People Before Profit blog

Health care reform takes new turn in California

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 05:01:00 +0000

This article has been corrected.

The long-running saga of health reform in California has taken a new turn, with two developments that are reshaping the debate about how best to cover millions of uninsured and underinsured people in the state.

Last week, the Executive Council of the California Labor Federation, the AFL-CIO’s largest state affiliate with over 2.1 million members, voted unanimously to back HR 676, the national single-payer bill now before Congress. “The California Labor Federation believes HR 676 is shaping up as the national leader in quality health care reform,” spokesperson Anastasia Ordonez told the World. The federation and its affiliates will support actions across the country in support of the measure, she said.

HR 676, introduced into Congress by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), now has 87 additional co-sponsors in the House of Representatives. It has been endorsed by 355 union organizations in 48 states, including 32 state AFL-CIOs and 94 Central Labor Councils and Area Labor Federations. The measure would cover everyone in the U.S. for all necessary medical care, with no deductible or co-pays, and would save billions annually by eliminating high overhead and profits of the private health industry and HMOs.

Meanwhile, on Jan. 28, the state Senate Health Committee voted down a controversial private insurance-based reform bill crafted by Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democratic leaders of the Assembly and Senate. The bill, known as “ABx1 1” passed the Assembly late last year. It was first heard by the Senate Health Committee in a protracted Jan. 23 session. On Jan. 28, committee members – Democrats and Republicans alike – voted it down, 7 to 1, with three abstentions. Those who voted no worried about the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s report that funding might become inadequate after several years. Some also expressed concerns over the impact on poorer Californians of the “individual mandate” requiring nearly everyone to have insurance.

The labor movement, health care advocates and professionals, the business community and even insurers were split over ABx1 1’s merits. Supporters said the bill would cover most uninsured Californians, with public coverage or subsidies for low and moderate income people. Funding was to come from premiums, employer contributions, taxes on hospitals and cigarettes, and government funds already allocated to health care. Employers could either provide coverage or pay into a state pool.

Opponents, however, pointed out that ABx1 1 was not universal, would leave insurance companies in charge, did not guarantee quality of care, affordability or cost control, and did not require enough contributions from employers. The Senate Health Committee could hear the bill again at its next regular meeting, and its supporters could amend it and start over. But Assembly Speaker Nunez did not ask for a new hearing, and no time was left to put a funding measure before voters in November.

Meanwhile, medical students from around California held a noontime rally at the state capitol in Sacramento Jan. 28 in support of SB 840, a state single payer bill. SB 840 passed the legislature in 2006 before being vetoed by the governor. Sen. Kuehl withdrew it before it could be vetoed again last year.

“The California Labor Federation has always supported SB 840,” Ordonez told the World. “We’ve been active on the other measures that have been before the legislature.'

Ordonez noted that the Labor Federation publicly supported AB 8 and took a 'support if amended' position on ABx1 1. She said the Labor Federation expects that SB 840 will be held until 2009, when there will be a reduced chance of a veto, with a new governor.

mbechtel @pww.org

California Labor Federation Communications Director Anastasia Ordonez was misquoted in a previous version of this article. We have corrected the misquote in the last paragraph. We regret the error.

Congress returns with economy topping agenda

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:32:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI)--“It’s the economy, stupid.” That 1992 campaign slogan by Bill Clinton might be the theme as the Democratic-run 110th Congress returns to hard work on Capitol Hill in mid-January.

With unemployment jumping to 5% in December, the sub-prime mortgage mess threatening hundreds of thousands of homeowners and other indicators of economic illness on the horizon, lawmakers are starting to consider stimulus ideas.

And the AFL-CIO and other organizations are already calling for an extension of jobless benefits, which were limited, even during the first Bush recession, to 26 weeks after a jobless worker gets approval to receive them. They’ve stayed at 26 weeks.

Meanwhile, the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute unveiled its own $140 billion stimulus package, featuring quick jobless benefits and more infrastructure spending. It would create 1.4 million-1.7 million jobs, EPI’s Lawrence Mishel said.

What all this concern will produce is anyone’s guess. Leading congressional Democrats are already suggesting they enact a stimulus package without offsetting tax increases on the rich. Pay-as-you-go budget rules, designed to stop the increases in the federal deficit, which the Democrats enacted at the start of this Congress, require any new tax cuts or spending be offset.

Anti-worker GOP President George W. Bush says the economic ailments point out the need not to help people immediately, but to make permanent his tax cuts for the rich that the prior GOP-run Congresses enacted at his request.

That’s not what the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, the Iron Workers, the Machinists, the Teamsters, SEIU, UNITE HERE and other groups want Congress to do. “In light of the rapid rise in unemployment, a program of federally funded extended benefits should take effect without delay (their emphasis) and it should last for at least one year, with states provided appropriate funding to properly administer the program,” their letter said.

And since there are now more long-term jobless than there were in 2001, workers “who remain unemployed after exhausting their state benefits should qualify for a maximum of 20 weeks of federally funded extended benefits” on top of the 26 weeks they now get in state benefits. Workers in states with exceptionally high joblessness--such as Michigan--should get another 13 weeks of federal jobless benefits on top of that, the unionists wrote. They did not define “exceptionally high.”

The union leaders also proposed larger weekly jobless benefits, with the feds adding $50 a week to each state’s level of benefits. “Average weekly UI benefits remain egregiously low, just $285 a week,” they explained. That average jobless benefit is now one-third of the average weekly wage.

The extra money would go to jobless people to cover the much-higher costs of gasoline--which they need as they drive to job interviews and sites--and home heating oil, as well as anticipated record rises in food prices, they added.

And they also want Congress to insert an incentive program for the states to cover more of the jobless. That Unemployment Insurance Modernization Act would extend jobless benefits to 300,000 more low-wage workers who right now do not qualify for them, the unionists said.

“That action is needed now is obvious. Today’s job market is already far weaker than it was in March 2001, when the last recession began. Then, the nation’s unemployment rate was 4.3 percent, and the total number of jobless workers had grown 400,000 over the preceding 12 months. In contrast, 900,000 more workers are unemployed today compared to a year ago, and the latest unemployment rate (December 2007) was up significantly to 5 percent,” they added.

EPI has bigger ideas.

“The right stimulus will have the biggest bang for the buck, which comes from increasing unemployment compensation, providing state fiscal relief, issuing targeted tax rebates, and direct federal spending on low-income families through such means as increases in food stamps,” Mishel told the Joint Economic Committee on Jan. 16.

“Infrastructure spending, especially school repair and maintenance, can be done quickly and can efficiently put a million people to work. But even if it takes a year or more to employ large numbers of workers on infrastructure projects, the impact will be timely and important in counteracting rising unemployment and the kind of glacially slow job creation we saw following the 2001 recession,” he added.

“The economy has been broken for some time, and the economic growth we have seen has not reached the vast majority of families. This will probably be the first business cycle where, at the end of the recovery--the last full year being 2007--the typical family will have lower incomes than they did at the start of the downturn: 2000, the last full year of recovery,” he pointed out.

Despite Bush veto threat, House passes new mine safety bill

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:30:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI)--Despite a veto threat by anti-worker GOP President George W. Bush, the Democratic-run House passed a new mine safety bill--strongly supported by the AFL-CIO, the Mine Workers, the Steel Workers and mine victims’ families--by 214-199 on Jan. 16. Democrats favored it 207-16; the GOP did not, 7-183.

The S-Miner Act, HR 2768, “would build on the improvements” in mine safety enacted two years ago in a bipartisan mine safety law after a series of disasters then, AFL-CIO legislative director Bill Samuel told lawmakers in arguing for the legislation.

Lawmakers said disasters since that law, notably the explosions and collapses in Crandall Canyon, Utah, showed the need for more safety measures. HR 2768 installs a wide range of them, including a mandated 50 percent cut in how much coal dust a miner may be exposed to. “Black Lung is back,” the bill’s summary notes.

But Bush’s Office of Management and Budget argued HR 2768 would halt some of those prior improvements in their tracks, that some of its requirements had technical problems and that it “was not drafted with participation of all the stakeholders” in coal mining, meaning mine owners.

