People Before Profit blog

Hartmarx workers declare victory

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:03:00 +0000

DES PLAINES, Ill. — In an unprecedented display of hope, struggle and unity, more than 600 workers at the Hart Schaffner & Marx factory here joined with union leaders and elected officials in a rally June 29 to celebrate a major victory that will save nearly 4,000 jobs nationwide and keep the Chicago-based company open for business.

“I feel great,” said Ruby Sims, president of Local 39 of Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, which represents the Hartmarx workers. Sims has worked at Hartmarx for 32 years. “We finally got a buyer approved by a judge and now we will be able to work and keep our jobs,” she said.

“Now we can hold our heads high because there is a light at the end of the tunnel, especially for people who have been working here for decades,” she said. “This factory is like home away from home to many of us. Workers everywhere need to be organized and during times like these it’s good to know your brothers and sisters in the union got your back.”

Joe Scalise, originally from Italy, is president of Workers United Local 61 and has been employed at Hartmarx for 42 years. “The last six months have been very scary for many of us here,” he said. “Everybody was worried about losing their jobs, but now we are all very happy and excited.” Scalise continued, “Now we can go back to our members and let them know that our jobs are secure. When we stick together and stand behind our union and fight, we know we can achieve victory.”

Hartmarx Corp. is a major Chicago men’s suit manufacturer that has been in business since 1872. The company has plants here and in Rock Island, Ill., as well as a warehouse in Indiana. Hartmarx also employs more than 450 at the Hickey-Freeman factory in Rochester, N.Y.

The company is the largest maker of men’s tailored clothing and one of, if not the only, men’s topcoat manufacturer in North America. The business has become known for making suits worn by President Barack Obama. Obama wore one of the company’s tuxedos at his inauguration.

The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January after its main creditor, Wells Fargo, a $25 billion recipient of federal bailout money, reduced credit to the business. The bank preferred to liquidate Hartmarx rather than restructure and continue operations.

The workers in Des Plaines and Rochester voted unanimously in May to occupy their factories if the bank sold the company to new owners who wanted to shut it down.

Now, Hartmarx Corp. will stay open as a result of an agreement through bankruptcy court that will allow an acquisition by British equity firm Emiresque Brands and its partner SKNL North America. The new owners will finalize the deal July 7 and plan to keep the business operating.

“It’s a great day when I can look at the workers here whose faces have changed from despair to hope,” said Jorge Ramirez, secretary-treasurer of the Chicago Federation of Labor. “This is not only a victory for the workers but also a victory for the entire community,” he said. “These hard working men and women were not looking for a bailout, they just wanted to keep their jobs. Their victory is a beacon of hope and a model for future union battles.”

Noel Beasley, manager of the Chicago-Midwest Regional Joint Board and executive vice president of Workers United told the crowd, “We have gone from ‘yes we can’ to ‘yes we did!” Beasley said the Hartmarx struggle was in large part due to the example of the Republic Windows and Doors workers who occupied their Chicago factory last winter and won a major victory. “The workers at Hartmarx picked up the gauntlet and stood up to Wells Fargo and promised to sit in if they didn’t back off,” said Beasley.

Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias congratulated the Hartmarx workers, saying, “We are sending a strong message that saving our economy is a two-way street. The hard working people here at Hartmarx are a testament to the American spirit.”

“You are my heroes,” he said.

Reps. Jan Schakowsky and Phil Hare, both Illinois Democrats, addressed the workers.

Hare spent 13 years cutting linings for men’s suits at the Rock Island plant and said the suit he was wearing was made at Hartmarx. One of the proudest moments of his tenure in Congress is coming here and knowing the good, decent men and women and their families are going to have their jobs and their health care, he said. “I can’t thank you enough for your courage and your strength.”

Schakowsky said that when her great aunt migrated from Russia decades ago she worked at Hartmarx. Her aunt was one of the women who walked out on the job back then for her basic rights and helped formed the union there.

“Clearly many of you today have come from all parts of the world to work hard and support your families,” Schakowsky said. “My heart is overflowing with pride and gratitude. You have sent a positive message of victory to workers all over the country that when you stand together, you win. And you won.”

plozano @ pww.org

Labor big outs himself

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 23:47:00 +0000

Original source:

Stuart Appelbaum, president of the New York City-based Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), in an exclusive interview, told Gay City News that his decision in May to openly affirm his gay identity within the American labor movement means, “I am defining myself publicly, and not just defining myself privately. That’s what makes a difference. I wanted to make my public role not just as a labor leader or Jewish labor leader, but as a gay Jewish labor leader.”

While other heavyweight US labor leaders, such as Randi Weingarten, president of New York’s United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and its parent, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and Nancy Wohlforth, secretary-treasurer of the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU), have come out publicly, Appelbaum is the first international labor president to publicly embrace his gay sexuality.

Appelbaum, 56, oversees an international union with 100,000 members in the US and Canada that serves diverse sectors, from department stores, such as Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, and Saks Fifth Avenue, to Canadian supermarkets and to poultry processing plants in the South, including Tyson Foods.

The ongoing legislative fight in New York for marriage rights for same-sex couples was critical in Appelbaum’s decision to come out. “Marriage equality is so important to me. I came out because of it,” he said. He discussed recent union struggles —for the rights of immigrant workers, for tough health and safety protections in manufacturing plants, for a paid holiday for Muslim workers celebrating Ramadan in a local union contract (the first such provision in a US labor contract), and for a statement by more than 40 US unions rejecting trade union boycotts of Israel — and asked, “How can I see justice and full acceptance denied to LGBT community, which I am part of, and do nothing? I wanted to be engaged.”

On June 20, Appelbaum spoke at the headquarters of Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network (NAN) in Harlem about his “coming out and being gay,” and also urged an end to the political gridlock crippling the State Senate. It marked his first public speaking engagement in which he discussed his sexual orientation. The crowd at Sharpton’s House of Justice event included a dozen Democratic state senators, including conference leaders Malcolm Smith of Queens and John Sampson of Brooklyn, labor leaders, and hundreds of NAN supporters. Appelbaum argued it is “crucial for Senate Democrats to bring up marriage equality.” Sharpton, he said, “echoed my support for marriage equality.” In a moment of levity, Appelbaum told Gay City News, “If you told me a year ago that I would have done that, I would have had a heart attack.”

Appelbaum took the initiative in early June in drafting a letter to state senators on the marriage equality issue also signed by George Gresham, head of the massive health care workers’ union 1199, New York State AFL-CIO president Denis Hughes, Mike Fishman of Local 32BJ, which represents doormen, superintendents, and janitors, and Weingarten. The letter urged action in the current session of the Legislature.

* Weingarten told Gay City News that it is “fantastic” that Stuart, as a labor leader, has outed himself. He is a” friend of mine and I am proud of him,” she said. “I hope for the labor movement that we are as understanding as we say we are.” Recalling her own public coming out two years ago, Weingarten said, “It weighed on my mind. What would the members think?” But the reaction, she said, has been “amazing,” adding that it is a “testament to the labor movement” that diversity is embraced. “Stuart is finding the same experience,” according to Weingarten.

Same-sex marriage legislation is also a crucial goal for Weingarten. She said the significance of the issue “hit me very hard” this year when her mother died. Weingarten’s sister and brother-in-law were with her in the hospital, and her mother’s impending death had them discussing “rights and responsibilities” in family relationships. She noted that the AFT and UFT have a powerful tradition of fighting for equality, and she is “very proud of my union” for embracing its minority group members and approving equal rights resolutions.

Asked about the significance of Appelbaum’s action, Richard Trumka, the AFL-CIO’s secretary-treasurer, wrote in an e-mail, “When a leader of Stuart’s stature comes out, it sends a powerful message that LGBT people are a vital part of the labor movement. I think that makes it easier for other LGBT trade unionists to come out.” Trumka, considered a likely successor to John J. Sweeney as president of the Federation’s 56 local unions and 10 million members, said the AFL-CIO supports marriage equality, but also noted, “It’s important to remember that one of the most important contributions unions can make to marriage equality is by fighting for spousal benefits at the bargaining table. Every time we win a contract that eliminates distinctions between same-sex couples and straight couples we’re showing politicians, the media, and others that marriage equality is an idea whose time has come.”

