coercion every day in this country,' he said.

Elana Levin, assistant director of communications for Workers United, connected the dots between union members, journalists and bloggers in the struggle for health care reform when she said, 'Workers have experienced the health care war themselves. This is valuable content for bloggers, but it also builds support for workers and their struggle.'

Matt Browner-Hamlin, from the Service Employees International Union media department, couldn't agree more. 'The continuity and relationships that the labor movement has is a great resource for political bloggers,' he said.

'The Republicans would rather cut money for schools, home care and social services than raise taxes on the richest 1 percent,' he continued. 'But, no one wants to see social services cut. This is another reason why there needs to be a lot more cooperation between bloggers and unions.'

Blaine Rummell, from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees legislative department, summed things up when he said, 'The union agenda is the progressive agenda.'

Labor and bloggers join forces at Netroots Nation

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 06:26:00 +0000

PITTSBURGH, Pa. - 'We are using technology to go beyond our traditional organizing efforts,' Eric Russell, from the United Steelworkers union (USW) communications department, told workshop attendees here at the Netroots Nation conference August 13.

'We're using new technologies to grow our union, learn from our members, educate, and inspire action. This is all about communicating with the members and the general public,' Russell added.

The USW, like many other unions, has began the process of merging its traditional organizing efforts - work-site fliers, mail pieces, phone-banking, rallies, events and canvassing - with emerging technologies.

Russell runs USW's 30 station predictive dialer, which enables the union to communicate quickly and directly with the membership through live-calls, patch-through calls and robo-calls.

'Ninety percent of our members in battle ground states got union mail and literature during the 2008 elections. Eighty-four percent got phone calls. And twenty-five percent were visited by a door-to-door canvasser,' said Russell.

By merging traditional and new organizing techniques USW activists were able to generate 'hundreds of thousands of votes in battle ground states,' Russell added.

The USW isn't just using the predictive dialer to mobilize its own members. They are also working to mobilize allies on working-class issues. For example, they have committed over 400 dialer hours to the fight for the Employee Free Choice Act by calling over 11,000 Sierra Club members, which generated over 650 patch-through calls to Senator Spector's office. The Employee Free Choice Act is organized labor top priority.

According to Connie Madin, the USW is using 'online activism to augment our strength, our boots on the ground.'

Madin talked about Union 2.0 and the steelworkers' website redesign as a 'way to empower the members, to make our online work an extension of their grassroots activism.'

In another workshop Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, emphasized grassroots activism and urged bloggers, journalists and tweeters to 'break into the discussion.'

He said, 'our trade policy defined by Wall Street and forced in back-room deals has destroyed the middle class. Fundamental changes to our economy needs to be made,' he added. 'And you need to be a part of making that change happen.'

Congresswomen Donna Edwards placed the blame for the current economic crisis squarely on the table. She said, 'we're fighting the same battle with the same corporate interests. The same interests that caused the economic meltdown, caused the decline in manufacturing and depressed working people's wages. And they are the same interests orchestrating the fight against health care reform,' said Edwards. 'Their interest is in moving money. They don't care if it is here, France, Bangladesh, or elsewhere. We have to put the brakes on the corporations because they aren't gonna do it on their own.'

Speaking on the decline in manufacturing, Steelworkers president Leo Gerard said, 'We have to blow up the myth that manufacturing is a declining industry. It's not the rust-belt. It's the industrial heartland. We can't fall into the trap that industry is a thing of the past.'

Additionally, Gerard urged policy makers to support a domestic industrial policy that puts people back to work creating the jobs of the future. 'Steel is the most recycled product in America. The steel industry is a green industry,' he said.

Emphasizing the use of new technologies, Gerard said, 'The progressive blogosphere is in the front lines of changing our society. We certainly can't count on the mainstream media. We need to get our industrial policy message out beyond the traditional base.'

He also challenged China bashing in the steel industry and said, 'We shouldn't blame the Chinese. They are doing what we should be doing. They have an industrial policy. They aren't stealing our jobs. Our trade policies are giving them away.'