And in an indication of how much miners, their families, the Mine Workers and lawmakers mistrust Bush, HR 2768 says two other agencies besides the Mine Safety and Health Administration--which Bush has stacked with company executives--can probe mine safety, too. They are the [independent] federal Chemical Safety Board and the Labor Department’s [also-independent] inspector general, Bush’s veto message says.

The technical problems, new agencies and no inclusion of the owners all pushed the Bush regime’s OMB to recommend he veto HR 2768.

That didn’t stop the House Education and Labor Committee’s Democrats, who crafted the bill, the AFL-CIO, the Mine Workers, or the families of the miners killed in the August explosion and collapse at Crandall Canyon.

HR 2768 “adds new safeguards for retreat mining, a dangerous practice that involves removing the coal pillars originally left in place to hold up the roof of the mine,” committee chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) explained. The Crandall Canyon explosions collapsed pillars, killing six miners and--in the second blast--three rescuers.

The new bill also “enshrines in the law critical standards for explosion-proof seals, the walls that block off an abandoned area of a mine, where methane can build to dangerous levels,” and orders the mines to start using “new, fire-resistant conveyor belts” to carry coal out, and tells mine owners to stop using the same system to carry belt air in, Miller said.

And it gives the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) subpoena power, makes it easier for the agency to fine owners of unsafe mines, increases the fines “and allows MSHA to shut down mines that do not promptly abate violations,” Miller said. HR 2768 creates a miner ombudsman so miners and families can blow the whistle on safety problems “without fear of retaliation.”

The Crandall Canyon families told Miller’s panel that whistle-blowers feared retaliation at the non-union mine. That was a contrast with union mines, where UMWA contracts protect whistleblowers and provide joint labor-management committees to air safety issues. In their letter, the families thanked lawmakers for acting, saying, “We have experienced what happens when the coal industry puts profits before miners’ safety.”

All the mine disasters “identified and highlighted major gaps and deficiencies in the protections afforded miners,” Samuel said. “Insufficient emergency oxygen, lack of communication and tracking devices, lack of refuge chambers, inadequate mine seals, use of flammable conveyor belts and belt air for ventilation, and dangerous retreat mining practices have all contributed to the deaths of miners. Oversight found MSHA failed to address important health problems--including exposure to asbestos, toxic chemicals, and coal dust,” he added.

Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts pointed out a key difference between the 2-year-old Miner act and the new bill: HR 2768 “is designed to prevent accidents and illnesses” while the prior law covered after-accident responses, he said. “Miners need your help now, before we bear witness to even more needless disasters,” he said.

Remembering the 81 coal miners who died since New Year’s Day 2006, Roberts added HR 2768 “will help stop the coalfield carnage we have witnessed for far too long.”.

Think tank: holes in presidential candidates health care plans

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:28:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI)--A think tank, the Commonwealth Fund, that assembled a task force of experts two years ago to examine United States health care and draft principles for a comprehensive and affordable health care system, says there are holes of varying sizes in the health care plans of the top eight remaining Democratic and Republican presidential contenders.

Its analysis, issued in mid-January, says the big problem with the four GOP contenders’ health care plans is they don’t cover everybody, while leaving individuals at the mercy of the market and giving them tax incentives many people can’t use.

Meanwhile the big problem with the four Democratic contenders’ plans is lack of figures on cost controls. And three of the four plans are extremely complex, too. The fund adds that those three would be paid for by rolling back GOP President George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, but it points out that none of the plans provide a revenue figure.

The analysis comes as the AFL-CIO’s Working America affiliate launched its own online health care survey, designed to ask both union members and non-members about their health care coverage, and to gather stories in preparation for making health care a priority domestic issue in this year’s campaign.

The survey asks people whether they are covered, their level of satisfaction, whether the price of insurance has risen--but not by how much--and whether they had to put off or cancel prescriptions, procedures or doctors’ visits, among other things, due to cost. It does not ask people if they favor alternatives to the present health care system, but there is a box for people to write in suggestions about what they would tell policymakers about health care.

In general, the Commonwealth Fund’s panel said the presidential hopefuls’ plans fall into three groups. The Republicans’ plans are far less detailed, the panel said. Former Govs. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.) and Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.), former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) all would sever the link between employers and health insurance, putting individuals and families at the mercy of the market and the insurance companies. All also lack cost controls.

The fund also noted that by turning the market loose on individuals, the GOP proposals could only make a bad situation, where the number of uninsured has risen by 8.6 million since Bush took office, to 47 million, worse.

Three of the four Democrats--Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.)--would keep the present mixed private-public system. Everyone (for Edwards and Clinton) or children (for Obama) would be required to have insurance, with subsidies for low- and moderate-income people. Edwards would have penalties for those who don’t. They would also use regulation as a method of cost control, along with mandating that insurers could not reject people because of age or pre-existing conditions.

The fourth Democrat, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), backs government-run single-payer health care, in essence expanding Medicare to cover the entire country, but without a role for the health insurers. But Kucinich, like the other Democrats, is somewhat vague on how much the expansion costs, the Commonwealth Fund said.

The fund’s commission reiterated the health care principles it unveiled two years ago, then measured the candidates’ proposals against them.

The principles included: “Provision of equitable and comprehensive insurance for all,” benefits to cover essential services with appropriate financial protection, premiums and deductibles and out-of-pocket payments “affordable relative to family income,” the broad pooling of health risks to cut costs, simple administration and coverage that is automatic from job to job, minimum dislocation when people switch jobs or move and financing that is “adequate, fair, and shared across stakeholders.”

“Measured against these principles, the mixed private-public group insurance with a shared responsibility for financing proposed by the leading” Democrats, plus Kucinich’s “public insurance reform proposals have the greatest potential to move the health care system toward high performance,” the fund’s panel concluded.

“Those approaches have the potential to provide everyone with comprehensive and affordable health insurance, achieve greater equity in access to care, realize efficiencies and cost savings in the provision of coverage and delivery of care, and redirect incentives to improve quality.

“However, from a pragmatic perspective, the mixed public-private approach, which allows the more than 160 million people who now have employer-based health coverage to retain it--and does not require them to enroll in a new program as in the public insurance models,” like Kucinich’s does, “would cause far less dislocation.”

The Republican proposals, in so many words, flunk. “Proposals for reform that rely on tax incentives and voluntary purchase of coverage in an unregulated individual insurance market are, on their own, unlikely to achieve universal coverage. Buying coverage in the individual market will continue to be challenging if tax incentives are not coupled with an individual mandate,” minimum benefits, bans on insurers’ cherry-picking and spending limits keyed to income.

The full analysis is at .

Good for GM, bad for the rest of us

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 11:45:00 +0000

While the future is looking up for General Motors and its high-priced execs, it’s anything but good for workers, as the company is moving quickly to slash its labor expenses. Last week General Motors told Wall Street analysts it will take advantage of its new cost-cutting labor agreement with the United Auto Workers to reduce its annual U.S. labor costs by $5 billion by 2011. Wall Street is also pushing GM to close an additional three to four plants. This is happening even though cutting wages and closing more plants can only exacerbate the nation’s overall economic downturn.

In the announcement, GM said it will offer buyouts to 46,000 of its 73,000 employees next month. Unlike previous buyouts that drastically reduced the company’s workforce, this one aims to drastically reduce the workers’ pay.

Workers accepting a buyout will be replaced by workers with a pay and benefit package totaling $26 an hour, compared to the current package of $62. The new GM-UAW agreement, signed last September, allows GM to pay new hires in non-core jobs approximately 50 percent less than other workers, and all new hires, core and non-core alike, will be covered by a new health and benefits package that is significantly less than the one covering current employees.

All this is happening while GM set 2007 sales records in Europe, Asia and other non-North American markets. And the future is looking even better as far as GM is concerned: within 10 years, CEO Rick Wagoner said the company will probably get 75 percent of car and truck sales from outside the U.S. as it expands operations and sales worldwide.

The company’s increased profits, combined with its wage cuts, will only widen the pay gap between workers and the top brass. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger has noted that Japanese executives make 43 times less than their U.S. counterparts.

While GM is hoping 20,000 workers will accept the buyout and be replaced with the lower-wage workers, the result will be 20,000 workers who will have even less to spend on mortgage payments, their kids’ college tuition and everything else working families are struggling with. The communities and states they live in will receive less tax revenue, and retail stores will see fewer people walking through the door.