Anna Burger, chair of the more than six-million member union coalition Change To Win, which split off from the AFL-CIO in 2005, wrote in an email, “Our unions represent working women and men from all different backgrounds, far too many of whom are denied equal rights and protection under the law simply because of who they love. RWDSU president Stuart Appelbaum’s decision to come out and speak out for justice serves as another reminder to our LGBT friends, family, sisters and brothers that the labor movement stands at their side in the critical struggle for equality for every man, woman, and child in America.”

Trumka emphasized that “the labor movement is a natural ally of anyone fighting for human rights. Obviously, that includes the LGBT community. And it cuts both ways. For example, HRC, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and Empire State Pride Agenda in New York are strong supporters of the Employee Free Choice Act. They recognize that LGBT workers need a strong voice at work and that unions ought to be that voice. The bottom line is that you can’t be pro-gay and anti-union, and you can’t be pro-union and anti-gay.” The Employee Free Choice Act is labor’s top legislative goal in Washington; it would make it easier for workers to form and join unions against the often determined efforts of employers to block organizing efforts.

Nancy Wohlforth, secretary-treasurer of the Office and Professional Employees International Union a founder and co-president of Pride at Work (PAW), the AFL-CIO’s LGBT constituency group, said by e-mail that Appelbaum “has always been a solid supporter of PAW and lent help for rank and file member of RWDSU to serve on the PAW board for several years. I’m thrilled that he has come out after all these years and especially thrilled that he is lending his support to the struggle for equal rights and benefits through marriage equality.” Wohlforth was also frank about the distance labor still must travel, saying “Very few national labor leaders are on board with this fight, and I’m so happy to be joined by Stuart!”

Appelbaum, president of the RWDSU since 1998, has been at the forefront in offering domestic partnership benefits to the union’s staff, as well providing such benefits for tens of thousands of members enrolled in the union’s health and pension funds. Member unions of the RWDSU have won labor agreements that bar sexual orientation disagreements and offer equal partner benefits.

In May, Appelbaum joined the board of directors of the Empire State Pride Agenda Foundation, the non-profit educational affiliate of ESPA, New York State’s LGBT lobbying group. ESPA executive director Alan Van Capelle, who previously worked in Local 32BJ’s political unit, said, “Stuart Appelbaum busts the myth that many people hold that union members, and especially union leaders, are not interested in LGBT rights. They are and they can have a big impact on moving our community’s agenda forward... As an out gay man, he has had an impact on his fellow union leaders at the New York State AFL-CIO, where he serves on the Executive Council. He helped get that statewide organization of 2.1 million union members to adopt resolutions in support of marriage equality, GENDA [the transgender civil rights bill], and the Dignity for All Students Act. And when New York labor leaders speak, New York elected officials listen.”

While Appelbaum is not the ESPA board’s first union representative, Van Capelle said he is the first labor leader. He “brings an important perspective to the Pride Agenda Foundation board,” he continued. “Thousands of LGBT New Yorkers are members of unions, and he can help represent their perspective on the education and advocacy that the Foundation carries out. His own union has an excellent track record of building labor-community collaborations in diverse communities, and he can contribute to our efforts to build alliances not only with unions, but also with faith communities, progressive businesses, and communities of color.”

In coming out, Appelbaum has experienced what he termed an “amazingly supportive” embrace within organized labor and among friends, but his public acknowledgment of his gay identity was tinged with some regret. “My parents are gone,” he said. “I wish I had done it when they were alive.”

For Appelbaum, LGBT activism resonates in the same way as labor activism. “It is not enough to privately send checks,” he said. “I want to be an activist within the gay community and to fight for justice in all its permutations.”

Ludlow massacre site dedicated as national landmark

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:56:00 +0000

Original source:

Mine Workers (UMWA) leaders, union activists, lawmakers and historians will dedicate the site of the 1914 Ludlow Massacre—one of the bloodiest chapters in the nation’s labor history—as a National Historic Landmark.

On April 20, 1914, in Ludlow, Colo., thugs hired by several coal companies and the Colorado militia attacked a peaceful encampment of striking miners and their families. By the end of the day, 20 were shot or burned to death, including 14 women and children.

More than 90 years ago, UMWA erected a monument there. But since 1918, despite the efforts of family survivors, historians and labor activists, there was no state or national commemoration of the site.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of the Interior designated Ludlow a National Historic Landmark. UMWA President Cecil Roberts says the designation will “preserve the memory of this brutal attack on workers and their families.”

The tragic lessons from Ludlow still echo through our nation, and they must never be forgotten by Americans who truly care about workplace fairness and equality. With this designation, the story of what happened at Ludlow will remain part of our nation’s history. That is as it should be.

In 1913, southern Colorado miners and their families walked out of the mines and mining camps striking for adequate wages, enforcement of state mining laws and union recognition. For more than a year, they lived in tent colonies near the mines. According to a UMWA history of the Ludlow Massacre:

Upon striking, the miners and their families had been evicted from their company-owned houses and had set up a tent colony on public property. The massacre occurred in a carefully planned attack on the tent colony by Colorado militiamen, coal company guards, and thugs hired as private detectives and strike breakers.

They shot and burned to death 20 people, including a dozen women and small children. Later investigations revealed that kerosene had intentionally been poured on the tents to set them ablaze. The miners had dug foxholes in the tents so the women and children could avoid the bullets that randomly were shot through the tent colony by company thugs. The women and children were found huddled together at the bottoms of their tents.

Since erecting the monument, the union has maintained the site, including installing interpretive markers and displays, as well as building a shelter where the annual Ludlow Memorial is held.

Rite Aids wrong, workers tell shareholders

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 23:57:00 +0000

Original source:

Rite Aid workers at the drug chain’s distribution center in Lancaster, Calif., took their years-long fight for justice to New York City yesterday, where they urged the company’s shareholders to fire management’s hired-gun, union-busting consultants.

At a Times Square rally, the workers got a boost of solidarity from their New York union brothers and sisters.

At the firm’s annual shareholder meeting, Angel Warner, a veteran Rite Aid employee and member of Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 26, charged Rite Aid with “abusive, disrespectful and illegal treatment” before and after more than 600 workers voted to join the IWLU in March 2008.

Speaking to the 10 members of the company’s board of directors, 12 top Rite Aid executives and about 40 shareholders, Warner said the abusive treatment began in 2006 when workers expressed their concerns to Rite Aid management about mandatory, unscheduled overtime and unsafe working conditions. Said Warner:

When we told them we wanted to form a union to help us solve problems and have a voice on the job, the company went nuts and started attacking us.

She said the company began systematically threatening and harassing her co-workers. But the workers stayed together and voted overwhelmingly for a voice at work with the ILWU.

Since the election, Warner said, Rite Aid has launched a new set of attacks against workers, hiring a new team of anti-union consultants that formed a company-led committee in the warehouse to campaign against the union.

Warner asked Rite Aid CEO Mary Sammons to fire Oliver Bell & Associates, the union-busting firm that has been coaching managers on how to harass workers and undermine support for the union. Warner also demanded that the company begin negotiating in good faith to reach a fair contract with employees.

In a rally organized by the New York City Central Labor Council before the shareholders meeting, hundreds of union members signed a giant postcard with a message of solidarity and support that will be sent to workers in Lancaster.

Speakers said Rite Aid’s massive interference with the workers’ freedom to form a union and its failure to bargain in good faith are a prime example of why the Employee Free Choice Act is needed.

12 Senate Dems are key on employee free choice, union leader says

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 08:18:00 +0000

There are 12 “wavering” Senate Democrats that supporters of labor law reform need to be concerned with, Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen told the union’s legislative conference in Washington this week.

Democrats hold a 57-40 edge in the Senate. That edge grows to 59-40 when the independents who caucus with them are counted. One seat, in Minnesota, is vacant. There, Democrat Al Franken leads GOP incumbent Norm Coleman, who has tied the election up in court.

Asked by phone to identify the 12 senators Cohen was referring to, CWA Vice President Annie Hill listed Evan Bayh, D-Ind., Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Thomas Carper, D-Del., Mary Landrieu, D-La., Michael Bennett, D-Colo., Arlen Specter, D-Pa., Kay Hagan, D-N.C., Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and both senators from each of two states, Arkansas and Virginia.

