People Before Profit blog

Pay freeze saves peanuts, AFGE leader charges

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 13:25:00 +0000

Labor and its allies have come out swinging against President Obama's call for a two-year pay freeze for federal workers.

"No one is served by our government participating in a race to the bottom in wages," declared AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Nov. 29. "The president talked about the need for shared sacrifice, but there's nothing shared about Wall Street and CEOs making record profits and bonuses while working people bear the brunt."

John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, was even more severe in his criticism of the plan.

"This proposal is a superficial panic reaction to the draconian cuts his (President Obama's) deficit commission will recommend. A federal pay freeze saves peanuts at best and, while he may mean it as just a public relations gesture, this is no time for political scapegoating," he said.

Gage said the two-year freeze "barely makes a dent in the federal budget deficit but will be devastating to the VA nursing assistant making $28,000 a year or a border patrol agent earning $34,000 per year."

Gage said, "While President Obama asks federal workers to share the sacrifice, it is unconscionable for him to attack the wages of federal working people while the millionaires and billionaires on Wall Street not only get their bailouts and astronomical bonuses; they also get their tax cuts. We need to invest in jobs, not undermine the ones we have."

Calling the pay freeze proposal "a play from the Republican handbook," The Hill said, "The move represents the first time Obama has fully embraced a Republican idea on spending cuts since the election, and the proposal can be seen as either an olive branch to newly empowered Republicans or a Clintonesque attempt to co-opt their ideas."

House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland said he would "review" the proposal but avoided promising to take it up in the lame duck session.

Progressive lawmakers are openly challenging the proposal while conservatives are voicing support.

"It would have been far preferable for the White House to have included this as part of a comprehensive proposal, instead of singling put the hard working men and women of the federal workforce," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., in a statement to the press.

"By focusing almost exclusively on federal employees, the president runs the risk of re-enforcing the myth, pushed by some for politically convenient but cynical reasons that America suffers from a federal government comprised of unproductive and overpaid civil servants. Nothing could be further from the truth," Van Hollen said.

If Obama actually intends to make the wage freeze proposal materialize it will require forming a coalition on Capitol Hill of Republicans and conservative Democrats.

Signaling his willingness to make this happen, Nebraska Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson quickly announced his "wholehearted support" for the wage freeze as did Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-CT., chairman of the Senate's Government Affairs Committee.

Jamelle Bouie at American Prospect's Tapped called the pay freeze "pointless and self defeating."

"When you control for experience, gender, race, and total work hours - along with education - then government workers are paid 3.74 percent less than their private sector counterparts. Simply put, the federal employees aren't making a mint off of their association with the government, and freezing their pay does nothing more than take money out of their pockets and out of the economy."

Dean Baker, a leading U.S. economist said the freeze would mean "consumption would fall by $1 billion in 2011 and $2.5 billion in 2012. GDP will be about 0.0007 percent lower in 2011 and about 0.018 percent lower in 2012, implying drops in private sector employment in these years of 7,000 and 18,000 jobs, respectively."

Photo: Among the tens of thousands of jobs federal employees do is at the federal agency, NIOSH, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which conducts research and makes recommendations for the prevention of work-related injury and illness. (NIOSH/CC)

Republican attack on labor goes way beyond Congress

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 14:10:00 +0000

This article is part two of a series. Part one, "Republicans target labor," appeared last week.

After rereading last week's article on this subject, I realized that the coming attacks on labor are much more than big business's legislative program to roll back labor law. The Republican, tea party and corporate right-wing agenda is much broader than legislation.

During the height of the Great Depression, with millions unemployed, most of big business continued to rack up big profits. In this crisis we see and hear constant reports of record profits and record bonuses in the corporate suites and financial houses - while millions are unemployed and now threatened with the loss of even meager unemployment benefits. Another feature of the Great Depression was that big business used the crisis to attack workers' wages and living standards directly, cutting wages even while turning big profits. And exactly the same thing is happening again.

Last week the New York Times ran a story that described how three industrial unions, the Machinists, the Autoworkers and the Steelworkers were recently forced to take concessionary contracts from some companies, even though the manufacturers were making good profits.

In some cases, recent concession contracts even include a two-tier wage and benefit scheme. In other words, new hires take pay and benefit cuts that mean they make less than those working right next to them doing the same job, sometimes a great deal less. In some cases this second tier pay cut is even imposed on workers when they are recalled from layoffs, regardless of how much seniority they have with the company.

Let's face it: big business loves unemployment. They see unemployed workers as a reserve workforce that can be used as a club against the workers they employ. Don't want to take a cut in pay? There are plenty of hungry people waiting to take your job, they say. Don't want to pay big copays and deductibles for your health insurance? We can find plenty of people who will work without health care - and on and on.

This crisis has also seen a ramping up of union busting schemes, like the use of temporary workers to do union jobs. It's and old practice. Most new hires, even in a union shop, have to work a 30 to 90 day "probation" period before they can join the union and receive even starting union scale and benefits. In this scheme most of the new hires are worked up until just a day or two before ending their probation period - and then fired. And a new batch of probation workers is hired, allowing the company to keep a steady flow of workers without union protection.

All of this not only affects union workers, but also puts great downward pressure on all workers. As union workers well know, their wages and benefits set upward standards in local job markets. So when the top wages and conditions are weakened then companies can pay even lower wages overall. Times like these, with millions desperate and unemployed, are when companies also use wage theft schemes: paying sub-minimum wages, getting illegal kickbacks from workers for jobs, scheduling unpaid work times before and after regular paid time, and on and on.

Again, this is why it is in the interest of all the working-class people and their progressive allies to defend labor and the unions. This is why growing the unions and wining passage of the Employee Free Choice Act are critical fights for us all. Labor is moving aggressively to defend the unemployed and the progressive movements. Building bigger, broader coalitions and bigger and stronger unions, including new forms like workers centers and union committees even in shops without formal union recognition, are critical for the fights ahead. We all have a stake in defending labor and stopping the big business, ultra-right Republican onslaught on unions.

Dockers protest Del Monte union-busting

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 11:24:00 +0000

PHILADELPHIA - "No justice, no peace!" was the chant.

It echoed from the walls of Center City buildings here as members of International Longshoremen's Association Local 1291 and hundreds of supporters marched through downtown streets during a noontime rally Nov. 22. The dockworkers were protesting the decision by the Del Monte Fresh Produce Company to move its operations from a terminal where 1,291 union members work to a privately owned facility downriver in Gloucester, N.J., where the owner pays wages reportedly half the levels of the ILA contract.

Del Monte brings approximately 75 fruit shipments a year to the tri-state Port of Philadelphia. The company is cutting the jobs of at least 200 ILA members as a result of the move. According to media reports, Del Monte decided on the move despite government authorities' offer of $25 million in infrastructure improvements and additional free acreage for the existing terminal.

The members of Local 1291 were especially angered by the move since the union had offered concessions worth $5 million as a good-faith gesture. This did not stop the company from directing its fruit shipments to the Gloucester terminal on October 1.

The rally was organized with the support of the Friends and Families of Local 1291 and Philadelphia Jobs with Justice, and drew support from rank-and-file longshore workers from the ports of New York and Baltimore. The Friends and Families coalition includes a broad range of organizations including the Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO, the International Dockworkers Council, the International Transport Workers Federation, and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) on the West Coast.

The ILA has called for a boycott of Del Monte Fresh Produce of North America.