And the future for GM? The additional $5 billion annually it takes from the workers will enrich the few at the expense of the many. What’s good for GM is definitely not good for its workers.

jrummel @ pww.org

At Rev. King gathering in Memphis: unions launch drive to win in '08

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 10:09:00 +0000

MEMPHIS, Tenn. – One thousand leaders of the nation’s labor movement, gathered here for the AFL-CIO’s Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Observance, launched a drive Jan. 18 to “take back the country” in the 2008 elections.

Heeding King’s 1961 declaration that “the vote is our most powerful weapon,” labor and civil rights leaders mapped plans and held training sessions to arm trade unionists with tools they hope will elect a pro-worker president, larger pro-labor majorities in the Senate and the House, pro-labor governors and hundreds of progressives in state legislative bodies. Observers called it the most ambitious election effort ever by labor and its allies.

Before they launched their actual plan the unionists were fired up by remarks made by Ron Walters, professor at the University of Maryland-College Park, who said “in 2008, the elections are the key vehicle for civil and workers’ rights.

“Dr. King would indeed be proud if he could see the field of the main Democratic contenders for the presidency, a woman, an African American, and a white male who opened his campaign for the job in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans,” Walters declared as delegates rose to their feet and cheered.

“As always, we must keep the issues on the front burner,” he said, “but I think we can live with any of these three candidates and when could we ever say that before about all the possible nominees of one of the big parties?”

Also fueling the determination of labor and civil rights leaders to focus on the elections is the dismal record of the Bush administration which was emphasized by speaker after speaker at the King commemoration. Included on the list of “Bush disasters” were 4,000 dead American soldiers in Iraq, first the lack of and then the wrong response to Hurricane Katrina, the obscene and growing income gap between rich and poor, and use of the National Labor Relations Board, which was intended to protect union organizers to instead destroy organizing rights.

Among other “Bush disasters” cited by labor and civil rights leaders here were the unprecedented budget deficits, systematic attacks on voting rights, an increase in the number without health insurance to 46 million and the subprime mortgage debacle. Many speakers noted corruption in Washington with delegates laughing when Karen Ackerman, AFL-CIO political department director said, “because of Bush, Nixon is starting to look great.”

A major focus by labor on the elections is giving Republicans cause to be fearful.

AFL-CIO figures discussed at the King commemoration show that in 2004 the Democrat, John Kerry, lost to Bush by just 135,000 votes, a razor thin margin. If the trade union vote were subtracted from the 2004 totals the vote would not have been close at all. Kerry would have carried only Washington, Maine, Vermont and Connecticut.

Dr. King’s commitment to labor rights in America and around the world actually began long before the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike here when he was assassinated. His Dec. 11, 1961, declaration that “Our needs are identical with labor’s needs” was invoked here by several speakers who called for continuation of the “historical unity” of the labor and civil rights movements. That unity, they stressed, will make the 2008 election plan realizable.

In addition to electing a pro-worker president, the AFL-CIO announced here Jan. 18 that it will increase the pro-labor majority in the Senate by targeting 17 states where it believes progressives can be elected. The states on this list are Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Alaska.

Labor will add to that list three states, Alabama, Nebraska, and South Dakota, in which it believes it can elect pro-worker governors.

Anti-labor forces are responding by trying to divert some of labor’s time and efforts. Labor leaders in the relevant states were called together in groups in Memphis to study these right wing initiatives and to map plans to defeat them. The anti-labor efforts are coming in the form of “right to work,” “paycheck deception” and “anti-affirmative action” initiatives in Oregon, Colorado, Missouri, and Michigan. Unionists in Memphis were confident they could defeat all of the right wing initiatives.

Labor’s intention to elect Senators and governors and to defeat right wing ballot initiatives mean that unionists will be fully engaged in special efforts in at least 24 states.

Also included in the planning were Congressional seats. Unionists in Memphis mapped plans to take 68 additional seats in Congress, which would create a large pro-worker majority in the House.

In state legislatures across the country they targeted 200 state legislative seats. “Labor, when all is told,” Ackerman said, “will be mobilizing 15 million union voters in 528 races across the country.”

“The issues they will be mobilized on,” she said, “will be an economy that works for all, universal health care, support for the Employee Free Choice Act, so everyone can exercise their right to form a union, and an end to the war in Iraq so that money will be available to rebuild this country.”

Each month from February through June “leadership training” will occur in various states for those who will head up labor’s efforts in that state. On March 9 – 11, for example training for women, African American, Latino and other minority union leaders will take place in Ohio. Complete listings are available from the AFL-CIO’s political action department.

When it came to the 2008 elections, unionists gathered in Memphis left no stone unturned.

Noting that enormous numbers of African American votes are not counted, they launched a “protect the vote effort” that involves activity in more than 30 cities to alert voters to methods used to suppress African American votes. Delegates were presented with examples of treacherous tactics used by the right in recent elections including posters that warned people to pay all their fines and back bills before showing up at polling places. “They’re not going to get away with this stuff this time,” said David Carpio, AFL-CIO’s national political education coordinator.

In addition to efforts already outlined, local unions are being assigned responsibility for parts of a drive that will result in the registration of and the bringing to the polls of 4,000,000 additional pro-labor voters. “131,000,000 people are expected to vote,” said Ackerman. “After this drive we will boost this total to 135,000,000.”

Major tactical shifts in how union voters will be reached were announced. A decision was made to focus more on reaching workers at their work places. Polls have shown that 74 percent of union voters reached at their work place by a union rep or a shop steward vote for the union-backed candidate. Until now, however, direct mail has been the main method through which unions reach voters. Only 20 percent of union voters, until now, have been reached directly at their workplace. “Even with this problem we have been very effective,” Carpio said, “but this year we will use the direct contact approach and we anticipate an even higher rate of success in getting union members to vote for the union backed candidate.”

Every one of the more than 1,000 participants was asked by Carpio to “leave behind here in Memphis one tactic in election work that you have used that did not work and take with you a new tactic learned from someone else that did work. If we all do this, we will win in 2008.”

jwojcik @pww.org

Tasini's take on directors' contract

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 06:35:00 +0000

Not surprisingly, the Directors Guild of America has struck a tentative deal with Big Media. The DGA has always been perceived as more producer-friendly in the business because many of the heavy-weight directors are producers themselves and some are mini-empires. Of course, the spin that is being put out is that this is a great deal:

“It’s really an excellent deal,” Gilbert Cates, who led the directors’ negotiating committee, said in a telephone interview.

Okay, so you can take that for what it is: self-congratulation that comes before most people can study the fine print. I would say the same thing if I was the negotiator. The deal appears to be predicated on the DGA's view that Internet-based revenues will be quite small over the life of the three-year deal.

The question is: did the DGA sacrifice terrain that is now lost forever?

From my vantage point, there are some good things here but also some areas of concern. Before looking at some of the specifics, in my humble opinion, whatever the deal is, it has to be absolutely clear to the DGA--even if they may not want to admit it because the DGA historically sees itself as the elite among the Hollywood unions--that the strike by the Writers Guild of America strengthened the DGA's hand. Big Media has been rattled by the strike and, obviously, wanted to reach a deal with the DGA to try to, then, bring some closure to the WGA walk-out.

So, let's talk specifics here: Here is what the DGA has given out on some of the highlights of the deal and what I think this means. And, remember, these are just highlights--the devil is truly in the details when it comes to labor contracts and I reserve the right to say I'm sorry, I was wrong:

Wage Increases: Compensation for all categories except directors of network prime time dramatic programs and daytime serials increases by 3.5%, each year of the contract.

Compensation for directors of network prime time dramatic programs and daytime serials increases by 3%, each year of the contract.

Outsized increase in director's compensation on high budget basic cable dramatic programs for series in the second and subsequent seasons:

For ½ hour programs: 12% increase in daily rate and increase in guaranteed number of days to 7 days.

Results in show rate increasing from $9,009 to $11,760.

For 1-hour programs: 12% increase in daily rate and increase in guaranteed number of days to 14 days.

Results in show rate increasing from $18,010 to $23,520.