Cohen, addressing the conference, said, “The trouble we have is with cloture.” He explained that “unions don’t have solid promises from both Arkansas senators and from Sen. Specter yet that they will vote to break a filibuster.”

He noted that the “ongoing Republican obstructionism that keeps one of Minnesota’s U.S. Senate seats vacant, plus congressional concentration on health care, are combining to put consideration of the Employee Free Choice Act in a holding pattern.”

The same congressional committees that would deal with labor law reform are now busy with overhauling health care.

The result is that labor will likely have to delay its goal of having the Employee Free Choice Act on President Obama’s desk by Labor Day.

People who participated in discussions about this with CWA leaders note that a senator like Louisiana’s Landrieu should be vulnerable to pressure from labor. It is common knowledge, they say, that Landrieu could not have won re-election in her “right-to-work” state without major help from unions.

One CWA official took a dimmer view of the situation in Arkansas. “Wal-Mart got to ‘em,” he said, referring the two Democratic senators in that state.

The giant retailer, which has its national headquarters in Arkansas, has been one of the national leaders of the corporate lobbying campaign against the Employee Free Choice Act.

The measure’s lead sponsor, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, remains hopeful, however. “The EFCA is alive and kicking,” he said last week, adding, “But we need 60 votes, which means we’ve got to wait for Franken to be seated.”

Harkin has said there are a number of compromises in the works that would replace majority sign-up (card check) with one or another form of balloting that would involve mailing cards in to the National Labor Relations Board.

Asked whether any additional compromises are on the table, a source in the senator’s office said that one possible compromise would lengthen the time period before arbitration can be mandated. In its original form, the bill does not allow companies to drag their feet in negotiations for a first contract for more than 120 days. Presumably, a compromise on this point would allow them to drag their feet for a longer period of time.

The source also said that some senators, under pressure from companies, have asked that the stiffer penalties that the EFCA provides for those who break labor law be applied mostly to “repeat” rather than first-time violators.

Some note that Wal-Mart has violated labor law almost 300 times in the last five years.

jwojcik @ pww.org

Unionists demand universal health care at DC rally

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 06:18:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI)—Declaring Congress must listen to the voters, and not the health insurance companies, thousands of health care advocates—led by unionists—demanded universal, affordable health care in a mass rally on June 25.

The crowd, featuring more than 1,000 Communications Workers legislative conference delegates—decked out in red “We demand Health Care Now!” T-shirts—then converged on Capitol Hill to lobby for affordable health care.

Other unionists at the rally were from the Steelworkers, the Laborers (in orange), the Seafarers, The Newspaper Guild, the Office and Professional Employees, IBEW, UFCW (in yellow), the Teachers (blue), the Service Employees (purple), the Teamsters, the Ironworkers, AFSCME (green) and the Bricklayers. Advocates from almost 200 other groups nationwide chimed in, as some came from as far as Seattle and Portland.

The system they advocate, which is being pushed by the Democratic Obama administration and hammered out in key congressional committees, features universal coverage, medical cost controls, consumer choice of doctors, a government-run Medicare-like alternative to the health insurers and that the cost not be shouldered by taxing workers for their present insurance.

“All of us in the labor movement know we can’t just take care of health care at the bargaining table. The bargaining table is being crushed” by rising health care costs, Communications Workers President Larry Cohen told the throng.

Some of the crowd campaigned for HR 676, government-run universal health care. They called for total abolition of the private insurers and their high co-pays and premiums, refusal of care, huge profits and tons of paperwork.

And though leaders did not adopt the abolition of the private insurers, the health industry and its malevolent influence—especially its duplicitous back-door campaign against the public-run alternative—this was in the speakers’ sights.

“Do you want a real strong public option?” Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., yelled. “Yes!” the crowd yelled back. Schumer, a key negotiator, has at times floated a weak public alternative to the insurance industry.

“We’re counting on you to go across the street” to the Capitol “and convince and persuade and cajole and cajole and cajole” lawmakers to enact universal health care this year, said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio. “The special interests will not hijack this process. We must have a strong public option.”

Service Employees Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger, whose union is one of the nation’s largest for health care workers, said her members see the impact of lack of health care coverage in the nation’s emergency rooms daily.

“People are more worried about their medical bills than about the illnesses they have to treat,” Burger added. The insurers “have bean-counters and paper-pushers telling people what they can’t get,” Burger said. “We know our health care system is broken,” added SEIU Vice President Diane Palmer, RN, head of its Nurse Alliance.

AFSCME President Gerry McEntee also warned the crowd about the controversy over paying the nation’s health care bill. Congressional panels are wrestling with an estimated $1 trillion cost to overhaul health care. Health care consumes $2.5 trillion, one-sixth of overall U.S. output. Some 20% — at least—of that health care cost goes for insurers’ overhead, profits and paperwork.

“Our opponents will fight hard and fight dirty and they’ll outspend us,” McEntee warned. “Taxing health care benefits is the wrong way” to pay for health care, and it’s pushed by the Right Wing, he added. “The right way is, first, to start by taxing the wealthy, and second, by closing corporate loopholes.”

In their lobbying after the rally, unionists warned lawmakers that if workers must pay taxes on their present health benefits, they and the labor movement will turn against that health care legislation.

But there were two groups missing from the mass rally: The nation’s employers—except for one small business owner on a live video feed from a similar rally in the Pacific Northwest—and Republicans.

That’s even though some leading business groups joined prior congressional hearings on health care, realizing its skyrocketing costs makes them uncompetitive with foreign firms and can push them out of business here at home. The GOP, egged on by the insurers, is against the public alternative, and much of the rest of Obama’s plan, too.

“We have a message to employers: Get off our backs and get by our sides and fight together for health care for all,” CWA's Larry Cohen said.

Sherrod Brown added another reason the insurers are fighting so hard against the public alternative: they fear its advocates are right. “The industry says they can do things the best, and that government can’t do anything. So explain to me why they’re so afraid a government-run option will put them out of business,” he said.

Press Associates, Inc. (PAI) — 6/26/2009

Massive Capitol Hill rally demands real health reform

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 05:50:00 +0000

WASHINGTON -- Thousands of union members and ordinary citizens massed on Capitol Hill on Thursday to make their voices heard for a progressive health care reform with a public option.

The crowd at the demonstration, organized by Health Care for America Now, was estimated at 10,000. The corporate-controlled Washington Post did not mention the rally except by posting one photograph of a handful of participants, with a caption downplaying the size as 'hundreds.'

Labor’s major role in organizing this rally and in fighting for health care for all was clearly shown by the massive display of color-coordinated T-shirts of the unions participating.

AFSCME, Communications Workers of America, International Brotherhood of Electrial Workers, Steelworkers, Laborers’ International, United Food and Commercial Workers, SEIU and Labor Coalition for Latin American Advancement members arrived from every corner of the country and marched to Upper Senate Park, where a spectacular view of the dome of the Capitol building was the background for the speakers at the rally.

Labor contingents were joined by many other organizations including seniors groups, supporters of single-payer government financing, Planned Parenthood and many others. In spite of the blazing sun and 90 degree heat, participants enthusiastically clapped and stamped to the cheer “We want health care — Now!”.

From the comments of the speakers and members of the crowd, it is clear that the health care reform movement sees this as a crucial “make or break” moment. On the table in discussions in Congress and with the White House are:

* Whether there will be a major government provided alternative to cover the 47 million-plus people who don’t have health care at all, and the several millions more who are inadequately covered by private insurance. The insurance industry is fighting hard through its front-people in Congress to remove the public option supported by President Obama, and replace it with vaguely defined 'co-ops.' The thousands in Upper Senate Park made it clear that they are determined to have a public option, whether the insurance industry likes it or not.

* Whether employees’ current health care benefits are going to be taxed or not. The labor movement is strongly opposing taxing benefits.

Speakers at the rally emphasized the need to cut down the influence of the private insurance industry and pass legislation with a strong public option, and to act quickly and not accept any more delays. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said to the crowd:

“The first person who proposed national health care was Theodore Roosevelt, 100 years ago …we’re not going to wait another 50 years, we’re not going to wait another year”.