The Philadelphia rally was part of a planned national protest against Del Monte, scheduled to include actions at two Florida locations and in Galveston, Texas.

Following the rally, many ILA members joined a service at a local church calling for the extension of unemployment benefits. The service was organized by the Philadelphia Unemployment Project.

Photo: PW/Ben Sears

Labor journalists gather in Washington

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 04:19:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - Journalists who cover the labor movement, labor leaders and even a U.S. Department of Labor top official attended the International Labor Communication Association's annual awards ceremony here Nov. 19.

The People's World took Second Prize in the feature story category for John Wojcik's article Steeler Nation Fights its Way Back.

According to the judges, "Wojcik spoke with out-of-town fans who had made the trek from California to Pittsburgh for the game; it turns out, like many Steelers fans across the country, the family's patriarch had worked at the Homestead Mill until it was shuttered in 1989. Wojcik captures the pride these former steel workers felt in the work they did, the devastation of the mass layoffs, and their struggles since, working fast-food jobs for minimum wage. Wojcik's essay makes an eloquent argument for an industrial policy in America."

"I wondered why there were all these Steeler fan clubs across the country, more than most teams," Wojcik said. "When I was in Pittsburgh, I asked the question of these guys at the bar. It turned out that, because of the shutting of the mills, people scattered and there's this diaspora of people from that area who still love their hometown team."

During the awards ceremony, Wojcik told this reporter, "It really is an honor to be here with all these great writers, video makers, especially the other recipients. A lot of their work is incredible."

While to many the term "labor media" still brings to mind stodgy old union newsletters, the ILCA gathering demonstrated a greater vitality than most would imagine. Dozens of awards were given, for everything from publications of union locals - which seem to be taking on a new vitality - to worker-oriented radio, video and even internet-based spots.

A morning workshop dealt specifically with how the labor movement could get its message out via the new media, specifically social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

The communications director for the American Federation of Teachers, which hosted the conference, detailed how her union was able to counter the anti-teacher message of Waiting for Superman, the pro-charter school film.

Though Superman had a much higher marketing budget than An Inconvenient Truth, which was made by the same people and employed a similar public relations strategy, it "bombed," as AFT representative described it, at the box office. This was due to the online work of AFT, notably more through Facebook than the AFT's own site.

The labor press has become all the more important because the traditional, mainstream media has cut way back on its coverage of workers' struggles, said Carl Fillichio, the DOL official who addressed the gathering.

"I think that the New York Times is the last newspaper to have a full-time labor reporter," Fillichio said.

According to outgoing ILCA president Steve Stallone, the association is looking forward to its next national convention, to be held either in Chicago, San Francisco or Seattle.

As injuries soar, Sacramentans offer help to Hyatt's housekeepers

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 22:26:00 +0000

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - With brooms and mops held high, our group of 35 people, including the president of the Central Labor Council and religious leaders, marched into the Hyatt Hotel lobby. Our mission on Nov. 18 was to offer to help the severely overworked housekeepers clean their allotted number of rooms.

At the same time that we were carrying our brooms and mops into the Hyatt here in Sacramento, similar actions were taking place from Vancouver to Honolulu, Chicago, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Long Beach.

The Hyatt hotel chain is known among hotel workers as perhaps the worst of the national hotel corporations, which pay low wages, cut health benefits and demand more work than people can safely do. Our demonstration was a part of Unite Here!'s determination to do something about this treatment of hotel workers.

Of course, our offer to help the housekeepers was not enthusiastically received by management. But after a brief discussion, we felt we had made our point, and so ended our demonstration for that day. Further protests are planned until some kind of relief is given these workers.

In a 2010 study of hotel worker injuries in 50 hotels around the country, published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, housekeepers working in Hyatt Hotels had the highest injury rate of all hotels studied.

At some Hyatts, housekeepers must clean 30 rooms a day. That is double what is usually required. This workload means that a housekeeper may have as little as 15 minutes to clean a room - to make beds, change linens, clean the toilet, the bathtub and all other surfaces, to dust, vacuum and empty the trash. And of course the more rooms cleaned, the more exposure to the chemicals used by the cleaners.

A significant change in the hotel industry in the last decade, as these nationwide chains compete for business, is the upgrading of rooms and the addition of customer-pleasing amenities. An example of such amenities is the Hilton hotels' "serenity bed." The mattress alone is 12.5 inches thick and weighs 113 pounds. The linens for each bed weigh 16 pounds. A housekeeper who changes one serenity bed per room and cleans 15 rooms per day strips over 500 pounds of soiled linen and replaces it with 500 pounds of clean linen.

The sheets and blankets are tucked under the mattress, requiring the housekeeper to lift the heavy mattress at least eight times in the course of making one bed. As there is often more than one bed in a room, and housekeepers must often clean more than 15 rooms in a day, the workload can far exceed what I've just described.

A few common sense solutions would make a huge difference. For example, fitted sheets would save much lifting of heavy mattresses, and replacing rags with long-handled mops and dusters would mean not getting down on hands and knees to do the floor or climbing on the bathtub to clean high surfaces.

Another study, also published by the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, found hotel workers had an injury rate 25 percent higher than all other service workers. Housekeepers had the highest rate of injury, 50 percent greater than other hotel workers.

Ninety-one percent of housekeepers say they have endured work-related pain. Two out of three visit their doctor regularly for relief of pain. Two-thirds regularly take pain medication on the job. And of course the fear of losing one's job is always there, to keep the worker from complaining.

Nearly all housekeepers are women, and the majority are immigrants and women of color.

Unite Here! has requested that the five largest hotel chains in the U.S. provide any study or analysis they may have conducted on worker health and safety or on the prevention of injuries.

So far, the union has received no answer.

Photo: Unite Here! Local 49.

NFL lockout threat is about greed, union leaders say

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 15:13:00 +0000

Sparks are flying between National Football League players and their union on one side and NFL owners on the other as the threat of a lockout looms for the 2011-2012 season.

The league's collective bargaining agreement expires in March and the players and owners must agree on a new set of rules governing what percentages of earnings will be spent on salaries, stadiums and other NFL costs.

Manny Herrmann, online mobilization coordinator for the AFL-CIO, wrote in an e-mail message that if a lockout occurs "players won't play, fans won't have a football season and local economies that rely on football will be devastated leaving more people out of work."

What it comes down to is one word: "Greed," he said.

It's estimated a lockout would impact 150,000 jobs and cause more than $140 million in lost revenue in each and every NFL city, some $4.5 billion across the nation. Stadium employees will be jobless, and police officers as well as people employed by sports bars, restaurants, hotels and others will all be affected in the event of a lockout.

"The NFL and team owners don't care what a lockout costs communities and fans - they only care about their own profits," notes Herrmann. "The NFL's set to make billions of dollars, even without a football season. But if they do that, players and fans lose."

He says the NFL system is rigged because owners have already set aside $900 million that should've gone to players' benefits, reserving the money to cover their costs for locking players out. They have also signed TV contracts that will pay out billions of dollars even if no football is played in 2012.

In order to save football next year, to save jobs, the AFL-CIO and supporters are urging people to sign an online petition demanding that the NFL not lock out its players.

Among other things, the NFL wants players to accept a longer season next year - an 18-game schedule instead of the current 16.

The union is looking for a raise and opposes an expanded schedule, noting players are concerned about the further strain on what are already short careers. An average football player will work for only three and a half seasons. Yet the health impacts from playing those seasons can include a lifetime of pain or discomfort and even brain trauma that studies show lead to depression and suicide.