My view:The wage increases are okay. But, remember, the standard reported rate of inflation is running at far above the 3.5 percent annually so this does not keep pace with inflation. In a world of mostly rollbacks, one could say that at least that didn't happen. And keep in mind, I said 'standard reported rate of inflation' because I have, for a long time, maintained, as other have, that the way inflation is calculated does not really measure the cost of living stress that lots of people are under.

Residual Increases: Residual bases increase by 3.5%, each year of the contract, except for reruns in network prime time. Residuals for reruns in network prime time increase by 3%, each year of the contract.

My take:Ditto on the residual increases: not a cut but not going to keep pace with the stated inflation number.

New Media Jurisdiction over: All new media content that is derivative of product already covered under current contracts.

Original content: All original content above $15,000/minute or $300,000/program or $500,000/series, whichever is lowest.

Original content below the threshold will be covered when a DGA member is employed in the production.

My take: I think this is really a problem. It goes to the very question of union jurisdiction and what kind of world we will see in ten and twenty years. The DGA only gets jurisdiction over product currently under contract. That means that all non-union work--such as reality shows--will remain outside the new media jurisdiction.

And any work done under those thresholds will not be covered. The industry is precisely moving to a lower-cost structure--doesn't that sound familiar? It's the 'kid-in-the-garage' problem--content coming from everywhere and everyone. As I described it in a panel discussion I just spoke at this week, it's similar to the off-shoring of work in manufacturing. You have the world of the WGA, where the standards are decent, with wages, health care and pensions. And, then, you have Big Mediastan--that would be the world where there is no union, where there are no residuals, no pensions, no health care. The above provision agreed to by the DGA seems--seems--to allow the growth of Big Mediastan.

As an aside: it is one reason I believe that a critical component of the WGA's future--and that of the Screen Actors Guild--is to focus intensely on organizing the young kids today who are cranking out material using IMovie and other software. The unions have to get those younger--and older people--who are now producing content into the union now so that they don't become this mass of unorganized, low-wage labor that has no connection to the labor movement.

If the WGA agreed to those terms, it would basically be giving up on an important issue: union jurisdiction.

Therein lies the tough fight that all unions face: how do you convince current member to fight for the rights of members in the future? The answer is: you have to be able to show that organizing new members and broadening the reach of the union is critical to keeping the union's power what it is--and being able to bargain with strength ten and twenty years down the road. It's hard--when you've been out on strike for many weeks, any worker will feel, 'damn, let's take the best deal for the present...who knows what will happen later?' But, I can guarantee one thing--if the union jurisdiction shrinks, you, buddy, will be in deep shit down the road.

Electronic Sell-Through (Paid Downloads)

More than doubles the rate currently paid by the employers on television programming to .70% above 100,000 units downloaded.

Below 100,000 breakpoint: rate will be paid at the current rates of .30% until worldwide gross receipts reach $1 million and .36% thereafter.

Increases rate paid on feature films by 80% to .65% above 50,000 units downloaded.

Below 50,000 breakpoint: rate will be paid at the current rates of .30% until worldwide gross receipts reach $1 million and .36% thereafter.

My take: this sounds good. Wow, you get double!!! But, as I remember from high-school math, double of zero is zero. Okay, it's not that bad. But, recall, that the formula of .3 percent was the pathetic rate that was being paid out based on the bad deal shoved down the throats of the creators in the 1980s over videocassettes and, then carried over into the DVD era. In my opinion, this sets a producer-friendly standard that will be hard to break.

Distributor's Gross

Payments for EST will be based on distributor's gross instead of producer's gross, a key point in our negotiations. Distributor's gross is the amount received by the entity responsible for distributing the film or television program on the Internet. We would not have entered the agreement on any other basis.

Companies will be contractually obligated to give us access to their deals and data, enabling us to monitor this provision and prepare for our next negotiation. This access is new and unprecedented.

If the exhibitor or retailer is part of the producer's corporate family, we have improved provisions for challenging any suspect transactions.

My take: it is a good thing that now payments will come out of the distributor's gross--and it was an important demand by the WGA. Without boring people with the intricacies of film economics, the pie is bigger before it gets into the hands of the producers, who, then, use creative math to pretend like, ooopppssss, the picture made no money. Anyway, the one caveat here: there are no details on how, exactly, transparency will happen. Call me suspicious and unkind but i don't trust the liars and skunks in Big Media--they have a bad track record.

Ad-Supported Streaming:17-day window (24-day window for series in their first season).

Pays 3% of the residual base, approximately $600 (for network prime time 1-hour dramas), for each 26-week period following 17-day window, within first year after initial broadcast.

Pays 2% of distributor's gross for streaming that occurs more than one year after initial broadcast.

My take: I don't particularly think this is great shakes, either. Basically, the producers get a residual-free window for ad-supported streaming--i.e., they get all the money--for the time period when the product is most valuable. We all understand that, right? First-run gets the most eyeballs. Creators, then, get to scrape for a smidgen of a much smaller pie.

Let me conclude with one other observation. The New York Times, in particular, seems to have spent a lot of time during the WGA strike trying to look for internal disputes within the WGA. Here, for example, in today's story, are two examples: Patric M. Verrone, president of the West Coast writers guild, said he planned to thoroughly review the directors’ contract. “Ultimately, the membership will weigh in, too,” said Mr. Verrone, who has been struggling to maintain the writers’ solidarity. To dismiss the directors’ settlement out of hand would risk an open rebellion in his ranks. And...

On Monday, a group of prominent writers met with two members of the writers guild negotiating committee to discuss the ramifications of any deal by the directors. According to two people who were briefed on the meeting but requested anonymity to avoid conflict with guild leaders, the group stopped short of making an overt break with the union leaders.

This is prose looking for a story. I've been around a lot of strikes. There is always debate within a union during a strike about developments. But, The Times has repeatedly--as have other outlets--tried to paint a portrait of a union about to come apart. I'm going to guess that the two reporters who wrote the above rubbish have spent very little time on the picket line. I've been there dozens of times and, even now, weeks after the strike began, the turnout is huge, including among the 'show runners'--the writers who are the headliners for the big hits. I worried, frankly, that after a week, the adrenaline of being on strike would wear off and people would stop coming. But, each rally brings out consistently big numbers--those are my observations from the New York City pickets but I understand the same thing is true out in Los Angeles.

Jonathan Tasini is executive director of Labor Research Association.

Mexican authorities move to crush copper strike

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 10:14:00 +0000

Mexican labor authorities seized on technicalities to order an end to the strike at the country’s largest copper mine in Cananea, Sonora, on Friday. The Mexican press reports that over 700 heavily armed agents of the Sonora state police arrived in Cananea just hours before the decision was announced, and agents of the Federal Preventative Police were sent to this tiny mountain town as well. Strikers report that the streets were filled with rocks and teargas, and 20 miners have been injured - some seriously - in the ensuing conflict. The union says that five strikers are missing.

The action by the government seeks to end the longest-running defiance of government labor policy in Mexico in decades. The mine belongs to one of the largest mining corporations in the world, Grupo Mexico, which is owned by the wealthy family of German Larrea.

On June 29 of last year, the union at Cananea, Section 65 of the Mexican Union of Mine, Metal and Allied Workers, went on strike over extreme health and safety dangers. Since the beginning of the strike, both the company and the labor board in the state of Sonora, which is controlled by Mexico’s old ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, as well as the company itself, have tried to declare the strike illegal. The union won an injunction, called an “amparo,” from the Mexican Federal Court on December 13, protecting the strike’s legal status.

Under Mexican law, if the strike is legal, the company may not make any effort to operate the mine or make reprisals against the strikers. If the strike is declared illegal, however, the company can begin operations, and fire any striker who refuses to return to work. Miners fear the presence of heavily armed police is intended to protect a company effort to reopen the mine with strikebreakers, or to frighten strikers themselves into returning.

Smashing the strike in Cananea would have economic and political repercussions, not just in Mexico, but in the United States as well. In two previous strikes, at Cananea and its sister mine in Nacozari, in 1998 and 2005, respectively, over 2,000 miners lost their jobs. Most of them, unable to find other work in the tiny mining communities of northern Sonora, crossed the border into the US as undocumented workers in order to survive.