These sentiments were echoed by actress Edie Falco, who pointed to the Capitol building behind her and said, “It’s time to make THEM sweat.' Falco then introduced several ordinary working people who told shocking stories about how the current non-system of financing health care has affected them and their families.

Maureen Kurtek, from Pennsylvania, who suffers from lupus, recounted how she had lost parts of her hands and feet due to a delay by her private insurance in agreeing to cover treatments she needed.

AFSCME President Gerald McEntee blasted the insurance industry for scuttling the attempt at health care reform at the beginning of the 1990s with their famous and misleading “Harry and Louise” paid commercials on TV. Other speakers also denounced the political role of the insurance industry as one of the chief obstacles to reform.

After the rally, the thousands of workers headed for Senate and House office buildings to lobby Congress to support their demands.

South Carolinians point to Sanfords real misdeeds

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 07:54:00 +0000

South Carolina AFL-CIO President Donna DeWitt quickly brushed aside questions about Gov. Mark Sanford’s tearful admission June 24 that he flew secretly to Argentina for a weeklong tryst. Instead she pointed to other, bigger misdeeds.

The governor’s aides put out the story that Sanford, an avid hiker, had gone for a long walk on the Appalachian Trail to clear his mind after losing several bruising fights with the state Legislature. It turned out to be a lie. Instead he had flown to Buenos Aires pursuing his love affair with an Argentinian woman named “Maria.”

The story is pouring out in sordid detail, including steamy e-mails between the woman and Sanford, who is married and the father of four children. There are reports that the Republican governor, a fiscal barracuda who slashes programs that serve the poor, flew three times to Argentina at state expense.

During the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Sanford, then a member of the House of Representatives, called on President Bill Clinton to resign to restore “moral legitimacy” to the White House. Sanford voted to impeach Clinton.

Yet union leader DeWitt focuses instead on the other source of Sanford’s notoriety: his much-publicized rejection of hundreds of millions of dollars in President Obama’s economic stimulus funds that South Carolina was to receive.

The South Carolina Legislature repeatedly overrode the governor’s vetoes of spending bills funded from the stimulus, and a state court recently overruled his rejection of the money.

“It’s a sad, sad story from a sad state,” DeWitt said in a phone interview from her office in Columbia, the state capital. “The labor movement gave Sanford a 20 percent rating when he was in Congress.” His wife “comes from a very wealthy family and has always been his main political adviser,” DeWitt noted.

Sanford, she charged, “hasn’t been focused on running the state of South Carolina but rather on running for president. All the things he did flowed from his political ambitions.”

DeWitt stressed the dire economic crisis that afflicts the Palmetto State. “We needed the money,” she said, referring to the Obama stimulus funds. “Across the board we were looking at 20 percent cuts to our schools, tremendous cuts in health care. If he is truly the compassionate conservative he claims to be, those cutbacks would have been important to him, but he put his political ambitions ahead of our schools and health care.”

Sanford’s loud rejection of the economic stimulus funds “was a political ploy. Don’t forget, John McCain invited him out to Arizona to discuss naming him his running mate in last year’s election. Sanford wants to make a name for himself.”

DeWitt pointed to other shocking facts about South Carolina not aired by the corporate media.

“South Carolina ranks 50th in the nation in the number of women elected to public office,” she said. “South Carolina is the only state with no woman in the state Senate. We are always in the top five in the number of women killed by domestic violence. Our unemployment rate is 12.5 percent, among the highest in the nation. In some rural counties, it is in the 20 percent to 25 percent range. We have rural counties that are just devastated and they desperately needed that economic stimulus money.”

The South Carolina Progressive Network and the state AFL-CIO organized a rally of nearly 4,000 people April 1 on the steps of the State Capitol to denounce Gov. Sanford’s grandstand play against the stimulus package. The multiracial crowd held up pink signs with the message, “Pink Slip for Mark Sanford.” Banners proclaimed, “Recall Sanford” and “It’s Our Money: Jobs, Education, Health Care.”

SCPN Executive Director Brett Bursey told the World he has known Gov. Sanford more than a decade and takes no satisfaction in his personal “tragedy.” But he too stressed that the overriding issue is the plight of hundreds of thousands of unemployed and poor people in South Carolina as the economic crisis deepens.

“We’re tops in the nation in unemployment,” Bursey said. “It’s over 12 percent. There were going to be severe cuts in services — critical services — even with the economic stimulus package, including severe teacher layoffs.”

SCPN, the AFL-CIO and other allies responded by mobilizing the biggest demonstration to demand the stimulus funds of any state in the South.

Some in South Carolina believe Sanford cannot survive and will be forced to resign. He has already stepped down as chairman of the National Republican Governors Association. Once considered a presidential contender, he joins Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., on the GOP’s lengthening roster of disgraced and discredited might-have-been presidential candidates.

greenerpastures21212 @ yahoo.com

Unions on the march in D.C. for universal health care

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:14:00 +0000

WASHINGTON – Thousands of union members and their allies are marching today in the nation’s capital, demanding universal, quality, affordable health care.

They are highlighting two special demands – that the plan include a strong public option and that Congress not pay for it by taxing workers’ health benefits.

Laborer’s President Terry O’Sullivan said unions and their members are opposed to any plan that taxes those who now have employer provided benefits and that any such plan will be “dead on arrival.”

Leading the march are 2,500 delegates to the Communications Workers legislative conference now convening in Washington.

After the mass rally, which starts at 11:30 a.m., union members will flood the halls of Congress to lobby lawmakers.

America, which now spends one of every six dollars of its gross national product, $2.3 trillion, on health care nevertheless has 47 million uninsured and an equal number of underinsured. Insurance companies pocket 20 percent of the money spent for profits, overhead and CEO pay as they routinely deny claims. Unions say that more than 100,000 people die each year as a result of these practices and that the high cost of health care makes it almost impossible for workers to win decent contracts.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., told the unionists that “families are being crushed by rising health care costs. All across America, good guy businesses fight to provide health insurance to their employees, but are being crushed by the costs. The time for health care reform is now. We cannot afford to wait another day.”

President Obama has been calling for inclusion of a strong public option in any health care plan that emerges from Congress.

Today’s rally and lobbying has been organized by Health Care for America.

Wells Fargo charged with job-icide and home-icide

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:37:00 +0000

CHICAGO — Dozens of labor, community and religious leaders rallied here in front of the Wells Fargo home lending offices June 23 demanding the bank save 100 jobs and extend credit to the Quad City Die Casting company in Moline, Ill., slated to close July 12.

The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), the union that represents the Quad City workers, organized the protest, which was part of a national day of action in more than 20 cities. Housing rights advocates also joined the midday rally in support of the UE workers and are calling on Wells Fargo to stop home foreclosures, create jobs and rebuild communities.

Quad City Die Casting is a 60-year-old family-owned business that manufactures precision metal parts. Wells Fargo received $25 billion in federal bank bailout money and refuses to extend credit to the company.

“Banks like Wells Fargo are contributing to the economic crisis,” said Leah Fried, UE organizer. “It’s a crime. Today we are saying they are guilty of ‘job-icide and home-icide.’”

“When people lose their jobs or their homes it’s completely devastating for working families and these losses destroy our communities,” she said. Wells Fargo, she added, should not be a roadblock to economic recovery; it should invest in good American jobs.

At the rally protestors chanted, “Wells Fargo this sucks! Where’s our $25 billion bucks?” and “Wells Fargo you can’t hide, we charge you with ‘job-icide’ and ‘home-icide.’”

Wells Fargo is also under fire for targeting African American borrowers for high-rate sub-prime mortgages in Baltimore, where city officials are in the process of suing the company. Some 4,000 Hartmarx Corp. workers nationwide are also in jeopardy of losing their jobs because the bank refuses to extend credit to the men’s suitmaker and is aiming to liquidate the company.

“These demonstrations are a massive outcry against institutions like Wells Fargo. We’re demanding that they do the right thing and protect these workers by saving their jobs,” said Elcee Redmond from Chicago Jobs with Justice. “The foreclosure crisis has gotten to the point where families and communities are being torn apart and Wells Fargo is contributing to that,” he said.