Yet, while the owners want more games, they are offering less-generous health care and other benefits.

If both parties can't come to terms by March the owners will lock the players out of team facilities, meaning no NFL football until further notice.

The players say they will seek legal action against the league for lost wages and broken contractual promises. But federal law prevents a union from suing its employer during negotiations.

So the NFL Players Union is making a controversial move. DeMaurice Smith, Players Union executive director, has been on a two-month tour of team locker rooms, handing out voting cards and receiving unanimous votes in return to decertify the union. More than half of all NFL teams have voted to decertify from the Players Union, most of them voting unanimously.

The move raises eyebrows, but union leaders say they can only sue the NFL during this process if they are technically not a union.

"When the NFL and the owners have taken aggressive action against the players, or they have taken action to restrict employee rights, the union and the players have decertified to fight for those rights in the courts," George Atallah, assistant executive director of the Players Union, told Yahoo Sports. "The owners can't view players as their automobiles - if they break down, you can just replace them with somebody else," he said.

Both Smith and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell have been to the White House to seek support in the event of a lockout.

As of Sept. 30, the NFL had spent around $1.1 million this year on federal government lobbying, more than triple the union's $340,000. And unlike the union, the NFL also has a political action committee, which made almost $600,000 in campaign donations in this year's elections.

Legal and sports analysts say there is little chance Congress would pass legislation that would affect the labor dispute. What's more likely is the threat of congressional involvement having some impact, they add.

Photo: Mr. Usaji CC 2.0

U.S. official: We need independent labor media

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 14:52:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - The mainstream media has become so biased against working people that even a federal agency can't get its message out, says a senior Department of Labor official.

President Obama's Labor Department has an impressive list of accomplishments, but most of the media doesn't bother to report on them, Carl Fillichio, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis's senior adviser for public affairs and communications, told the annual gathering of the International Labor Communications Association.

Referring to the midterm elections, Fillichio said, "Why we fared the way we did three weeks ago is because things weren't explained enough to people. There is a great need for people to get the full story."

The role of labor media is therefore all the more precious, he continued. In many cases, the only way his department can get its accomplishments known is through the independent media.

"We battle every single day when we try to put something out," he said. "The Washington Post, the New York Times, cable television" and others want to focus only on the nuts and bolts of policy issues. "Nobody is really telling the true story about how this is going to affect real people in real time in real ways."

Fillichio announced at the meeting that he had hired a staff person specifically to deal with labor media, and then proceeded to give his name, e-mail address and phone number to everyone in the audience.

The message was appropriate for the crowd. ILCA, with nearly 500 members, is the professional association of newspapers, websites and other forms of media published by labor unions or about the labor movement across the country. (The People's World is a member.)

In making his case, the official listed Labor Department accomplishments that the vast majority of Americans have never heard about.

The department has, since Solis took over, hired 720 bilingual grievance personnel, issued the largest OSHA fine in history, and, in a move unprecedented in U.S. history, completely shut down a mine because of worker fatalities.

"We believe that a worker doesn't have to die for a paycheck," the federal official said.

More than anything else, however, the biggest accomplishment of Solis's department so far, Fillichio told the crowd, was to bring it back up to pre-Bush, year 2000 standards.

"That's pathetic," he said, "but we gotta brag about that, because the previous administration brought it so low." He noted that "the previous Labor secretary, Elaine Chao, was the only Bush cabinet member who was there in the same department for eight years." He argued that over the eight years of the Bush administration, the employees and the department itself had been "de-souled."

"Here's something revolutionary," he said, speaking of the new department's accomplishments. "It was actually called 'revolutionary.' Hispanic workers are killed more than others on the job, so we held a Hispanic health and safety conference."

Fillichio is proud of the initiative, but said it was "ridiculous" that it could be called "revolutionary" or "historic," asking, "That was the first time an administration held such a conference?"

The Department of Labor will continue fighting for working people, he said, and will assess how to best do so given the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives. Solis and her staff will focus especially on enforcing existing labor law, he said.

"We cannot depend on those other people - the traditional media - to get that message out," Fillichio concluded.

Image: Fillichio - Dan Margolis/PW

Amy Dean: Labor must build "to challenge power"

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 12:27:00 +0000

ST. LOUIS - To re-build the American labor movement we “can’t use the same tired old strategies and tactics,” Amy B. Dean told union members and community activists here at the Friends of the People’s World 7th Annual ‘Working Class Media & Democracy’ forum.

“We have to do things fundamentally different,” she continued. “We have to build a fundamentally different capacity and deal with what it takes to challenge power in fundamental ways.”

Dean is the co-author of ‘A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement.’ She has appeared on CNN, NPR and Good Morning America, and her articles have been printed in dozens of publications across the country.

The forum, held at the Operating Engineers’ Local 148 Union Hall, raised over $4,000 for the Friends of the People’s World, and was attended by members of the state workers’ union (Communication Workers of America local 6355), CWA 6300, Operating Engineers’ Local 148, the Steelworkers union, the Service Employees International Union, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, and the United Auto Workers.

According to Dean, “the only way that we build power is by building the trade union movement.” Additionally, though organized labor has seen a steep decline in union membership over the past 30 years, unions still remain the most powerful peoples’ organization in the country.

Reflecting on the recent mid-term elections, Dean said, “this is a sobering, not somber moment.”

“We should use this moment as a teachable moment,” she continued. Referring to President Obama, she said the first lesson we should learn is: “There are limits to charismatic leadership. It is not a substitute for building the movement.”

She said, “We have to build the political organizations that are year-round and long-term. We need to keep an electoral-political apparatus active year-round.”

“The building blocks for progressive change is local organizing that impacts organizing on a federal level. However, if local communities aren’t organized on the ground change doesn’t happen,” Dean concluded.

While the recent mid-term elections were sobering, Dean emphasized the positive accomplishments of organized labor. She said, “the labor movement of today has a better coordinated electoral machine than ever before. No one can put the troops on the ground like the labor movement can.”

Additionally, she said, “at a local level progressive are finding their voice. However, we need to learn from each other and share best practices.”

Dean suggested that labor and community organizations partner to do research and development, build deep, long-term coalitions, and organize around aggressive political action.

Ultimately, she concluded, “We have to build the political space for people to come together that translates into public policy. We have to build formal mechanisms for relationship building, and we need to be more serious about leadership development.”

Photo by Mark Esters, CWA 6355 / PW

Trumka: more jobs solve deficit crisis

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 12:07:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka is strongly reiterating the position that creation of more jobs will increase revenues and thus solve the nation's deficit and debt crisis.

In a lengthy telephone press conference on Nov. 16, the federation chief also strongly rejected plans put forward by the co-chairs of President Obama's deficit-cutting commission.

Co-chairs Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson want to stanch the flow of federal red ink by raising the retirement age, cutting home mortgage interest deductions, taxing health care, freezing federal worker pay for three years and a wide range of other measures - but without tax increases.

The 18-member panel, including former SEIU President Andrew Stern, is supposed to send Obama a deficit-cutting package by Dec. 1, but needs 14 votes to do so. If it votes for a plan and Obama approves it or amends it, the lame-duck session of Congress will vote on the package. That means battling the Bowles-Simpson plan is a key item on labor's legislative agenda for the closing days of the 111^th Congress.