Grupo Mexico has extensive ties with US corporations. It became the owner of two mines and a smelter in Arizona when it bought the bankrupt American Smelting and Refining Company. The union in those mines, the United Steel Workers of America, has actively supported the striking miners in Cananea. Grupo Mexico’s chief financial officer, J. Eduardo Gonzalez, is a former executive of Kimberley Clark de Mexico, the Mexican subsidiary of the US-based paper corporation Kimberley Clark. That company was founded by the family of Wisconsin Congressman James Sensenbrenner, one of the most vociferous opponents of Mexican immigration to the US. Grupo Mexico’s board of directors also shares a member with the board of the US Carlyle Group (which included former President George H. W. Bush).

Grupo Mexico has been at war with the Mexican miners union for over three years. In 2001, Napoleon Gomez Urrutia was elected as the union’s president. He soon became a high-profile opponent of the Mexican government’s conservative economic policy, successfully fighting its effort to weaken labor law and privatize its pension system. Taking advantage of high world copper prices, Gomez negotiated wage increases much higher than the limits the government sought to impose in its effort to attract foreign investment.

On February 19, 2005, 65 miners died in a huge explosion in the Pasta de Conchos coal mine in the northern state of Coahuila. That mine belonged to Grupo Mexico. The union found that workers on the second shift had complained of high concentrations of explosive methane gas in the shafts before the accident. “They told us that welding was still going on, even after the failure of some electrical equipment,” Gomez charged.

Two days after the explosion, Gomez Urrutia accused the Secretary of Labor and Grupo Mexico of “industrial homicide.” Then-President Vicente Fox filed corruption charges against Gomez less than a week later, and Labor Secretary Francisco Xavier Salazar Sáenz appointed Elias Morales to replace him as union president. Morales had been expelled from the union for his close relationship with the company. Gomez fled to Canada to avoid arrest, where the United Steel Workers gave him sanctuary, and where he remains. While in exile, he was twice reelected president of the union, although Grupo Mexico and the government refused to recognize him.

A July 2006 report by the National Human Rights Commission found that the local office of the federal labor ministry responsible for inspecting Pasta de Conchos had “clear knowledge” before the accident of the conditions that set off the explosion. In 2004, labor safety inspectors had found 48 health and safety violations in the mine, including oil and gas leaks, missing safety devices, and broken lighting. Although Grupo Mexico was given an order to fix the illegal conditions, no compliance inspection was carried out until February 7, 12 days before the explosion.

The Cananea strikers say conditions in their mine also threaten their lives and health. Rock dust in the enclosed part of the huge complex, called the concentrator, is so deep that it rises up over workers’ boot tops. “When the mine is running,” says Victoriano Carrillo, a member of the mine’s health and safety commission, “you can’t even see more than a few feet in front of you.”

Mine dust is more than just uncomfortable or inconvenient: it’s deadly. Superfine particles lodge in the lungs, and miners who breathe rock dust year after year suffer a variety of lung diseases, including silicosis. Cananea miners charge that the vacuum apparatus that is supposed to suck dust from the complex has been disconnected and inoperable for a decade. “We know what’s safe and what’s not,” one miner charged, “but they never want us to spend time fixing problems - just get the production out. If we tried to stop the line for safety problems, we would lose our jobs.”

In October, a binational delegation of health and safety experts from Mexico and the US visited the Cananea mine and performed preliminary health screenings on 68 of the 1,300 strikers. “We documented appalling working conditions in the open-pit mine and processing plants where workers are exposed to high levels of airborne silica, which can cause fatal diseases like silicosis and lung cancer,” stated Garrett Brown, a California health and safety inspector and director of the Maquiladora Health and Safety Network. “Ironically, the Mexican Labor Department’s own safety inspectors found the same hazards in an April 2007 inspection of the facility and issued a laundry list of 72 ‘corrective actions,’ including fixing the cranes’ brakes and re-assembling the dust collectors. None of the mandated corrections, many of which had also been identified in previous inspections, had been completed by the time the workers went on strike over health and safety issues on July 29.”

According to Grupo Mexico, the strikers are supporters of Gomez Urrutia, and are striking to pressure the company and government into reinstating him. But breaking the strike in Cananea would allow the company and government to install a company union at the mine, as they have at many others over the last two years. In November 2006, the federal Mexican labor board, under the control of the conservative government of the National Action Party and President Felipe Calderon, gave legal status to a new miners union, the National Union of Workers in the Exploration, Exploitation and Benefit of Mines. Grupo Mexico was a large contributor to Calderon’s 2006 presidential campaign.

The new union is headed by Francisco Gamez, a former contractor for Grupo Mexico who once worked at Cananea. The federal labor board set up elections to allow it to take over representation rights in eight mines. The Center for Labor Action and Reflection (CEREAL), a human rights organization, charges that the election process was manipulated to get rid of the old miners union. Fifteen workers were fired before a vote at a San Luis Potosi mine, CEREAL says. In Nueva Rosita, Coahuila, miners on the first and second shifts were locked inside the coal mine for a day before balloting began, while 300 federal, state and municipal police surrounded the mine entrance.

At Nacozari, where 1,500 workers were fired for striking in 2006, over 900 were denied voting rights. Workers brought in to replace the fired miners were told they would be fired themselves, evicted from company housing, and sent back to southern Mexico if the company union didn’t win the vote there. Rita Marcela Robles Benitez, an analyst with CEREAL, charges that Grupo Mexico “changed the working hours from 8 to 12 per day, which has resulted in more accidents because of the lack of safety protection and training.” The new union approved the change.

The government and Grupo Mexico have been prevented from holding a similar election at Cananea because of the strike. If the strike is smashed, however, authorities will probably hold one there to eliminate the miners union, and allow Grupo Mexico to deal with the company union instead.

When the miners union lost its strike in Cananea in 1998, in which it tried to stop the elimination of hundreds of jobs, blacklisted strikers poured into Arizona in the months that followed. If the current strike is put down, the union broken and its leaders and activists terminated, they too will likely find themselves in Phoenix, Tucson or Los Angeles, hungry and desperate for work.

truthout.org

Clevelanders picket Wal-Mart

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 11:28:00 +0000

Photo by Debbie Kline who heads up Cleveland Jobs With Justice.

Some of the 100 participants in a holiday picket Dec. 19 at the Wal-Mart in downtown Cleveland. The event was sponsored by Cleveland Jobs with Justice and the United Food and Commercial Workers.

Labor support for Obama grows as unions eye 2008 elections

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 09:41:00 +0000

Barack Obama won the backing on Jan. 9 of the 60,000 strong Culinary Workers Union in Nevada, boosting his campaign for the presidency. Nevada voters will caucus on Jan. 19 to select their delegates to the Democratic National Convention. The endorsement followed announcements by the 450,000 member parent union, Unite HERE and the international plumbers’ union that they were backing the Illinois Senator.

The decision by leaders of the Culinary Workers Union, Local 226 came just one day after Obama was narrowly edged out by Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary and one week after his impressive win in the Iowa caucuses. The union, representing hotel, restaurant and laundry workers in Nevada’s casino industry, is the largest and best organized labor group in the state. The union, 45 percent of whose members are Latinos, is expected to steer thousands of voters to the Jan. 19 caucus.

The union has worked hard this year to register Latinos who make up 25 percent of Nevada’s population but are under represented on the state’s voter rolls.

Culinary secretary-treasurer D. Taylor, at a Las Vegas press conference, hailed the senator’s support for hotel workers in Chicago and said Obama would appeal across the union’s diverse ranks, which also include white, Asian and African American workers. Union members attending broke out into cheers and chanted “Si se puede,” which translates “Yes we can.” Obama had chanted the English language version in his New Hampshire speech following the primary vote a day earlier.

The press conference followed an Obama endorsement by the parent union, Unite HERE, which has 450,000 active members. Observers note that the endorsement of Obama by a major national union right on the heels of the first two electoral contests of the season signifies that some in the labor movement see support for his campaign as key to building labor’s leverage in the elections.

“Our organization and our members will do everything in our power to see that he reaches the White House this fall, because we know that he will bring working Americans with him,” Unite HERE president Bruce Raynor said.

In addition to the support from two major national unions and from the state’s most powerful local union, Obama picked up the backing of the Nevada chapter of the Service Employees International Union. The growing support for Obama by labor is seen as particularly important in Nevada, the most heavily unionized state in the country. Two thirds of Democratic voters there are union members.