“Abandoned foreclosed houses are part of the destruction of our neighborhoods.” Redmond added, “We’re here to ensure that the bank extends the credit for the Quad City workers because they have the power to do that and it won’t hurt their bottom line.”

Moises Zavala, from the United Food and Commercial Workers union, said Wells Fargo should be held accountable for the UE workers. “Workers are the main engine to stabilizing and regenerating the U.S. economy,” he said. “Big banks need to recognize and respect working people. And Wells Fargo must be a part of the solution and not the problem.”

UE drew national attention last year when hundreds of workers occupied the Republic Windows and Doors factory here after Bank of America cut credit to the business. The workers eventually won a settlement with the bank, and the factory was sold to a buyer that has reopened the plant and plans to rehire all former Republic workers.

“We are setting an example just like the Republic workers,” said Shelly Ruzicka of Arise Chicago. “We’re not going to stand down. We plan to keep on fighting till victory is won.”

plozano @ pww.org

Daryl Hannah, scientist arrested in W.Va. protest

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:40:00 +0000

Actress Daryl Hannah, NASA scientist James Hansen and former U.S. Rep. Ken Hechler were among 31 people arrested Tuesday as they and several hundred others protested mountaintop removal mining in southern West Virginia.

Those arrested were released after being cited for impeding traffic and obstructing an officer when they sat down in a road near a Massey Energy Co. subsidiary's coal processing plant, The Associated Press reported.

Another woman, who was among a crowd of mining industry supporters, was charged with misdemeanor battery.

The arrests followed a rally near the plant's coal storage silo. After the rally, protesters marched quietly to the plant and attempted to enter the property, but were blocked by several hundred coal miners shouting, 'Go home.'

Miner Fred Griggs, who works at a Massey surface operation, told AP he was there 'defending my job.' He said, 'I've got to support my family.'

Yet in reality, mountaintop mining is “a job killer for miners, not a job creator,” says West Virginian John Case, who writes on economics and the labor movement. “Mountaintop mining requires the least labor per pound of coal of all mining technologies. The only thing that can be said in its favor, for miners, is that it is less dangerous than deep core mining.”

Mountaintop mining involves blasting away ridgetops to expose coal seams. While mine operators typically are required to return the mountain to its approximate original shape, excess material is used to fill valleys, burying miles of streams.

“There is no demonstrated means of making it ‘clean,’ or to repair its damage to the environment in terms of lost streams and toxic runoffs,” says Case.

'It's not necessary,' Hannah said before she was arrested. 'If you do it wisely, there are ways to use renewables. It's realistic for everybody.'

Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University, criticized the Obama administration for not banning the practice. The administration does plan to tighten regulation of it.

Case, who hosts the morning “Winners and Losers” radio show out of Shepherdstown, W.Va., says, “One of the bitter ironies in West Virginia politics is that it remains the second poorest state in the nation despite having abundant natural resources and two of the most powerful senators in the United States Congress: Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller. It seems they are not so powerful as the mining industry which has maintained a 150-year lock on state economic policy even in the face of steadily declining employment.”

That industry lock on state policy, Case said, “is accomplished, in part, by having mining industry employees run for state legislative offices while remaining on corporate payrolls. State legislative offices do not compensate elected officials enough to permit most to run without employer sponsorship.”

The Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. notes, “The coal industry in West Virginia and across Appalachia is not the economic force it once was. A new and growing body of research by academics not only points out the huge public health costs, but questions the long-held conventional wisdom that coal is good for the region’s economy.” But, Ward writes, “in isolated pockets of our region, coal remains the big thing — the only thing, really.”

Massey Energy is the nation's fourth-largest coal producer by revenue. It operates mines in West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky.

suewebb @ pww.org Tim Huber of The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Medical industry trying to scare up votes against Obama plan

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 06:23:00 +0000

As the president travels around the country to build support for an overhaul of the health care system, the medical industry is trying to scare up opposition to his plan with claims that Obama seeks to deny patients the lifesaving tests they need.

While Obama held a town hall meeting and talked with governors today, industry advocacy groups gathered in Washington to put the squeeze on Congress.

Pharmaceutical and medical imaging companies, among others, were behind a “bipartisan” letter to Obama from 57 House members objecting to any cuts in Medicare reimbursement for procedures that yield these companies big bucks.

MRIs and other medical scans for Medicare patients, pushed by the health industry, cost the government billions of dollars, much of which could help finance other needed aspects of overall health care reform.

The health industry and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are among those leading the charge for unlimited government reimbursement for such procedures, the use of which grew to $182 million in 2007.

Administration officials have cited figures showing that Medicare payments for these procedures doubled from $7 billion in 2000 to $14 billion in 2006, while their medical necessity or effectiveness is often questionable. Obama has said that one source of possible savings is to reduce these payments by $5.9 billion over the next decade. At the same time, the president also says quality and affordable health care requires measures to determine the real effectiveness of these and other procedures that provide lush profits to medical companies. No surprise, these measures are also being fought by the same companies and their front groups.

Meanwhile, parts of the medical industry, fearful that a new health care system could cut into their profits, are moving to cut potential losses.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America made a deal last week with the White House and Congress in which they promised to contribute $80 billion over the next decade by lowering drug costs for some seniors and by “paying” for a portion of health care overhaul.

The big insurance companies, however, continue to focus their opposition on Obama’s proposal for a public insurance option.

Only yesterday, senators received letters from America’s Health Insurance Plans and Blue Cross Blue Shield that claimed creating an optional public insurance plan would “wreck the coverage many people get from their employers.”

Bert Newcombe, benefits coordinator for Local 464A of the United Food and Commercial Workers, commented sarcastically, “Suddenly they are concerned about the quality of insurance available for workers.”

“We support the public option,” Newcombe said in a phone interview. “A public plan is the only way that Obama and the Congress have to push insurance companies into reducing their prices.”

Labor unions and their allies plan a Capitol Hill rally tomorrow in support of Obama’s health care efforts. Speakers include Edie Falco, who now stars in the Showtime series “Nurse Jackie.”

Health Care for America Now, a coalition of progressive and labor groups, is running a television ad campaign in 10 states, including states with lawmakers on committees writing the legislation.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is in its second week of hammering out a bill. House Democratic leaders put theirs out last Friday, and another measure is emerging in the Senate Finance Committee.

As the committees work, the health care industry is bombarding them with calls to defeat both the public option and any attempts to reduce government reimbursements for profitable medical procedures.

The Chamber of Commerce sent letters to the Senate last week saying it would oppose the bill because it would be “harmful to businesses of all sizes, to the economy, and to American workers.”

The Chamber’s letter, unions point out, offered no alternative. “They’re not interested in doing anything to help either workers with insurance or the 47 million uninsured,” said Newcombe. “They simply want to kill any and all provisions that require employers to provide coverage and they want to kill the public option.”

The public seems to be seeing through industry attempts to create confusion about health care reform.

Eric Burton, 42, was interviewed after he left the Brooklyn, N.Y., Methodist Hospital emergency room where he was treated for a broken finger, June 19.

Burton took issue with industry claims that government bureaucrats would place themselves between patients and doctors and deny needed medical procedures.

“Right now I have insurance company bureaucrats doing that all the time,” he said. “They always try to deny not just tests but even essential surgery. If I had to make a choice I’d rather deal with the government — at least they aren’t out to profit off of my illness.”

Ben Williams, 36, emerged from the same ER with his arm set in a new cast — he had a broken wrist. His greatest concern was the need for a public option.

“The opponents say that the public option would kill off the private insurance industry. I don’t buy it,” Williams said. “Right now we have Medicare, we have government insurance for the military and we have a public plan even for all the people in Congress who are against the people having a public plan. Even with these public options we still have a powerful private insurance system — too powerful if you ask me. A public option might force them to lower costs but I don’t think it will put them out of business. If it did, I’d say ‘good riddance.’”

jwojcik @ pww.org

Chicago charter school teachers join union

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 03:31:00 +0000

Original source:

Teachers at three Chicago charter schools voted overwhelmingly last week to join the Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff (Chicago ACTS), an affiliate of the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT) and AFT.

The 73-49 vote at the Civitas Schools sets a precedent for teachers at other charter schools whose staff want to organize, union leaders said.