"Solving the deficit crisis doesn't start with the report by the deficit commission," said Trumka. He called the co-chairs' blueprint "a millstone," around the middle class.

Trumka admitted the deficit must eventually be dealt with, but said that should occur only when unemployment declines to 4%-5%. "We have a mid-term or long-term deficit crisis. We have a short-term jobs crisis" with joblessness at 9.6%, he declared.

To help the jobless, Trumka and AFL-CIO Legislative Director Bill Samuel said the labor federation would push for four key measures during the lame-duck session: Extending unemployment benefits - particularly for the long-term jobless, passage of the Dream Act to help high-school-graduate immigrants become citizens if they serve in the military or attend college, extending tax credits only for the middle class - not the wealthy, and legislation against Chinese currency manipulation.

And in answer to a reporter's question Trumka added the Employee Free Choice Act to the legislative list, saying it too would create jobs. That measure, to help level the playing field between workers and bosses in organizing and bargaining, was long atop labor's legislative agenda. A presumed Senate GOP filibuster killed it.

Of the other measures, only the jobless benefits bill is likely to get consideration in the lame-duck session - and another GOP filibuster may stall or kill it. Without it, Trumka said, 800,000 of the 14 million unemployed would lose benefits by the end of November and 2 million would lose them by the end of this year.

Down the road, he added, other job creation measures should include infrastructure improvements, aid to state and local governments, renewal of the Federal Aviation Administration and the Clean Water Act and "green energy" legislation. All those measures were either marooned or sharply cut before the 111^th Congress took its election recess.

Trumka did not directly say what the fed's position would be if the Obama White House agreed to a possible compromise on the tax cut extension: A 1-year extension for everyone, including the wealthy, and a permanent extension for the middle class.

He called the tax cuts for the rich "TARP 2," referring to the successful - but extremely unpopular - Troubled Assets Relief Program that aided financial institutions, plus GM and Chrysler in the depths of the recession.

"It's absolutely insane in these tough times that some people want to continue the George W. Bush giveaways to millionaires," he said. Such tax cuts for the rich, he added, "don't create jobs."

Pushed about what the fed would do if Dec. 31 rolls around with no action and the middle-class tax cuts expire, too, Trumka replied: "I'm always willing to fight for good policy - and to take the consequences of fighting for good policy."

Photo: greenforall.org CC 2.0

Bad news for workers: Kline hates EFCA, opposes tougher OSHA penalties

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 11:15:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - John Kline, the Republican who will take over the House Education and Labor Committee next year, hates the Employee Free Choice Act and opposes tougher penalties for job safety and health violations.

According to a review of his statements, the representative from a district south of Minnesota's Twin Cities will be dubious to hostile towards causes pushed by workers and their unions. The AFL-CIO's 2010 legislative scorecard said Kline went 0-for-12 on votes on the labor federation's top issues so far this year.

Kline is the top Republican on the committee, which for years has been one of the most-polarized in Congress. Present chairman George Miller, D-Calif., leads its pro-worker Democrats. Its GOP contingent is heavily pro-business. Some of its Southern Republicans are virulently anti-union.

Kline, a close ally of incoming Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, is no fan of the Employee Free Choice Act. Kline also opposes project labor agreements for federal construction and the new majority-of-those-voting rules for airline and railroad workers seeking union recognition, rules promulgated by the National Mediation Board.

"There's nothing free about it, there's no choice about it. It is one of the biggest misnomers in all of government," Kline says of EFCA, which never came up for a vote this year in the House panel. Miller was waiting for the Senate to pass it first.

But Senate Labor Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa - who will hold that post in the next Congress - never got the 60 votes he needed to stop a planned Senate GOP filibuster against it. It had been labor's top specific legislative cause.

That didn't stop Kline from raising the specter of congressional passage of the Employee Free Choice Act sometime between now and Jan. 3, when the GOP takes over the House - and he takes over the House panel.

In typical Republican language, Kline declared in an August op-ed that one key provision, "'card check,' would replace a secret ballot election with a public sign-up process for workers deciding whether to join a union. As a result, the bill would drive up costs on business, increase workplace conflict, and lead to fewer jobs...Just yesterday, President Obama promised labor bosses [sic] he would remain in the fight to pass card check." Kline worried that labor would try to enact EFCA in the current lame-duck session of Congress.

His priorities will be very different, Kline said the day after the election gave the GOP House control, on Jan. 3 and for the next two years. "Because quality schools are essential to our economic strength, our efforts will include an emphasis on education reform to ensure all students have the opportunity to thrive in the 21^st century," he said.

That doesn't mean renewing GOP President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind education law, Kline said earlier. He wants a "top-to-bottom review" of it because he believes Bush's law produces too much federal control of local schools.

His other top priorities for the panel are: "Giving employers the certainty, flexibility, and freedom to create jobs, conducting robust oversight of education and workforce programs ... "

Kline was also dead set against improving the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which has changed little since it was approved in 1970. Its fines are still low and if a job safety accident kills a worker, the employer can only be cited for a misdemeanor.

Workers and unions - and survivors of workers who died on the job - argued for higher fines, tougher enforcement and making deaths on the job felonies punishable by years in jail. So did the Obama administration. Kline says "no."

"Proposed changes to the OSH Act...will drive up costs and litigation for employers - all of which would make it more difficult to create jobs when our economy needs them most," he said at a hearing.

Mine safety is another matter. Kline - and other panel Republicans - felt another mine safety law was not the answer to the Upper Big Branch coal mine blast earlier this year. His solution was more enforcement and targeting the "bad applies."

"Cecil Roberts, the head of the Mine Workers, testified 95% of mine operators are trying to do the right thing, but some small number of bad actors are flouting the law," Kline said at that same hearing. "This is unacceptable.

"The Department of Labor's Inspector General confirmed what MSHA itself told us: The agency never enforced the law to its fullest extent. This, too, is unacceptable. Both of these breakdowns in the system must be addressed. But neither can be solved with legislation alone. Tougher laws do us no good if bad actors are permitted to flout the law and federal authorities choose not to enforce it. Changes to sharpen the tools in MSHA's toolbox can prod the agency to step up its enforcement," he added.

Photo: PW/Marilyn Bechtel

Workers fight back vs. wage theft

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 06:49:00 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO - Victoria Aquino's life has changed dramatically because she and others are fighting back against the wage theft that is rampant among low-wage workers, and especially among young workers, immigrant workers and workers of color.

On the job as many as 13 to 16 hours a day, on call 24 hours but paid for just 8, Aquino used to be the sole caregiver for half a dozen patients living in a small care home. "I was just like a prisoner," she told low wage workers and their supporters who gathered on the steps of City Hall Nov. 18 to mark the National Day of Action Against Wage Theft and to pledge a stepped-up struggle for just treatment of all workers.

Now, Aquino works just the eight hours she's paid for - though she says her employer still needs to hire more workers - thanks to the struggle she waged with help from the Filipino Community Center, La Raza Centro Legal, and the Women's Employment Rights Clinic at Golden Gate University.

Speakers noted that some form of wage theft affects 68 percent of U.S. low-wage workers, with workers losing, on average, over $2,600 a year or about 15 percent of their annual earnings. It takes different forms among retail workers, caregivers, construction and restaurant workers, day laborers and others. Common forms include not paying minimum wage or overtime, forcing workers to work off the books, misclassifying employees as independent contractors, and not paying them at all.

Speakers also pointed out that wage theft hurts families, too, and creates unfair competition for responsible employers, while stopping it is an important form of economic stimulus, providing working families with money they spend in their communities.