“What we have to make real is the ideal that in this country, we value the labor of every American,” said Obama as he accepted the endorsements at a speech in Las Vegas. “We must respect that labor and reward it with a few basic guarantees – wages that can raise a family, health care if we get sick, a retirement that’s dignified, working conditions that are safe.”

Raynor noted in his announcement of support from the national union that Obama had begun his career in Chicago “fighting for families who had been devastated by steel plant closings over two decades ago” and that “he marched with striking workers at Chicago’s Congress Plaza Hotel picket line as a state senator and U.S. Senator.”

The possibility that the labor endorsements could swing support to Obama has caused Clinton, who has been leading in the Nevada polls, to push harder for support from the Democratic Party establishment there. Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley, who represents Las Vegas, had said she would remain neutral. She called reporters after news of the labor endorsements broke, however, to tell them she is backing Clinton. Sen. Harry Reid, who is the Senate majority leader, is thus far remaining neutral.

The plumbers’ union which has joined the list of labor organizations backing Obama, is one of the most influential building trades unions in the U.S. and is the first AFL-CIO international union to back Obama. It is a multi-craft union whose members fabricate, install and service piping systems and have 340,000 workers in 300 individual locals across the country.

The union’s president, William P. Hite, said, “Senator Obama will help us keep existing jobs and work to develop new, higher paying jobs here in America, reform our health care system, fix our ailing schools and make sure that the pensions of our retirees are safe.”

Although Clinton, Edwards and Obama each now have support from numerous unions labor is expected to unite behind the eventual Democratic nominee in a get out the vote effort that surpasses anything they have done in the past.

Labor’s ability to influence elections has grown markedly over the last few years.

Labor is seen as having been critical in ending GOP control over both houses of Congress in 2006. In 2007, at an August presidential forum at Chicago’s Soldier Field, a retired steelworker, Steve Skvara, moved millions of TV viewers when he asked the candidates, “What’s wrong with America, and what will you do to change it?” His call for change has become a rallying cry.

Later in 2007 unions mobilized voters who made many pro-labor changes in Virginia, Kentucky, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Commenting on the current round of caucuses and primaries, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney said, “Working families are fed up with the direction the Bush administration has taken this country…They’ve been taking this passion to the polls…The energy we’re seeing represents an emphatic, exhilarating rejection of the Bush agenda.”

jwojcik @pww.org

Air Controllers declare safety emergency, take campaign to Capitol Hill

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 08:54:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI)--Saying the safety situation in the nation’s skies, especially over Chicago, New York, Atlanta and Southern California, is dire, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association has declared a “controller emergency” in those four areas. And it is taking its campaign for safety in the skies to the public, the airlines and Capitol Hill.

In a Jan. 10 interview with reporters, union president Patrick Forrey noted that 1,600 veteran controllers left the Federal Aviation Administration last year, with more than half of them retiring due to FAA-imposed wage freezes and cuts after the agency’s Bush-named managers unilaterally declared an “impasse” in bargaining and imposed their contract terms on the controllers.

“We expect this year to be just as bad,” Forrey said, with “2,200 eligible to leave right now.” In Atlanta, Chicago, New York and L.A., the airport towers and Tracons—in-flight towers that control large areas of airspace in states around major airports—are short-staffed by 40 percent or more.

In Atlanta, FAA rushed 14 trainees into the tower of one of the nation’s two busiest airports to fill the gap. Ten have only ground training. “They don’t know the difference between a 737 and a DC-10,” Forrey says. Chicago O’Hare has 76 fully certified controllers, needs 97 now—and 117 when O’Hare expands in November.

“There is a staffing emergency within the air traffic control system which the agency refuses to deal with,” Forrey added.

The reason for the shortage is the agency’s refusal to negotiate a new and fair contract with the union. The controllers have worked without a contract during the entire Bush government, after Bush’s Office of Management and Budget, in his first days in the White House, rejected a pact NATCA worked out with Clinton officials.

Instead, last fall, FAA imposed its own pact, which froze the pay of 95 percent of the controllers. It also did nothing to mitigate six-day weeks in stressful strenuous jobs, lack of rest, increasing numbers of near-misses due to controller fatigue and hazards in the towers that range from water leaks to fog to literally, bats in the belfry in St. Louis.

The FAA claims it is filling the vacancies with 1,400 new trainees, but Forrey noted only 40 of them have become fully certified controllers, while 250 have resigned and another 250 have already washed out of the training as unqualified.

As a result, controller overtime has skyrocketed in Southern California, the number of near-misses in Chicago and the surrounding skies from Indiana through Iowa has doubled in a year, to 56, and “there are now just 22 fully certified controllers in New York, which should have 39.”

“These people are going to be overworked and there are not enough eyes and ears in the skies and there’s going to be a serious accident,” Forrey said. “That’s not us saying it, that’s the GAO,” he added, referring to Congress’s independent investigations and auditing arm, the Government Accountability Office.

Forrey has been lobbying the FAA “to take the appropriate measure to do the damn job—to make sure the system operates both safely and efficiently.” But so far agency officials have turned a deaf ear.

So the union is taking its campaign to several other areas. Forrey sent a letter Jan. 10 to the nation’s airline executives, proposing a joint meeting to discuss the safety hazards, which are a threat to the industry. And the union, agency officials and other stakeholders will meet lawmakers, headed by Rep. Jerry Costello (D-Ill.), chair of a House subcommittee on aviation, next week in a roundtable on safety.

Later this month, 400 controllers will come to Washington to buttonhole lawmakers, particularly senators, to pass legislation renewing and setting standards for FAA and its programs. That House-passed bill is held up in the Senate by a dispute over how much of the burden for paying for the aviation system should fall on private and corporate planes, as opposed to passenger jets.

That bill also would set levels for the controller workforce, authorize money for new and improved radar and navigation systems and channel airport passenger tax dollars to FAA functions. It could also be used to push for a settlement of the contract dispute, Forrey said.

Such a settlement, quickly, could help avert the looming controller crisis, he added.

That’s because once a pact is reached, with raises and better working conditions, the FAA could augment its controller ranks by asking those controllers who had recently retired—including the 856 retirees (out of 1,600 total departures) last year—to return.

Otherwise, “I think there are times when it’s unsafe,” Forrey says. “Our guys are doing the best they can with what they have—and on the other end of the microphone, you have pilots who are overworked and fatigued. The whole system is going to hell in a handbag.”

Labor returns to Memphis for Martin Luther King Day events

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 08:51:00 +0000

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (PAI)--The labor movement will return to Memphis, Tenn., site of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination as he was supporting striking African-American sanitation workers, for its 40th anniversary commemoration of the great civil rights leader’s birth.

The events, from Jan. 17-21, will include “a day of commemoration and reflection on the Memphis sanitation workers courageous strike, political training to prepare ourselves for the important 2008 elections and community service,” said UNITE HERE Vice President Clayola Brown, president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, and Richard Womack, MLK Labor Committee co-chair, with Brown.

“This was a valiant strike of men who dared to take a stand for dignity and respect on the job,” they said in the call to attend the events in Memphis. “This strike was also Dr. King’s final campaign. In Memphis, the labor movement will come together to remember Dr. King and the sanitation workers strike. We will join with our allies at the observance to advance the agenda for civil and workers’ rights and to carry on Dr. King’s legacy.”

The 40th anniversary commemoration comes as the union movement, particularly the AFL-CIO, continues to wrestle with how to implement the diversity agenda, called Resolution #2, its convention approved in 2005. That conclave set a goal of having union leadership reflect the composition of union membership, in representation of women, people of color and sexual orientation.

Four diversity summits last year drew 700 unionists from 33 unions, plus 20 state feds and 26 central labor councils. They showed the movement is still far from that goal, says a recent report by the federation’s Civil and Human Rights Department.

There was general agreement among attendees that diversity ot only was the right thing to do but also a necessary thing to do if we want to make sure our union movement is strong. But the majority of those attending reported they had not heard about Resolution #2 or the mandates the resolution imposed on their national and international unions or the state and local labor bodies, the report added.