Laura McMahon, an eighth-grade reading teacher at the Civitas Wrightwood campus, said:

Today’s historic victory sends a strong and clear message to Civitas school officials about our desire to have a say in our schools and work collaboratively. We expect Civitas will recognize the union now and begin the collective bargaining process.

The teachers’ effort points out the need for the Employee Free Choice Act. After a majority of the teachers signed cards in April saying they wanted to be represented by Chicago ACTS, the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board certified the union, as required by state law. But Civitas refused to recognize the union and petitioned the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to determine if an election should be held. The NLRB ruled in favor of the administrators and required an election rather than respecting the majority sign-up.

IFT President Ed Geppert praised the union’s newest members:

Throughout this historic effort, these dedicated men and women organized and campaigned with one goal—to work in partnership with their school administration and bring true collaboration to the educational decision-making process. The union that they successfully organized will be key to fostering that collaboration.

Emily Mueller, a high school Spanish teacher at the Civitas Northtown Academy, added:

We firmly believe teachers need a voice in the creation and implementation of school policy and should feel secure enough in their jobs to speak out on important issues. Success at Civitas schools can only come when we all work collaboratively as a team.

Death on the job in Texas

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 04:22:00 +0000

Original source:

Every 2½ days a construction worker dies on the job in Texas.

On Tuesday, just days after three construction workers fell to their deaths in Austin, a group of workers gathered outside City Hall there to call for better working conditions in the industry. They brought with them 142 pairs of workers boots, symbolizing the number of workers who died in construction accidents in the state in 2007.

Despite the recession, the construction industry is booming in Texas, but human rights groups point out that the state's lax enforcement of labor and safety regulations is exacting a huge price on workers. According to a new study by the Workers Defense Project, an Austin-based labor advocacy group, Texas now holds the title as the deadliest state in the country for construction workers, with nearly twice as many deaths as any other state.

The report, 'Building Austin, Building Injustice,' examined the poor and dangerous working conditions prevalent in the construction industry in Texas. It found that Texas fails to guarantee even the most basic safety and labor protections.

For instance, the report notes that many workers are forced to endure unsafe conditions and work in temperatures up to 112 degrees F. and overtime hours without rest breaks. Nearly two-thirds of the workers surveyed said they didn't even receive basic safety training before getting on the work site.

The researchers surveyed more than 300 Austin construction workers, but the report also details trends from across the state. Some further highlights from the report:

* 45% of surveyed construction workers earned poverty level wages, while one in five workers reported being denied payment for their construction work. * 50% of construction workers reported not being paid overtime, and for many this resulted in the inability to pay for food and housing. * 1 in 5 surveyed workers suffered a workplace injury that required medical attention. * 64% of surveyed workers lacked basic health and safety training. Many were forced to provide their own safety equipment, with 47% of residential construction workers providing their own hard hats and safety belts. * Employers frequently misclassified workers as independent contractors instead of employees, thus stripping them of their rights to overtime pay, workers' compensation coverage and benefits.

The Workers Defense report also found that violations of workplace regulations are routine and often go unnoticed due to a lack of inspectors, with state as well as federal agencies ill-equipped to investigate or lax about enforcement.

In fact, most of the surveyed workers had never heard of government regulatory agencies like the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration or the Texas Workforce Commission, which has not performed field investigations since 1993.

A National Problem

While Texas has some of the worst construction job-related death rates, issues of workplace safety are a growing concern across the nation.

A report released in April by the AFL-CIO found that on any given day 15 working people will be killed on the job as a result of workplace injuries and disease. In 2007, close to 6,000 workers lost their lives on the job and more than 4 million other workers were hurt or made ill, according to AFL-CIO's Death on the Job 2009.

Labor advocates argue that little has been done in recent years at the federal level to improve job safety and protect workers. Many advocates are now looking to the Obama administration to strengthen the capacity of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

OSHA's ability to provide protection to workers has greatly diminished over the years. Advocates point out that under the Bush administration the safety agency was systematically stripped of its enforcement apparatus and aligned with business interests. The AFL-CIO report notes that years of budget cuts and inadequate funding crippled the agency's ability to adequately enforce workplace safety standards.

The Texas Observer provided this background on the shrinking of OSHA under the last Republican presidencies:

Safety inspections were a casualty of the government-shrinking ideology that prevailed in Washington following Ronald Reagan's election until the current economic crisis. Especially during George W. Bush's administration, the emphasis shifted from enforcement to voluntary compliance. Meanwhile, the ranks of OSHA inspectors have been thinning for years. In 1980, there were 1,469 -- 14.9 per million workers. By 2007, there were just 948 OSHA inspectors nationwide -- 6.4 for every million workers, the lowest level in the agency's history.

Routinely underfunded, understaffed and overwhelmed, OSHA currently has the ability to inspect every workplace only once every 137 years on average. Several of the states with the worst OSHA safety inspection rates are in the South. According to the AFL-CIO report, in several Southern states it would take 150 years or more for OSHA to pay a single visit to each workplace: 303 years in Arkansas, 259 years in Florida, 184 years in Georgia and 173 years in Louisiana.

Texas itself has the second-lowest number of OSHA inspectors in the nation after Florida. As as the Workers Defense report pointed out:

[The] United Nations' International Labor Organization recommends that 1,023 OSHA inspectors are needed to adequately investigate the number of worksites in Texas, yet in 2008 the state operated with only 77 inspectors to cover over 10,231,906 workers.

Are you taking part in the June 25 health care rally?

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 03:55:00 +0000

Original source:

Union, health care and community activists from around the nation are set to converge on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., this week to tell Congress there is no time to waste in passing health care reform legislation that provides quality health care for all.

As a congressional hearing revealed last week, health care reform must also rein in the most outrageous and abusive practices of the private insurance industry.

The June 25 rally and lobby day sponsored by Health Care for America Now! (HCAN) is expected to be the largest ever health care rally. Click here for more rally information from HCAN and text “HEALTH” to 94553 to receive updates on fast-moving health care reform activities throughout the summer.

The rally will provide a real grassroots voice to counter the multi-million dollar campaign against real reform the private insurance industry, pharmaceutical giants and conservatives groups are waging against President Obama’s health care reform initiatives. Their special target is a public health insurance plan option for workers and families who either have private insurance coverage or no coverage at all.

More than three-quarters of those polled in a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll say it’s important for the American public to have a choice between a public plan option and a private one.

A public option would give working families a choice. If they are satisfied with the insurance they have now, keep it. But if not, they would have an option of choosing a public plan. That type of competition is vital to lowering costs and keeping insurance companies honest.

Keeping private insurance companies honest isn’t an easy task, as the CEOs of three of the biggest health insurers showed at congressional hearing last week. But the trio also provided some of the most compelling evidence yet why a public insurance plan option with a guarantee of coverage is desperately needed.

At a House Energy and Commerce Committee’s oversight and investigations subcommittee hearing, the three vigorously defended canceling medical coverage for sick-and paid-up-policy holders, especially those facing tens of thousands of dollars in potential treatment costs.

The practice is called “rescission” and an investigation by the subcommittee, writes Los Angeles Times reporter Lisa Girion, found

health insurers WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group and Assurant Inc. canceled the coverage of more than 20,000 people, allowing the companies to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims over a five-year period.

It also found that policyholders with breast cancer, lymphoma and more than 1,000 other conditions were targeted for rescission and that employees were praised in performance reviews for terminating the policies of customers with expensive illnesses.

The insurance industry claims it only rescinds policies when it finds fraud on the part of the policy holder. But the investigation found, and witnesses testified, that policies were canceled for inadvertent omissions or honest mistakes about medical history on their applications.

Robin Beaton, a retired nurse from Texas, who for years faithfully paid her Blue Cross premiums, was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer. Three days before a scheduled double mastectomy, the insurance company told her they were launching an investigation into her policy and then canceled it for failing to disclose a visit to a dermatologist for acne. She told the lawmakers:

The sad thing is, Blue Cross gladly took my high premiums, and the first time I filed a claim and was suspected of having cancer, they searched high and low for a reason to cancel me.

She eventually received her operation, but only after her member of Congress intervened with the company.