Donna Levitt of San Francisco's Office of Labor Standards Enforcement said her agency has collected about $4 million in back wages for some 2,500 workers since the city's minimum wage law took effect six years ago. "San Francisco is a national model for strong labor laws; we work very hard to be a national model for strong labor law enforcement," she told the crowd.

Arrayed on the City Hall steps, and sharing their stories from the podium, were workers from La Raza Centro Legal's Day Labor Program, the Chinese Progressive Association, Filipino Community Center, Young Workers United, and others making up the recently-formed Progressive Workers Alliance.

Joining them were several San Francisco supervisors and their representatives, as well as speakers from unions in the city, including SEIU and Unite Here!

The Alliance is proposing a Low-Wage Worker Bill of Rights including job creation, fighting wage theft, promoting responsible employers, protecting social services, and equal treatment for all workers.

Actions were also taking place across the country. In Houston, Texas, a "Justice Bus" was slated to stop at local businesses allegedly engaging in wage theft. In Memphis, Tenn., the Workers Interfaith Network planned to fill a shopping cart with items workers can't afford because of wage theft, and stage a dramatization of an employer taking a string of 130 $20 bills from a worker's pocket, representing the average annual amount taken from workers through wage theft.

In El Paso, Texas, the Paso del Norte Civil Rights Project was holding a "Worst Employer Awards" to highlight the area's worst violators of workers' rights, while in Albany, N.Y., Make the Road New York planned a press conference in the state capitol to press passage of a state anti-wage-theft law.

During a Nov. 17 press conference, Kim Bobo, executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice and coordinator of the National Day of Action, said wage theft is a national epidemic robbing workers of billions of dollars. "This Thanksgiving, as a nation we are struggling with how to boost the economy," Bobo said. "What better way to stimulate the economy, put more money back into neighborhood businesses, than to assure that workers are paid all their wages?"

More information on Interfaith Worker Justice's campaign against wage theft is available at www.iwj.org.

Photo: PW/Marilyn Bechtel

Picket line chants tell worker's stories

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 09:47:00 +0000

Health care workers at four Spectrum nursing homes in Connecticut have been on strike since April 15. Over 100 workers and supporters rallied at Spectrum's Birmingham facility in Derby on November 13. The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that the strike is the result of Spectrum's unfair labor practices, and has asked the judge to order that workers receive compensation with interest for lost wages and benefits.

The rally was livened with picket line chants, which reflect conditions on the job. The chants refered to the chronic short-staffing and compulsory (mandated) overtime:

Monday, Tuesday -- working short
Wednesday, Thursday -- working short
Friday, Saturday -- working short
All day Sunday -- working short
Disrespected -- all the time!
Mandated -- all the time!

Another chant reflects the unity of the workers, their determination to win, and their confidence in their union, New England Health Care Employees District 1199, SEIU.

Hey Hey, what do you say? 1199 is here to stay!
Housekeeping, what do you say? 1199 is here to stay!
CNAs, what do you say? 1199 is here to stay!
Dietary, what do you say? 1199 is here to stay!
For our children what do you say? 1199 is here to stay!
For our residents, what do you say? 1199 is here to stay!

Speaking at the rally, District 1199 President Carmen Boudier expressed optimism that the workers will prevail. But she warned that, having been on the picket line through a long, hot summer, the workers would now face winter conditions, with court hearings not scheduled until January.

Boudier will be receiving the People's World Amistad Award at a program Sunday, Dec 5 at 4PM at Hillhouse High School in New Haven. For tickets call 203-634-8664.

Photo: Art Perlo

Republicans target labor

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 13:18:00 +0000

Before the dust had settled on the 2010 elections, the Chamber of Commerce, the corporate-secret-donor political action committees and the far right began to move into attack mode against the labor movement. After all, they expect a good return on the hundreds of millions of dollars they spent buying Congress.

First up comes an issue right out of the Republican's second Contract on America, called Pledge to America. "We will fight for the rights of workers and oppose 'card check' schemes that put Washington union bosses before individuals' right to a secret ballot."

Big business and the corporate far right declared class war on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) from the day it was introduced. It was one of their worst nightmares going into the 2008 elections. Instead of the company, card check allows workers to make the choice of having a secret ballot or signing up a majority to form a union. Big business knows that workers would often choose card check because it speeds up the process of getting a union and curtails the ability of the companies to intimidate employees .

This is a credible threat now that Republicans control 20 state legislatures compared to 7 before the 2010 elections. In particular the right-wing blogs are crowing about the Republican take-over in the industrial states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin. (They call them rust-belt states.) These are seen by the anti-union crowd as key states to take initiatives against card check. For those who have doubts about the right-wing's intentions on this, keep in mind that already in the 2010 elections the states of Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Utah passed constitutional amendments banning card check even if the company agrees to the process. These ballot initiatives were used to help turn out the vote for Republican candidates and were well funded.

We can also expect this crowd to initiate the same anti-union campaigns that they unveil after every Republican election victory. Right-to-work (for less) laws are already moving in several states with more to come. And you can be sure that laws to take away prevailing wage provisions in public contracts will follow at both the state and federal level with the new Republican dominated House in Congress. These laws currently mandate that building projects financed by public tax dollars pay all workers on a project the union wage scale prevalent in the area. (Workers compensation laws are also a favorite corporate target.)

Perhaps the greatest threat to labor will be the efforts of big business to pass legislation requiring authorization from every union member to spend union money on political activities. The Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision allowed the free, undisclosed, flow of corporate money into the election process. It was argued as if this would equalize the money flow from corporations and labor. What a joke!

Even so, immediately the Chamber of Commerce and others like the infamous Union Facts group began a campaign to hamstring the unions with laws requiring permission from every union member. Now we can expect this campaign to intensify. The corporate right and the Republicans are very aware of the tremendous political action and get-out-the-vote efforts of labor. More than anything they fear the growing political independence of labor and its ability to turn out votes for candidates and issues.

Labor's growing role in building mass coalitions is critical to the progressive movement. Labor has intensified its focus on concerns that go far beyond trade union problems. Labor increasingly leads fights on broader working-class and people's issues. It is incumbent on the rest of the progressive movements to pay attention to these attacks on labor and rally in their defense. The rightwing cannot be allowed to separate out labor for special attack.

It's time for all progressives to organize against these attacks on labor. If labor is weakened all movements for change will suffer and our coalitions will surely be diminished.

Photo: From "'Right to Work Laws--Low Wage Scheme," Economic Outlook, January 1955, CIO Education Department. (Tobias Higbie/CC)

Shop Talk - Hollywood, jobs and jail

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Stubborn joblessness persists

Businesses reported they created 159,000 jobs in September, the government said, but it wasn't enough to lower the unemployment rate from 9.6 percent, which it hit the third straight month in a row.

While the gains were the biggest in five months, they were in low-paying positions including temps (up 35,000), health care (up 24,000), big box department stores (up 28,000) and fast food places and bars (up 24,000). Factories lost 7,000 jobs in September and in construction, the unemployment rate is at 17.3 percent.

Government shed workers: Local governments fired 14,000 and the federal government dropped the last 564,000 temporary census takers in September.

Piedmont goes union

In one of the first union wins under new federal rules that make it easier for unions to be recognized at airlines, the Communication Workers of America won the right on Nov. 5 to represent 2,867 fleet and passenger service agents at Piedmont Airlines.