Bloggers, activists head to Pittsburgh for Netroots Nation confab

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:21:00 +0000

PITTSBURGH, Pa. — With more than 1,500 progressive bloggers and activists streaming into Steel City for the Netroots Nation confab this week, Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., joined United Steelworkers president Leo Gerard, Campaign for America’s Future co-director Robert Borosage and Netroots Nation spokesperson Mary Rickles on a conference call today to set the scene and preview the star-studded three-day event, which opens Aug. 13.

In addition to major addresses from President Bill Clinton, Gov. Howard Dean and White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett and a match-up between Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., and Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., the gathering will feature several activities sponsored by the Campaign for America’s Future, including a straw poll, a tour of a modern steel plant and a party with batting practice at Pirates Stadium.

National and international attention is turning to Pittsburgh with the arrival of the Netroots Nation convention, followed next month by the AFL-CIO’s national convention and the G-20 Summit. Attention is also turning towards the city’s struggle to forge new jobs in an economy where millions have disappeared.

Pittsburgh’s economic revival is due to a high degree of collaboration between industry, labor and government, according to a new report by the Campaign for America’s Future. The report explains how Pittsburgh is an example of a city that has made the transition from the old to the new economy, citing lessons for the nation.

Sen. Casey, who welcomed delegates to the city for the major gatherings, cited that report and said a specifically designed industrial policy, not “market forces,” brought Pittsburgh back.

“Pittsburgh faced challenges as early as the 1950s, but by the 1970s it was losing tens of thousands of jobs,” said Sen. Casey “Pittsburgh had to transition out of that to the economy we have today, which includes a new manufacturing base that is unheralded in the nation. This recovery was the result of deliberate planning. You have to have government leadership but you also have to have corporate leadership and industrial leadership that's willing to work together to give meaning to words like ‘collaboration’ and ‘strategic planning.’”

Gerard, who along with Borosage is setting up this week’s steel mill tour for bloggers and reporters, said that the manufacturing sector in Pittsburgh, which pays much higher than its service counterparts, is defining a national model.

“I take issue with the term Rust Belt. There is no rust,” said Gerard. “The modern steel mill is a very high-tech and space-aged facility. They release a small fraction, less than one-third, of the carbon that a steel mill in China lets loose. Some say we can forget about manufacturing and move to a services economy, but a service economy won't produce good-paying jobs.”

The Campaign for America’s Future report on Pittsburgh is available online at .

Summers says Obama will fix Social Security question is how

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 06:41:00 +0000

One of President Obama’s top economic advisers, Lawrence Summers, told leading economists Aug. 11 that the president intends to overhaul Social Security before he leaves the White House.

Summers, director of the White House National Economic Council, said Obama’s aim would be to strengthen Social Security “in a way that will assure people that there’s something they can rely on, a base from which they can build their retirement security.”

His remarks came at the annual meeting of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a group that includes Nobel Prize winners, presidential economic advisers and economists from academia, business and labor.

Summers said he was “confident” that the Obama administration, would “address Social Security from the perspective that the protection of what’s the bedrock of the system has to be an absolutely central value.”

That bedrock is a top concern of retirees and workers about to retire. Social Security is the single largest source of income for the elderly. Two-thirds depend on it for most or all of their income.

The AFL-CIO Executive Council, at its March meeting, issued a statement saying, “We cannot allow fiscal responsibility to be used as a pretext for cutting the social safety net. In this time of growing economic insecurity, we should be strengthening rather than dismantling the social safety net.”

The financing of Social Security, the union leaders said, is “fundamentally sound.”

Social Security revenues and reserves are fully adequate to pay all benefits until 2041 or 2049, and 74 percent of benefits after that, they said.

They pointed out that the cost of making Bush’s tax cuts for the rich permanent is three-and-a-half times the size of the entire Social Security shortfall over 75 years. The cost of extending the Bush tax cuts for only the wealthiest 1 percent still exceeds the entire Social Security shortfall, they noted.