Witnesses told the committee that rescissions were about boosting corporate profits rather than fighting fraud.. Said Jennifer Horton from Los Angeles, whose policy was canceled because she had been taking a drug for irregular menstruation:

It’s about the money…. insurers ignore the law, and when they find a discrepancy or omission, they rescind the policy and refuse to pay any of your medical bills-even for routine treatment or treatment they previously authorized.

Since my rescission, I have had to take jobs that I do not want, and put my career goals on hold to ensure that I can find health insurance.

Lawmakers asked the three executives-Richard A. Collins, chief executive of UnitedHealth’s Golden Rule Insurance Co.; Don Hamm, chief executive of Assurant Health and Brian Sassi, president of consumer business for WellPoint Inc.-if they would promise to halt rescissions except in the cases on intentional fraud.

All three said: “No.” That refusal, said Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.),

is precisely why we need a public option.

Jerry Flanagan, a patient advocate with Santa Monica-based Consumer Watchdog, told the Times’ Girion:

When insurance companies go under oath and admit they are canceling innocent patients when they get sick, it makes it very difficult for lawmakers to pass a law that requires every American to buy a policy or face a tax fine. It opens the way for a public option to hold the companies in check.

Unions, allies to rally in Washington for health care

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 08:40:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI)--There’s a mass march on Washington for health care, after all, on June 25.

Unionists from around the country are set to descend that day on the nation’s Capital to demand universal, quality, affordable health care with cost controls and choice of doctors -- and to insist that Congress not pay for it by taxing workers’ health benefits.

If lawmakers impose that tax, says one union president, the Laborers’ Terry O’Sullivan, unionists -- both members and organizations -- will turn against the bill. He calls taxing workers’ benefits “dead on arrival.”

The unionists will be led by the Communications Workers, as 2,500 delegates to the union’s legislative conference and its subsequent convention will be in town. The health care lobbying follows a mass rally that starts at 11:30 a.m., on June 25.

The unionists will lobby lawmakers as Congress slogs through the heavy lifting of writing legislation to revamp the nation’s dysfunctional health care non-system. The big issues in dispute are whether to establish a public Medicare-like health plan to compete with the private insurers and keep them honest, and how to pay for the overhaul.

Health care now takes one of every six dollars of national output, some $2.3 trillion, but it leaves 47 million people uninsured, that same number underinsured, lets the insurers pocket at least 20 percent of the money for overhead, profits and high CEO pay, and routinely denies paid-for care, killing 101,000 people, data show.

It’s also the biggest stumbling block in virtually every union contract negotiating session.

Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee Democrats agreed with the unionists on the health care goals, but were silent on how to pay for them, at least in their remarks at a June 16 press conference.

“Families are being crushed by rising health care costs. All across America, good-guy businesses are fighting to provide health insurance to their employees, but being crippled by the costs. The time for health care reform is now. We can’t afford to wait another day. The bill...will lower the high costs of health care, protect people’s choice of doctors, hospitals, and health plans, and ensure all Americans have access to quality, affordable care,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md.

Democratic President Barack Obama, in a detailed speech the day before to the American Medical Association, espoused those principles, and the need to rework the U.S. health care system, but also was silent on taxing employee health care benefits.

“Now, if you don't like your health care coverage or you don't have any insurance at all, you'll have a chance, under what we've proposed, to take part in what we're calling a Health Insurance Exchange. This exchange will allow you to one-stop shop for a health care plan, compare benefits and prices, and choose a plan that's best for you and your family -- the same way, by the way, that federal employees can do,” he said.

“You will have your choice of a number of plans that offer a few different packages, but every plan would offer an affordable, basic package. Again, this is for people who aren't happy with their current plan. If you like what you're getting, keep it. Nobody is forcing you to shift. But if you're not, this gives you some new options.

“And I believe one of these options needs to be a public option that will give people a broader range of choices -- and inject competition into the health care market so that we can force waste out of the system and keep the insurance companies honest,” Obama declared.

The Capitol Hill march, rally and lobbying was assembled by Health Care for America Now, a massive coalition of unions and other progressive groups. The week before, AFSCME and CWA analysts told congressional health care specialists that taxing workers’ health care benefits would only make a bad system worse.

“Taxing workers’ health care benefits – in essence, taxing health care to pay for health care expansion – is regressive because it reduces the income of low-income earners more than that of high-income earners…In the end, this tax could reduce the quality and quality of health care provided by employers,” the two unions said.

In a letter to Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chair of the other key Senate panel working on health care, O’Sullivan was even blunter. “As I talk to workers around the country, union and non-union, I hear their outrage at being penalized for having health care coverage that protects them and their families,” O’Sullivan wrote. “I cannot recall any other issue in recent times that has so engaged and enraged workers.

O’Sullivan warned the senators his union “will be forced to vigorously oppose any health care reform package” that taxes employer-provided health care benefits.

“Because the hard-working men and women of unions, through their collectively bargained agreements, defer their take-home pay to help pay for their health care benefits, any plan that taxes those benefits is ‘dead on arrival’ for us,” he concluded.

It's still Main Street versus Wall Street

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 07:58:00 +0000

Original source:

Over the past few months, we've had conversations across our union and across our country about how to improve the lives and future of working families.

The good news is that for the first time in eight years, we have a President and Vice President who understand how critical working people are to the fabric of our economy and our nation. In just a short time, we've seen decisive action from the Obama administration, including an economic recovery plan that has help for working families and a renewed focus on jobs.

The not-so-good news: there's a lot more that must be done to turn around our struggling economy and provide the support that working families need.

The Wall Street and banking and investment interests that have run our economy into the ground can't be allowed to control our economic future. Our economic recovery can't be about avarice or about how much investors and monied interests feel entitled to take. This economic crisis wasn't only caused by homeowners getting in over their heads, it was caused by greed and overreaching by investors and by the extreme income inequality that has been rampant in this country for several decades.

This one-sided focus on capital, unfair trade and markets has produced an economy in which people don't have health care, quality jobs or the ability to move forward confidently into the future.

That's why our agenda for working families — jobs, real health care reform, retirement security and bargaining rights — goes forward.

And a part of that agenda is putting elected officials on notice that they are accountable for the actions they take that help — or harm — working families.

In many measures, working families in the United States continue to lag far behind working families in the world's other industrial democracies, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which tracks economic, environmental and social conditions in 30 developed countries.

Health care? The United States now spends 17 percent and more of our Gross Domestic Product on health care, twice that of other industrial democracies. Yet 46 million Americans have no health care. U.S. businesses that do provide coverage for employees face a competitive disadvantage compared to other U.S. employers who offer inadequate or no benefits and corporations in the rest of the industrial world where health care benefits are viewed as critical public policy.

Pensions and retirement security? For working families, the percentage of income replaced by Social Security and private pensions is lower in the United States than in any other OECD country with the exception of Mexico.

Jobs and fair trade? In the United States, our trade practices have been based on markets and some imbalanced notion of 'free trade.' Capital calls the shots. In other industrial democracies, workers' interests also carry weight in setting national trade policy.

Bargaining rights? The U.S. has the worst record of any democracy — with the exception of Colombia — when it comes to workers having a seat at the table with corporations in order to work out solutions to workplace and economic problems.

Wall Street loves to talk about the global economy and how workers must adapt to the global marketplace except when it comes to bargaining rights. This must change.

The Employee Free Choice Act ties all these issues together. Real bargaining rights are essential if working families are going to regain our economic standing. Despite what some Washington politicians and pundits say, popular support for the Employee Free Choice Act is stronger than ever.

Communication Workers of America and the entire labor movement, along with supporters from public interest, religious, civil rights, women's groups and many other organizations are determined to build on that support and win the bargaining rights that working families need. It's time we had an economy that works for everyone.

Larry Cohen is the president of the Communication Workers of America. You can follow CWA on Twitter during its upcoming Convention and Legislative-Political Conference, June 22-25, 2009, http://twitter.com/cwaunion.

New Yorkers rip Bloombergs budget

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 07:03:00 +0000

Workers protest: ‘We’re not going to take this anymore!’