Participants stated that getting information to members at the local and regional levels was the only way to ensure implementation, the report added. The diversity summit participants advocated that all national and international unions should get copies of Resolution #2 to their locals and regional bodies, and put them on websites and in publications.

The diversity summit participants said the union movement actually faced two problems: Recruiting and training more women and minorities for leadership posts, and recruiting and training more young people. They advocated naming mentors, appointing women, minorities and younger unionists to leadership posts to give them experience and more leadership education—as well as electing them to office.

Some unions started to implement those ideas, the report said. In one case, African-American woman Charlotte Flowers formed a slate at her AFGE local in Alabama, with an African-African man as her running mate, to combat closed attitudes of the all-male leadership against women and minorities. They ran for office, and won.

And the Chicago Federation of Labor realized that recruiting women and minorities for union leadership roles has to start even before they join the union—in this case by working to ensure women and minorities get the technical training needed for today’s modernized (and unionized) factories.

CFL Secretary-Treasurer Jorge Ramirez told the group that in coming years, 70 percent of factory workers would retire—giving minorities an opportunity to enter manufacturing. So the CFL formed a partnership with business and the city to create a new technical factory-skills-oriented high school and to establish union-run pre-apprenticeship programs, he added.

Austin Poly Tech was intentionally built in an African-American neighborhood to help students of color get ready for these high-road, highly skilled jobs in the manufacturing sector, Ramirez added.

Despite these and other diversity efforts, the union movement still puts up “challenges and barriers to inclusion,” the report said.

“Participants acknowledged problems continue and that all union members are not included fully in the leadership and life of our unions and union structures,” the report concluded.

Emergency Rail Board proposes settlement between unions and Amtrak

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 08:33:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI)--A three-person Presidential Emergency Board, named by GOPer George W. Bush, has proposed a settlement of the eight year dispute between Amtrak and the nine unions representing its 6,000 non-operations workers, leaders of the union coalition said. The settlement would give the workers a contract, a hefty raise and would reject all of the passenger railroad’s work-rule demands.

The Jan. 3 ruling, if adopted, means the workers would get raises—other than small cost-of-living hikes—for the first time since Jan. 1, 2000, said W. Dan Pickett, president of the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen/IBT, and Joel M. Parker, vice president of the Transportation Communications Union/IAM. The percent raise would be retroactive to the start of 2000 and would run through the end of 2009.

But the railroad still has to come back to the bargaining table following the board’s ruling, and negotiate with the nine unions. And if the two sides don’t reach a new contract by 12:01 a.m., Jan. 30, the unionists would be free to strike, under rail labor-management law - unless Congress steps in and imposes a settlement.

The unions are preparing for all three scenarios: a negotiated settlement, Congressional intervention or a strike, the coalition said.

After a three day hearing in early December - a hearing which forestalled the strike - the board recommended adoption by the nine unions and Amtrak of the wage and health care provisions the unions and the nation’s freight railroads agreed to last April. The board said the freight agreements have traditionally set the pattern for Amtrak contracts, wages, benefits and working conditions. The board criticized Amtrak’s “cherry picking of the freight contract to take the parts that benefit it while rejecting the rest.”

The board also said the workers should get full retroactive back pay, spread in two lump sums a year apart, to make up for eight years with no raises. The board also rejected Amtrak’s demand for unilateral and onerous changes in work rules. It said those proposals would cause significant instability in the railroad workforce.

“It took an enormous effort by the emergency board to investigate the contract dispute, and create a report that reflects such a thorough understanding of the issues. The board’s recommendations should form the basis for settlement, Pickett said.

Besides the Signalmen and the Transportation Communications Union, other unions in the coalition representing the workers are the Machinists, IBEW, the Transport Workers, the Train Dispatchers, the Maintenance of Way Employees/Teamsters and the National Conference of Firemen & Oilers/SEIU.

California Nurses Association Launches Drive for 'Cheney Care'

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 08:31:00 +0000

OAKLAND, California (PAI)-- First, 15 years ago, there was “Hillary Care.” Now there’s “Cheney Care.” But there’s a big difference between the two - and a big difference in the health care they provide.

“Hillary Care” is the GOP moniker for the national health care plan pushed by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton during her husband’s administration. With the aid of GOP ad man Peter Novelli and his infamous lying “Harry and Louise” campaign, “Hillary Care” sank in the then-Democratic-run Congress. Novelli now holds a top position with AARP.

“Chene Care” is the California Nurses Association’s name for the gold-plated care anti-worker GOP Vice President Dick Cheney has received after his heart troubles -care not available to the rest of the country. And it won’t be available without government-run single-payer universal health care, the union adds in its ads.

CNA launched its Cheney Care campaign with full-page newspaper ads, in Washington and in key primary and caucus states, even as it signed up another statewide affiliate on Jan. 10. The Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Health Professionals became part of CNA, which also has affiliates in Nevada, Arizona and Illinois besides its California home base.

Union Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro says “Cheney Care” - low-cost, guaranteed, and you can choose your doctor - is what everyone would get with universal single-payer health care. Without it, she added, Cheney - given his heart troubles - would be dead. CNA wants voters to sign petitions demanding care like Cheney’s.

“All Americans have the right to the quality of care our vice-president, president and Congress already have,” DeMoro said. “All the leading Democratic proposals -including the one from Clinton, now a presidential hopeful, “fall well short of “Cheney Care,” keeping insurance companies at the apex of power and allowing them to deny care that can save lives. The Republican proposals are even worse,” she added.

Another Unionist In Minnesota Legislature Gives Dems Super-Majority vs. GOP Gov.

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 06:50:00 +0000

NORTHFIELD, Minn. (PAI)--Add another unionist to the large ranks of them in the Minnesota legislature. And the election of Democrat Kevin Dahle to a state senate seat from Northfield is special: It shifted the balance of power in state government.

Dahle’s win in a Jan. 3 special election adds the president of the Northfield Education Association to the union members serving in the capitol in St. Paul. There, now, more than one of every six lawmakers carries a union card.

Dahle garnered 6,802 votes, 55 percent, to 5,225 votes, 42 percent, for Republican Ray Cox and 296 votes, two percent, for Independence Party candidate Vance Norgaard in state senate district 25. Dahle fills the seat vacated when Republican Tom Neuville resigned to become a judge.

His election means the Democrats—officially the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota—now has a “supermajority”: Enough votes in the state senate to override any legislative vetoes by Gov. Tim Pawlenty ®. Last session, Pawlenty vetoed major bills, including transportation funding and local government aid.

Dahle becomes the 36th union member in the Minnesota legislature. His election means Education Minnesota, the 70,000-member educators’ union that is a joint affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association—now has an astounding 21 members serving in the legislature.

Unions hope Dahle’s victory is a harbinger for the 2008 elections, when Minnesotans will go to the polls to elect a U.S. president, a U.S. senator, eight members of the U.S. House of Representatives and many state and local officeholders. In the weeks before the special election, union members made thousands of phone calls and knocked on hundreds of doors to turn out the vote to support Dahle.

Workday Minnesota and Press Associates

A movement to change America begins in Iowa

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 04:55:00 +0000

DES MOINES, Iowa – An unprecedented outpouring of independents, youth and women propelled Illinois Sen. Barack Obama to a historic victory in Iowa’s Democratic caucuses Jan. 3 opening the 2008 presidential campaign with a shot surely heard throughout the halls of power in Washington and in America’s corporate boardrooms. The record turnout of first time voters and independents hoisted Obama into his new position as the Democratic Party’s national front runner.

Obama is the first African American to win the Iowa caucuses.

“They said this day would never come and that our sights were too high,” said Obama during his victory speech. “They said this country was too divided to ever come together in a common purpose. But you have done what the cynics said we couldn’t do.”

One time Iowa favorite John Edwards, benefiting from significant labor support, came in second, edging out Hillary Clinton, the party’s national front runner.

Obama won 38 percent of the vote with Edwards getting 30 percent, Clinton 29 percent, Bill Richardson 2 percent and Joe Biden 1 percent. Richardson said his campaign would go on to New Hampshire after his fourth place finish; Sens. Chris Dodd and Joe Biden said they would quit the race.

Obama added that Democrats, Republicans and independents helped forge his coalition in Iowa.

“Our time for change has come,” Obama said.