The union won 1,107 votes out of 1,808 ballots cast, with 638 votes for no union, 40 for the Machinists, two for the Teamsters and 21 for other unions. The new federal rules require just a simple majority of ballots cast, not a majority of all eligible voters.

"Piedmont used every anti-union trick in the book. Management held forced captive audience meetings, and had supervisors tear up union materials," according to CWA President Larry Cohen.

AFSCME Prez to retire

Gerald McEntee, who as president of AFSCME heads one of the nation's most politically active and powerful unions, has announced he will retire at the union's next convention, in a year and a half.

"My term is over in - what is it? A year and a half? I don't intend to run again," he said. "I think at 74, that's long enough. I've been in unions - how long? - 52 years."

Iranian bus drivers jailed

The Iranian government broke a promise to release Mansour Osanloo, the jailed president of Tehran's bus drivers union. Instead it arrested other bus drivers and union activists and is holding them without charges, people in contact with the union report. The International Transport Workers Federation has filed protests with the Iranian government.

Osanloo was jailed three years ago when he refused to cede control of the union to leaders hand picked by the government. In brief comments smuggled out of Iran electronically, he said this week: "I didn't do anything wrong. And I don't want to be a puppet."

Stop stringing us along!

Earlier this week, members of Working America, the AFL-CIO's community affiliate, delivered thousands of job applications and signatures on jobs petitions - tied with long pieces of string - to incoming House Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) district office in Troy, urging him to back extension of jobless benefits during November's lame duck session of Congress.

The strings are reminders of the distance between what politicians like Boehner have promised and what they actually propose - job destroying measures like tax cuts for the rich that take money from local communities and transfer it into the pockets of the wealthy.

"We need politicians to stop stringing us along," said Ohio Working America member Marvin Bohn. "Unemployment benefits paid for the gas I needed to look for work when I was laid off, and they put money into our communities that supports businesses and creates jobs."

Hyatt housekeepers sue in 12 cities

Customers appreciate the clean rooms and nicely made beds they find when they check into a luxury hotel. Getting the room that way, however, requires back-breaking and dangerous work say workers at Hyatt hotels.

On Nov. 9 housekeepers at 12 Hyatt hotels across the U.S., with help from the union, Unite Here, filed injury complaints with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

Workers are asking OSHA to direct hotels to use fitted sheets to reduce the number of times they must lift 100-pound mattresses to tuck in sheets, provide long-handled mops and dusters, so workers do not have to get down on their hands and knees to clean the floors or climb bathtubs to reach high surfaces and to set reasonable room quotas, so workers no longer have to rush to finish rooms, often slipping on wet bathroom floors and tripping over furniture.

In a press conference call on Nov. 9 housekeepers reported being required to clean as many as 30 rooms a day. "After surgery and months of physical therapy, I am still in pain," said Maria Carmen Dominquez, who worked at the Grand Hyatt San Antonio as a room attendant before injuring a tendon and permanently debilitating her shoulder. "I am in pain any time I lift my arm, even just to get dressed or brush my daughter's hair."

A win for dealers at Wynn Casino

Three years after voting to join a union, dealers at the casino in Wynn Las Vegas last week ratified a collective bargaining agreement, the first-ever union contract for dealers in Las Vegas.

With the contract, the 600 Wynn dealers, who are members of Transport Workers Local 721, now have voice on the job. They are no longer "at-will" employees who can be fired at any time, and management no longer has the ability to make arbitrary decisions and alter work policies on a whim.

AFTRA, SAG reach agreements

On Nov. 8 the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Screen Actors Guild reached a tentative agreement with motion picture and TV producers on new television and feature film contracts.

The workers' top priority was an increase in pension and health care benefits. The tentative deal includes a 10 percent increase in the current employer contributions paid to the AFTRA Health and Retirement Funds and Screen Actors Guild Pension and Health Plans. This represents the largest dollar value increase to the plans under these contracts, since the plans were founded, and is the largest percentage increase to the plans in more than two decades.

Paul names anti-union big-wig

In another sign that the new Republicans going to Washington intend to take aim at unions, Senator-elect Rand Paul of Kentucky has appointed Doug Stafford, vice president of the cleverly-named National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, as his chief of staff.

American Rights at Work describes the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation as part of "the country's oldest organization dedicated solely to destroying unions."

Photo: House Speaker-in-waiting John Boehner of Ohio, turns his back on workers and their families. Alex Brandon/AP

Stress at work can make you sick!

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 13:39:00 +0000

PEORIA, Ill. (PAI) - A third of U.S. workers feel often or always stressed by their jobs, and such jobs cause not only mental problems, but also physical and even financial woes - for employers as well as for workers.

According to the most recent General Social Survey by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center, some 13 percent of workers find their jobs are always stressful and another 21 percent find their jobs are often stressful. That's 34 percent, total.

But working for unreasonable or incompetent bosses isn't merely tough on emotions, adds British scientist Nadia Wager of the Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College. It can lead to serious health woes.

Besides depression and anxiety, such employees face a higher incidence of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, headaches and danger to pregnancies, she says.

"Supervisors who are untrusting, disrespectful and practice favoritism have the most potential to raise employees' blood pressure," Wager wrote in "Discover" magazine. "Sustained elevations in blood pressure throughout the working day are likely to degrade the cardiovascular system."

Suppressing anger is no answer either, adds St. Louis University researcher Robert Nicholson. His colleagues at the university's School of Medicine found that withholding frustrations can trigger headaches for those susceptible to this malady.

"Companies treat workers as commodities rather than investments," says economist Howard Rosen of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a D.C. think tank. All this is costly, too - to business as well as to workers, and in other nations as well as in the U.S. For example, Australia's economy loses $730 million a year to job-linked depression alone, says the University of Melbourne's report. It measured the price tag from a total of lost productive time, government-subsidized health care and medications, and replacement costs.

That figure underestimates the total cost, said Melbourne Professor Tony La Montagne. He noted the difficulty in estimating the costs from job insecurity, sexual harassment, bullying and related factors.

"Employers would be the major beneficiaries of reducing job strain over the long term, because the greatest costs fall on employers due to lost productivity and employee replacement," he added.

Elsewhere, the Boston research firm of Kinder, Lyndenberg, Domini and Associates (KLD), has compiled data for 19 years about the gap between workers' wages and executive pay. That's relevant to stress on the job, too.

The larger the disparity between management and rank-and-file pay, the more likely managers are "to objectify lower-level employees," according to analysis for KLD done by Professors Jennifer George of Rice University, Sreedhari Desar of Harvard and Arthur Brief of the University of Utah.

Their result: "Moral disengagement" and an "exaggerated power asymmetry" that contributes to people with power being difficult or bad-tempered towards those with less power. Such a loss of balance and perspective, the three professors said, intensities as pay gaps continue to grow between CEOs and their labor forces.

Such illogical or arrogant management approaches could help explain why corporations, in the last two years, have laid off far more workers than the economic downturn justifies.

For instance, the Great Recession is generally thought to have started in December, 2007, after which real aggregate output in the U.S., gauged by Gross Domestic Product, declined by about 2.5 percent. But companies over that same period cut their workforces by 6 percent.

"Corporations are making out like bandits," commented New York Times columnist Bob Herbert. He quoted Northeastern University economist Andrew Sum as saying this lingering economic crisis "has seen the most lopsided gains in corporate profits relative to real wages and salaries in our history."

That's an observation that could make most workers sick.