Ed Coyle, executive director of the 3-million-member Alliance for Retired Americans, warned recently that the public should be suspicious of “sky is falling” predictions of doom for Social Security. Such doomsday warnings, he said, “mask an ongoing ideological agenda to cut benefits to current and future retirees.”

Instead, he said, the focus should be on strengthening Social Security by raising the cap on earnings subject to Social Security tax (currently set at $106,800), and “ending the nearly 20 percent overpayment that taxpayers give to the big insurance companies to offer privatized Medicare Advantage programs.”

The AFL-CIO leaders also suggested dedicating estate tax revenues above a certain limit to reinforce the Social Security Trust Fund.

Noting that throughout Social Security’s 75-year history, it has been modified many times to keep pace with economic changes, the AFL-CIO leaders emphasized that any fixes must maintain and extend its benefits, not cut them.

The union leaders warned against measures proposed by some, such as increasing the early retirement age or the standard retirement age; changing the Social Security benefit formula to increase the number of years of earnings counted or to index benefits to prices instead of wages; or restricting eligibility.

“‘Fixing’ Social Security by lowering living standards is no solution at all,” they said.

The AFL-CIO pointed out that wage stagnation is one reason why there’s a projected future shortfall. “The most appropriate response to this problem is to encourage wage growth by allowing workers to form unions free of employer interference and to reform health care so that health care expenditures are no longer a drain on wage growth.”

In his remarks yesterday, Summers noted that resolving the economic crisis and reducing health care costs will help replenish the Social Security fund.

Coyle emphasized job-creation as well as health care reform, saying, “Putting more Americans back to work will send more money into these trust funds.”

suewebb @ pww.org

Crisis and opportunity

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 06:07:00 +0000

Original source:

The dog days of August have arrive, Washington has mostly cleared out and neither health care reform nor the Employee Free Choice Act have been passed. The Republicans, the Hard Right, and Corporate America are doing all they can to defeat them both. And they are being more than ably assisted by a small group of moderate Democratic Senators who for some reason think the status quo is just fine that having 50 million Americans without health care is OK and that more people should continue to work harder and longer for less and less, that growing poverty is OK, and that corporations should get all the benefits of our work.

The chattering class and punditocracy are clucking their tongues, wrinkling their brows to look smart, and aping Rush and Grover and others that now is not the time. The economy is too fragile for real change. They are discussing what the Senate will do to both health care reform and the Employee Free Choice Act.

Our nation did not become great because generation after generation of Americans feared change. Our country did not become great because Americans refused to face the country’s challenges and ignored their responsibilities.

We are at an historic moment in American history. We have a huge economic crisis which has caused untold suffering and a decline in the standard of living and quality of life for the majority of Americans with take home pay less than in 1973 and more families working more hours to try to stay afloat. Our health care system is designed to make insurance companies and others vastly wealthy at the expense of the American people. We get less value for every health care dollar spent than anywhere else in the world. We already have at least four highly functioning popular public health care delivery systems but we’re told we can’t have a public plan in health care reform because that would be turning health care over to the government or socialism.

So we are at an incredibly important moment in American history. We can take advantage of the opportunities we have a President and Congress which essentially share progressive values to push through the kind of change that changes the quality of people’s lives and puts America on the right track to an economy that works for all, that values work and respects workers, an America that knows that what is good for workers is good for America or we can sit back and squander the moment, refuse our duty and responsibility and make believe someone else can do it.

Every generation in American history faced the same kind of challenges and opportunities that we face. And those generations which understood collective power moved the country forward toward a more perfect union:

The mechanics in the Philadelphia guilds with Tom Paine and the worker organizations in Boston with Sam Adams who laid the groundwork for our independence and provided the troops. The abolitionists with Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison who built a movement to end slavery that led to the greatest freedom struggle in our hsitory at the cost of 600,000 lives. The women’s suffragists with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony who won the right for women to vote and forever changed our politics. The populists and progressives who mounted an aggressive and effective campaign against unfettered, unregulated monopoly capitalism. Our forebears in labor who ended poverty for millions of workers and created the middle class and the American Dream. The modern civil rights movement which ended legal peonage, enfranchised millions of Black Americans and unleashed a movement and passion for social justice.