“We are choosing hope over fear, unity over division, with a powerful message that change is coming to America,” affirmed Obama.

Obama said he would be the president that finally makes health care affordable and available to all, who would free this nation from the tyranny of foreign oil and put an end to the Iraq war.

Obama went on making a powerful oratory about the major political challenges and victories that have impacted and changed American political history.

If it were not for the American people we would not have put an end to slavery, fought for women and their right to vote, or defeated fascism in World War II, said Obama.

It was the American people and especially youth who got on buses and traveled to Alabama and Montgomery to brave fire hoses, dogs and clubs and died all in the name of freedoms cause, remarked Obama.

“That is what hope is, and it lead me hear today, a son whose father is from Kenya and whose mother is from Kansas, a story that could only happen in America,” said Obama.

“Together ordinary people could do extraordinary things and when you believe that America could be better then it will be better,” he said.

John Edwards who came in second in the caucuses told his cheering supporters at the end of the night that, “The one thing that’s clear from tonight’s caucuses is that the status quo lost and change won.”

Labor unions including the steelworkers and the carpenters figured prominently in getting Edwards supporters out to the caucuses.

Hillary Clinton who came in third said, “Tonight is the first step in the process of getting a Democratic president elected in 2008.”

Earlier in the night on the city’s northwest side at Martin Luther King Elementary, Michelle Taylor-Frazier, 47 an African American, who is an after school program director, waited patiently inside with some of her students.

She said she comes from an activist family and pro-union background. She also resides on the Des Moines executive branch of the NAACP.

She said she was looking forward to caucusing later in her precinct and said she would proudly vote for Obama.

“I believe he will go after lobbyists and big business and stop them from sending our jobs overseas. I’m very much for universal health care because I believe that all Americans should have it,” she told the World.

“Even though I grew up as an army brat, I’m against the Iraq war and I believe it could have been preventable. I feel Obama will shut down the war in a responsible manner,” said Taylor-Frazier.

Thomas Simmons, also African American, is the principal at King elementary and said he was leaning toward voting for Bill Richardson because he is good on education.

“This election could dictate what our education is going to look like in the next four years and the No Child Left Behind was only a small snapshot for our children’s success,” he said.

“There needs to be a complete overhaul of NCLB,” said Simmons.

“The backbone of this country is due based on public education. Privatization of education only seeks to exclude rather than include our children’s success and their future,” added Simmons.

The rush of independents and first time voters hungry for change into the Iowa caucuses swelled the vote total to 350,000, a historic, record breaking figure. Analysis of turnout indicates that first time voters were the key factor here. Sixty percent of all Democratic caucus goers attended for the first time, with more than 70 percent of Obama’s support coming from them. Most of the independents and youth attended Democratic caucuses, swelling the total Democratic turnout to twice that of the Republican turnout.

There were so many Democratic caucus goers at Harding Middle School in Des Moines, where 800 people showed up, that organizers made people who supported John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Obama stay in the gym while supporters of everyone else were sent to classrooms. The site had never attracted more than 400 caucus goers before.

A heavy turnout also created problems at Brody Middle School on Des Moines south side. Karen Anderson, a Democratic Party worker at the Polk County Convention Center had to go there to participate and when she got back she said “we had to park eight blocks away.”

The wave of change seeking independent voters had its impact on Republicans who, in some cases, began making themselves sound more like Democrats as they distanced themselves from President Bush.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who portrayed himself as a champion for “change” while his operatives bussed right wing fundamentalist Christians to the caucuses, won the Republican contest with 34 percent of the vote. Mitt Romney got 25 percent, Fred Thompson 13 percent, John McCain got 13 percent and Ron Paul received 10 percent.

At the 64th precinct Republican caucus in downtown Des Moines a surrogate for former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee said, “I look around this room and I see middle class people here. Huckabee is for change. He’s for the little guy. He thinks that the gap between us and the big CEO’s is obscene.”

The surrogate for Mitt Romney at that same caucus said, “If ever there was a need for change in Washington it is now. If we end up with a majority Democrat (sic) Senate and Congress we need someone like Romney who knows how to work with Democrats. When he was governor of Massachusetts he achieved health care for everyone.”

The Ron Paul representative at the caucus spoke against the war in Iraq and called for a foreign policy that stresses diplomacy rather than war.

Huckabee, Romney and Ron Paul won 20, 19 and 16 votes respectively at that caucus. The anti-terrorist speech given by the Rudolph Giuliani surrogate won his candidate only 6 votes while the McCain surrogate, who defended the troop surge, won his candidate only 7 votes.

The extent of the Obama victory was a surprise to the pundits because they underestimated the determination and resolve of independent and first time voters. The night before the caucuses Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster working for Sen. Joe Biden’s campaign conceded that large numbers of independents would enter Democratic caucuses for the first time but she doubted that the figures would approach 40 percent.

“If that happened,” she said, “that would be a revolution.”

The figures turned out to be more like sixty percent.

plozano @pww.org, jwojcik @pww.org

Oregon workers take one on the chin

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 14:18:00 +0000

Oregon workers lost one recently when Senate Republicans blocked the extension of federal payments to the timber-dependent counties, including millions of dollars in funding which could have gone to pay for infrastructure and peoples’ needs.

In the past, 32 of Oregon’s 36 counties received federal payments based on historical timber harvest levels, and these funds have become a significant county revenue source.

Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) and Oregon’s leading Democratic representatives both showed a lack of leadership. In Smith’s case, we might have expected him to use his cross-the-aisles nice-guy-Republican credentials to make a case for keeping the funding. He backtracked instead and allied himself with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in making sure that the money didn't get here. Smith no doubt needs this credibility with the Republicans in order to build his reelection campaign.

In the case of the Democrats, we expected them to mobilize and to lead on the issue as a way of winning the money for Oregon and building momentum for a victory in 2008, but they failed to do so.

Many local politicians in Oregon who operate with more accountability at the county and city levels were apparently caught by surprise when the county payments extension fell through. The deal was, by almost any standard, non-controversial, much-needed, and previous extensions of the program made renewal seem likely.

Perhaps funding cut-off will lead to reshuffling of political alliances. For instance, perhaps Salem Mayor Janet Taylor will rethink her support for Sen. Smith.

Should federal payments be a primary means of funding county services? No. But withdrawing this money broadens a developing social crisis in Oregon. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have a solution to this crisis at present.

What is this 'developing social crisis'?

Other reports this week found that 850,000 Oregonians spend more than 10 percent of our incomes on healthcare and that 55 percent of current jobs in Oregon don’t pay a living wage for a family of four—even when both parents work. When companies like Pope & Talbot file for bankruptcy protection, you know there are systemic problems.

Most of the folks spending at least 10 percent of their incomes on healthcare are in families and are under 65—working people, in other words. The numbers of people in this situation has been increasing over the past seven years, and Oregon has a higher rate of people caught in this situation than nationally. About eight percent of the population will spend more than 25 percent of their family income on healthcare in 2008. Because of the loss of federal timber payments, that number could grow as services get cut at the county level.

The problem is not necessarily a lack of health insurance, either. About 576,000 Oregonians, or 16 percent, are uninsured. On the other hand, many families have some kind of health insurance, but the insurance is either inadequate or has premium costs which families cannot easily meet. Moreover, there may well be a total decline in real income, which means that percentage increases come to hit poor people disproportionately hard when it comes to healthcare spending.

Oregon's seasonally adjusted non-farm payroll employment grew by 3,200 in October and 7,500 in November. Most of these jobs are in trade, transportation, utilities and the service sector. But little improvement has been seen over the previous year as Oregon still had about a 5.5 percent unemployment rate (compared to 4.7 percent nationally) in both October and November.

Lost payments to timber-dependent counties and the strain on local budgets combined with rising health care costs, employment in low-wage jobs or unemployment are not, by themselves, a crisis. The gaps could be filled by ending the war and putting the money going to the war back into building the economy and giving catch-up raises to workers without a major disturbance to the system.

But that isn't going to happen without an on-going political fight. From the point of view of the far right and the liberal forces they have either co-opted or intimidated, the system is working pretty much as it should be.

The problems cited here signify something deeply wrong and contradictory in the system overall, and in Oregon’s political environment particularly.