Photo: Stressed out, cc 2.0

Restaurant workers celebrate “first birthday”

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 16:28:00 +0000

DEARBORN, Mich - The people on the picket line I approached this past Friday were acting as if a party was going to break out.

Why such enthusiasm on this windy, sub-freezing Friday evening?

It was the one-year "birthday" of the Restaurant Opportunities Center of Michigan protests at Dearborn's Andiamo restaurant.

Instead of treating the day as a reminder of twelve months without a final victory, ROC-MI took the opportunity to celebrate the unity and solidarity that have sustained them by having a birthday party.

But before the cake could be eaten, people naturally had to pay their dues. That entailed joining 100 people in one of the more rousing demonstrations of those that have been held weekly for the past year at the Dearborn restaurant.

In the past year ROC-MI, the workers at Andiamo and their growing numbers of supporters have chalked up a number of important victories. This past August the National Labor Relations Board found that Andiamo had illegally cut the hours of, intimidated and retaliated against servers and other restaurant workers in seeking to prevent them from participating in a lawsuit and protest against workplace violations.

Then in September, the campaign was given a major boost when the United Auto Workers called for a boycott of the restaurant.

At Friday's demonstration, Andiamo worker Naome Debebe recalled her feelings from the initial protest, one year ago.

"I remember how afraid I was the first day I showed up for a protest. I saw hundreds of people lined up," she said. "It gave me comfort.

"I was working as a server hired in for $2.65 an hour. I walk in the door and they tell me I have to work in the kitchen for $2.65 an hour. I paid over $100 for my uniform. At the end of the day I look behind me and the cook has been there 70 hours for the week without getting paid overtime. There's a woman next to him that has been experiencing sexual harassment. No one's doing anything about it.

"When we got together and stood up for our rights, they fired us, reduced our hours, put video cameras and told us we can't talk about this."

It was those violations that resulted in the NLRB victory.

Image: John Rummel/PW

Al Przydzial, assistant director of United Auto Workers Region 1A, told this reporter that in light of the recent elections it was "more important than ever to show support to these workers. Sometimes people forget that [Detroit] is not just hockey town, this is union town.

"We're not going to give up the fight. As President Barack Obama said, we took a shellacking but we are bouncing back and we are going to continue to fight. We're determined to help these workers all we can."

From the beginning of ROC's campaign, Pastor John Pitts Jr., the president of Metropolitan Detroit Interfaith Workers for Justice and a retiree from UAW Local 600, has been a consistent picketer and supporter. He told the crowd that, on this anniversary, "I'm a soldier in the army of the lord. I'm going to fight a good fight, I'm going to keep the faith, I'm going to finish my course, I'm not going to quit until justice is served."

Afterwards, everyone made the short trek to the New Place Lounge for cake, courtesy of UAW Region 1A, food and the drink of choice.

A good way to end an evening, the workers said, a great way to celebrate one year of struggle.

Lame-duck Congress must act on jobs, union leaders say

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 10:59:00 +0000

Union leaders are stepping up their call on Congress and the Obama administration to push through, quickly, legislation to create millions of jobs in construction and manufacturing.

Terry O'Sullivan, president of the half-million-member Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA), said, "There will be much talk about a dramatic shift in the aftermath of the 2010 midterm elections. But here's what hasn't changed: Nearly 1 in 10 American workers is unemployed. In the construction industry - a key driver of our economy --nearly 1 in 5 workers, or 1.5 million men and women, are jobless."

O'Sullivan called on Congress to approve the long-stalled Surface Transportation Act to put tens of thousands of workers back to work building bridges, roads and highways.

The surface transportation bill, most of it funded by a federal tax on gasoline, is part of a long tradition of bipartisan support for such initiatives, O'Sullivan pointed out.

"Republican Dwight Eisenhower led the charge to build our interstate highway system," he said. "Democrat Franklin Roosevelt made possible the engineering feat of the Hoover Dam. Republican Abraham Lincoln spearheaded the first transcontinental railroad."

Congress will convene in a post-election lame-duck session that could approve this bill blocked by the Republicans.

Labor and its allies are also demanding that the lame-duck session approve another extension of unemployment benefits as the jobless crisis intensifies. Yet the Republicans, emboldened by their victories in the Nov. 2 elections, are already pushing for a $100 billion budget cut targeting vital human needs programs like food stamps and unemployment compensation.

U.S. investment in critical infrastructure "has dropped below 2 percent, said O'Sullivan. Twenty-seven percent of U.S. bridges are substandard. A third of highways are in poor or mediocre condition. Nearly 2,000 dams are high hazard, threatening loss of life and property.

He also cited a crisis in the nation's water systems "due to deteriorating pipes and billions of gallons of sewage over-flows into clean water."

O'Sullivan called, as well, for allocating billions to build or repair schools and other public buildings and rebuild the nation's electric power grid.

LIUNA has one of the labor movement's most dynamic movements to push for major public works and public service jobs programs, with spirited demonstrations in Indiana, Maryland, Colorado, Connecticut, Kentucky and Pennsylvania in the months leading up to the elections. Now LIUNA is urging an outpouring of e-mail messages to the House and Senate demanding passage of the surface transportation bill.

United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard said "Republicans got it wrong" in interpreting the Nov. 2 elections as a mandate to "demolish everything produced over the last two years - health care reform, Wall Street re-regulation, and economic stimulus." He added, "The nation wants construction, not destruction. Voters want cooperation not gridlock."

He cited an April poll by the Alliance for American Manufacturing that "creating jobs and, specifically, generating manufacturing jobs, as well as strengthening manufacturing in America were by far their top three concerns" outpacing issues like reducing the federal deficit. "Switching tax breaks from corporations that off-shore to those that create jobs in the United States seems like a no-brainer."

Gerard called for an "immediate industrial retrofitting program to create good, green jobs updating buildings and industries with energy-saving equipment."

In an op-ed posted on the Truthout website, Jeanne Mirer, president of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild, urged President Obama to create by executive order a $300 billion federal jobs program funded by money from TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Fund). The TARP funds have been approved by Congress already and are not subject to Republican obstruction, the authors argue. Furthermore, the fund has been enriched by banks that have repaid the TARP money they received and the program is on its way to making a profit for the federal government.

Mirer and Cohn point out that Franklin Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration (WPA) by executive order in 1936, employing 8.5 million jobless workers during its seven years of existence. WPA built 651,087 miles of roads, 124,031 bridges, 125,110 public buildings, 8,192 parks and 853 airports, many of them still in use, with the cost to taxpayers repaid in full many times over.

"If one assumes an average cost of one job is $50,000, six million jobs could be immediately created for $300 billion," they write.

Photo: Workers build the new earthquake-resistant San Francisco Bay Bridge eastern span, in Emeryville, Calif., last May. ToastyKen CC 2.0

U.S. Steel locks out Canadian workers

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 12:49:00 +0000

U.S. Steel locked out 900 workers at its Hamilton, Ontario, plant this week after the union rejected a company offer that would have denied benefits to new workers and slashed benefits for current retirees. Workers have been on the job since their last contract expired at the end of July.

The company wants new employees to pay into their benefit plans and pensions. Workers currently get defined benefits and receive defined pension benefits when they retire. The company also wants to end cost of living adjustments available to current retirees.

Union leaders at the plant have rejected the demands, saying the company is trying to "shaft" current retirees and future employees.