NEW YORK—A militant demonstration called by the union of school support staff brought together thousands of people—workers facing layoffs and their supporters—at City Hall June 17 to protest against Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s budget that could result in the layoffs of thousands of more than 2,500 school workers alone.

The workers, members of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Union District Council 37 Local 372, prepare and serve lunches, serve as teacher’s aides, and perform other services in public schools.

While it looks as though the reduction of teaching jobs has been averted, teachers still face trouble under the new budget. If school support workers are laid off, their duties would fall on teachers and other school staff. This would have the effect of more work for teachers and a lessening of services for students.

“We’re not going to take this anymore!” Bill Thompson, the City Comptroller and the Democratic frontrunner in the November mayoral election told those gathered. “We have to let everyone know you are a part of the school community.”

Thompson’s speech, and the rally itself, underscored the disdain city workers feel for the current mayor. At certain points during the rally, chants of “Who’s got to go? Bloomberg’s go to go!” erupted.

“We’re going to vote with that union power,” local 372 president Virginia Montgomery-Costa added.

D.C. 37 executive director Lillian Roberts said Local 372 members “are part of our schools too,” and that they were among the city workers who could least afford to lose their jobs. The school support staff and other groups of city workers bear the brunt of the cuts. However, all New Yorkers will feel the pain. The city will increase sales tax and abolish a tax exemption on clothing sales over $110.

While the regressive sales tax has been increased, the Bloomberg budget reworks the corporate tax formula to give breaks to those in the world the mayor came out of—the big corporations.

Though the City Council voted for the budget after reaching a recent agreement with the mayor, most rage has been directed towards Bloomberg, who first proposed even worse. His original plan included cuts through attrition and layoff of nearly 14,000 public employees, as well as the shutdown of libraries and fire stations and other cuts.

One of the most important victories was the derailing of a plan by Bloomberg to add a fifth tier to the pensions of D.C. 37 workers. The division of pension benefits into “tiers” based on date of hire is despised by trade unionists, because it both reduces overall income of newer workers and sows disunity between newer and older workers.

After protest and fightback by labor, advocates for education and thousands of others in the city, the current budget was agreed to. Progressive city councilors were unhappy with the agreement, but voted in favor of it, assuming that it was the best that could be won under Bloomberg’s reign.

But much is still up in the air. The changes in taxes have to be agreed to in Albany, and, given the standoff in the State Senate, no one is certain when or what the outcome will be there. According to a report by Thompson’s office, the budget is full of risks and may not fix the city’s deficit problem. Thompson, along with a number of city councilors, called for no sales tax increases; instead he proposed a special tax for three years on people making over $500,000. Bloomberg rejected this idea outright.

And the number of layoffs of school staff is as of yet undetermined. The budget mandates that school principals reduce expenditures in their school by about four percent, and the exact mixture of layoffs is to be determined in each locality.

While the budget itself has been agreed, unions are still fighting. According to a white paper released by D.C. 37, the city wastes billions of dollars by hiring private contractors at exorbitant rates to do jobs, instead of maintaining a workforce of union full-time workers. Replacing private contractors with union workers would at only 10 city agencies would, according to the report, save New York nearly $130 million. All together, the city spends $9.2 billion on 18,000 contracts, making up 46 percent of discretionary spending.

At the rally, many supporters, including officers of DC 37 locals, City Council member Robert Jackson, who chairs to council’s education committee, and Democratic mayoral candidate Bill Thompson, urged workers at the rally to continue their fight, not only in the city council, but also by calling Mayor Bloomberg and his administration, and at the state and federal levels. Every call for continued fightback produced enthusiastic responses from the workers.

The crowd included teachers, members of several other AFSCME locals, and members and officers of CWA 1180, which also represents public workers, as well as other members of the community.

D.C. 37, which represents some 120,000 city workers, has yet to make an endorsement in the mayoral race. While some have feared that D.C. 37’s leadership might stay neutral in the election, it seems apparent that to those who saw the rally that the union would find it hard to not support Thompson.

Sen. Dodd declares for strong public option as health care reform markup begins

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 04:58:00 +0000

Americans mobilize for public health option

Call senators toll-free 866-210-3678, unions urge

A week before health care activists poured into the nation’s capitol demanding health care for all with a public option or single payer, Sen. Chris Dodd had taken time away from preparing for Senate Health Committee sessions to meet via web with members of Families USA, Doctors for America and unions SEIU, CWA.

Dodd is sitting in for Sen. Ted Kennedy.

“I am an advocate of a very strong public option in this plan,” said Dodd. “You can’t drive down costs if you don’t have it.” He said that while he hopes for a bi-partisan bill, “I won’t sacrifice a good bill for that.”

The contentious mark up sessions by the Health Committee have been dominated by Republican pro-insurance company claims that any public option will mean health care “rationing.” In fact, under the current private profit system 50 million uninsured and 40 million underinsured have little access to necessary care and medications.

This battle in the Senate was the target of thousands of activists from 20 states who came to Washington on June 25 to rally and lobby their Senators and Representatives to support a choice that would be free of insurance company control.

The rally and lobby day was organized by Health Care for America Now, a coalition of 1,000 national organizations including the AFL-CIO, which was a major mobilizer. The Communication Workers of America incorporated the rally and lobby as part of their national convention which had been taking place in Washington at the same time.

While HCAN is pressing for a strong public option, many of the member organizations have endorsed HR 676, the single payer Medicare for All bill introduced by Rep. John Conyers.

On June 27, Organizing for America held health care days of service across the country in support of President Obama’s plan which includes public option.

In answer to a question from Alice Chen, executive director of Doctors for America, Dodd told the conference call that he is hopeful because a new poll shows 76 percent of the public favors public option. Referring to sections of the business community he said “some allies have come across that divide and joined with us....the economic crisis in our country—foreclosures, loss of jobs, decline in earning power, pensions abused by some,” have made a section of business realize “they can’t afford it any longer.”

Dodd said all Democrats on his committee “believe a public option is critical, the vast majority of the Democratic caucus is for it, the House is, the President is for a public option. But we are not done,” he warned, urging massive grassroots pressure during the next ten weeks of markup. “A minority in the Senate can cause real problems.”

Dr. Luella Toni Lewis of SEIU urged everyone to call their senators on the toll free number 1-866-210-3678. Participants were also asked to “call, e-mail, get in the streets, and visit your member of Congress when they come home for recess.”

joelle.fishman@pobox.com

Organizing and mobilizing with flair

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:45:00 +0000

For four days next week, the campus of the National Labor College (NLC) in Silver Spring, Md., will reverberate with the sounds of music, poetry and creative chants and art.

From June 20-23, some 100 union and social justice activists will participate in the annual Great Labor Arts Exchange and Conference on Creative Organizing, programs that combine union mobilization and outreach with songs, skits, art, poetry, theater, posters, cartoons and film.

For 31 years, the Great Labor Arts Exchange has celebrated the rich cultural heritage of working people and served as a forum that brings together talented labor artists, activists, cultural workers, educators and students.

Last year, the Great Labor Arts Exchange featured a wealth of new, young talent. Some of last year’s featured events included a giant puppet show by two members of the United Steelworkers (USW) who showed participants one way to use street theater to deliver a message. Tayo Aluko, a Nigerian who now lives in Liverpool, England, performed a one-man show on the life of actor and human rights activist Paul Robeson.

Another presentation, by the group “Teaching For Change,” demonstrated strategies for educating children, parents, teachers and the community about social justice by having them work jointly on a quilt depicting different social issues.

The Conference on Creative Organizing trains union staff, organizers and activists to use songs, chants, skits, game shows, costumes, theater and other creative tactics when reaching out to working people. Participants exchange experiences, brainstorm about specific union campaigns, share resources and return home with a battery of new ideas and tools that will make their campaigns more compelling.

On June 23, participants from the two conferences will converge on Washington, D.C., to join in a day of action to focus attention and energy on issues currently facing working people, such as the Employee Free Choice Act, immigration reform, poverty, health care reform and education reform.

At the “Raise Your Voices and Be Heard Concert” that evening, artist Ricardo Levins Morales will receive the Joe Hill Award, which honors leaders and artists who have contributed to the successful integration of arts and culture in the labor movement.

Both events are sponsored by the Labor Heritage Foundation and NLC.