So it is now our time. It is time we understand the dynamics of power,use our opportunities to develop more power and mobilize to wield that power to win the kind of change that changes thw quality of people’s lives, that will turn around America.

Our forebears understood that power is how we get things done, change things, make things happen, make change and the only power available to us workers is collecting power.

We build our power by organizing.

We exercise our power by mobilization

We leverage our power through coalitions.

So now it is our time and our opportunity to build and exercise our power to change America. This is organizing to build worker power so that we are not waiting on politicians in Washington to deliver change. We are mobilizing workers to create change from the ground up.

We will never again in this generation get this kind of opportunity and if we fail to take advantage, our labor movement will fail and our country will be unrecognizable. Our children and grandchildren will lose any access to the American Dream. The stakes could hardly be higher. Time to fight.

Plot to kill Post Office cloaked by right wing recess rally chaos

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 05:13:00 +0000

Even as it works overtime to disrupt the national debate on health care reform, the radical right is taking advantage of the chaos to quietly destroy yet another public service Americans take for granted – the United States Postal Service. Working through Sen. Thomas Coburn, R-Okla., they have rolled a huge boulder onto the road lawmakers are taking to close a $7 billion budget deficit hanging over the agency for the year ending Sept. 30.

Coburn attached a killer amendment, just before the Senate’s August recess, to legislation that would grant the Postal Service the $5 billion it needs to cover health care costs for retirees. Without the legislation the agency says that on Sept. 1 it will have to fire more than 50,000 workers, close down hundreds of post offices and kill Saturday pickup and delivery.

The right-wing amendment effectively squashes the collective bargaining rights of the entire Postal Service workforce by ordering arbitrators to place the fiscal condition of the Postal Service ahead of any contractual obligations the agency has to its workers or retirees.

The law, as amended by Coburn, would allow the Postal Service, for example, to withhold a $5.4 billion payment it must make within a month to cover retiree health care costs.

The postal worker unions are warning that attachment of the Coburn amendment to the rescue bill forces them to withdraw their earlier support for the legislation.

“The Coburn amendment serves only to upset collective bargaining procedures,” said Bill Burrus, president of the American Postal Service Workers Union.

The new Letter Carriers president, Frederic Rolando, told senators in a hearing just before the recess, that his union also could not support a bill containing the Coburn amendment. Witnesses at the Aug. 6 Senate hearing pointed out that health care costs are only part of the problems the agency faces.

Mail volume has dropped by 12 percent in the last year and the drop is expected to reach 16 percent by the end of fiscal 2009, in September, according to the Government Accounting Office.

Postmaster General John Potter told senators that the USPS has lost much of its volume because of the Internet.

Potter, who was named by a GOP-appointed Postal Board during the Bush administration, has proposed cuts in the workforce as the solution. He says that at least 677 post offices should be closed, most of them in major cities, and that 55,000 workers should be fired.

The USPS workforce, the unions note, has already shrunk, through retirements and buyouts, to 603,000 workers, from 773,000 several years ago. The unions are saying there is a better way than job cuts.

Both union leaders are angry about the radical right amendment to the rescue bill because they have already been working with USPS management on money-saving plans.

The Letter Carriers and the agency, for example, are reviewing 168,000 city letter carrier routes, examining them for possible consolidations. Senators at the Aug. 6 hearing were non-committal on the Coburn amendment.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Ind., Conn., was among the group of supposedly pro-labor Democrats who weren’t saying too much.

He asked Rolando and Burrus to submit conditions they would attach to any arbitrations. Both restated their opposition to the anti-labor amendment attached by Coburn but declined to offer any others.