United Steelworkers Local 1005, which represents the workers, has been criticized by the company and in the media because they have refused to put the concessionary proposal before the membership for a vote.

The company, in a statement, said it was "disappointed" that the union did not put its proposals up for a vote and that its offer was "fair and reasonable."

Local 1005 president Rolf Gerstenberger said the company's proposal cannot be put to a vote because such a procedure would actually be "undemocratic and harm the interests of thousands of retirees."

"One of their major demands will affect 9,000 pensioners, who have no vote. So 900 people in the plant will make a decision on what happens to the living standard of 9,000 pensioners," Gerstenberger said. "That's one of the basic reasons we cannot agree to this vote."

The union has bargained firmly ever since it began negotiations with the company in May. U.S. Steel's latest offer, put forward Nov. 4, dropped prior company demands for concessions on vacation time, benefits and cost of living allowances for current workers but refused to budge on demands regarding pensions and retirees.

The union made a counter offer that the company rejected. It then notified the local that as of 7 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 7, the entire workforce of 900 was officially locked out of the plant.

U.S. Steel took over the plant as part of its acquisition of Stelco in 2007.

Last year the Canadian government sued the company for failing to meet job-related commitments it made at the time of the takeover.

The union says the lockout is only the latest example of how Canadian government policies on foreign takeovers, particularly U.S. takeovers, of Canadian firms fail workers. Canadian law says that such takeovers must produce a "net benefit" for the communities in which they occur.

The current struggle is just the latest in a series, says Ken Neumann, the Steelworkers national director for Canada.

"These workers and their community were promised by their government and U.S. Steel that they would benefit from this foreign multinational's takeover of Stelco," said Neumann. "Instead, the takeover has resulted in pain and suffering for working families in Hamilton, Naticoke, Ontario, and other communities. U.S. Steel's 'net benefit' has consisted of plant shutdowns, production costs, lost jobs and labor disputes."

In March, 2009, U.S. Steel temporarily shut most of its Canadian operations at two big steel plants, the one in Hamilton and the other in Nanticoke, Ontario, affecting 1,500 jobs. It blamed "adverse market conditions."

Ottawa's law suit against U.S. Steel says the company broke production and job commitments and seeks fines of $10,000 a day until the company meets its obligations.

In July, a Canadian court rejected U.S. Steel's attempt to have the case dismissed on grounds that the Investment Canada Act, through which the government monitors foreign takeovers, is too vague.

"Whether it's Vale, a Brazilian company in Sudbury and Labrador, or U.S. Steel, foreign corporations show no qualms about breaking their commitments and inflicting economic pain on our communities," Neumann said. "It's high time that our federal government adopts legislation to protect against such disastrous foreign takeovers."

Last week, Industry Minister Tony Clement blocked an attempt by Australian BHP Billiton to take over fertilizer giant Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan, Inc., saying it failed to meet the Investment Canada Act's requirement of offering a "net benefit" to the country.

Image: Steel mill in Hamilton, Ontario. Cathy // CC BY-NC 2.0

Working Families Party wins big in New York

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 16:46:00 +0000

NEW YORK — On Election Day, voters in this state strongly rejected the Republican tide that swept much of the country - but they went a step farther in statewide races by giving more than 100,000 votes to the Working Families Party.

The WFP, now in its 12th year, was formed in 1998 when New York City and state labor unions and community organizations decided they needed an independent political party that would specifically fight for the needs of working people, through which they could operate.

Because of New York's "fusion" voting system, in which candidates can run on the lines of more than one party, people can vote for the political party that most represents their point of view, while at the same time ensuring that their vote goes to a candidate who can win.

Most recently, people who wanted to support working families and the fight for equality were able to vote for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo, but send a message that they reject his move rightwards, by voting for him on the Working Families Party line.

As of press time the number of votes received was still not certain. However, it is clear that the "magic number" of 50,000 was passed. If a party gets more than that number of votes in the race for governor, it is automatically afforded ballot status in each election until the next gubernatorial race - when it must again muster 50,000 votes.

There had been some concern that the WFP wouldn't reach this number, partially because a minor scandal around its record keeping brought an investigation by the federal government. Though the U.S. government found nothing, and dropped the case, it was feared that the public perception of the party had been tarnished.

"Good news on a rough morning," the WFP's Facebook page said Nov. 3. "Thanks to you, the WFP received well over 100,000 votes on E-day."

The number of votes is so high, in fact, that many are speculating that the WFP may move up a slot, from row E to row D, on the ballot. For third parties in this state, it is generally considered best to be closest to the two main parties.

The party, which, aside from electoral politics, has been involved in numerous fights of interest to regular New Yorkers, including the struggle to stop budget cuts, demanding that this city's transit system not face cuts or fare hikes and the fight against dangerous drilling, enlisted a number of well-known figures, including musician Pete Seeger, to record videos asking people to vote its line.

"If there's something you want to give me for my birthday that will really cheer me up," actor Matt Damon said in his own video, "vote for the Working Families Party."

"If you want more of this," he said, holding up a 2008 Obama "change" sign before putting that down and holding up a WFP logo, "you have to vote this."

Damon is from Massachusetts (where progressives also found a silver lining post-Election Day) - Boston. Known as one of the most fervent supporters of the Red Sox in a town that is known to be one of the most fanatical about sports, Damon issued a challenge.

"If 200,000 of you vote Working Families, I'm going to shoot another video wearing this," the Good Will Hunting star said - holding up a Yankees cap. "I'm serious."

"Not sure yet if we got enough to make Matt Damon wear that Yankees hat," the party's Facebook page currently says, "but we'll count every last vote."

Photo: The Working Families Party is currently on row E. However, it may have taken enough votes to move to row D. (Jeremy Zilar // CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Shop Talk: Bucking bosses and closing unsafe mines

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 15:00:00 +0000

Piedmont workers go union

Despite a vicious anti-union campaign by hired guns known as the Labor Relations Institute, more than 3,000 fleet and passenger service agents at Piedmont Airlines voted this week by a two to one margin (1,170 - 638) to join the Communications Workers of America. Workers had been forced to attend captive audience meetings, supervisors tore up union materials in front of them. LRI, the union-busting firm, promised management results "or your money back." Workers are celebrating and management got both its money back and results - just not the results it wanted.

IBEW fights climate change

When Illinois Democratic Governor Pat Quinn decided to put solar panels on the roof of the governor's mansion in Springfield, the state turned to the Electrical Workers to handle the job. The project kicked off Oct. 10 as part of the 10/10/10 Global Work Party. The party, a day of action to fight climate change, includes more than 7,000 events in 183 different countries to help find solutions to climate change. The one kilowatt solar array on the governor's house will cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 tons of carbon dioxide over the next 25 years, the equivalent to about 100,000 car miles or the planting of 1,100 trees.

MSHA seeks to shut mine

A Massey Energy Company-owned mine in Kentucky, which has earned 2,000 safety citations since June, 2008, is "one accident away from tragedy" and needs to be shut down, say federal mine safety officials. No coal mine has ever been shut down for a pattern of safety violations, but the Mine Safety and Health Administration asked a federal court yesterday to do just that - to Freedom Energy's Mine No. 1 in Pike County, Kentucky. "Freedom Energy has demonstrated time and again that it cannot be trusted to follow basic safety rules when a MSHA inspector is not at the mine," said MSHA administrator Joe Main. "If the court does not step in, someone may be seriously injured or die." MSHA says that workers are being exposed to massive amounts of methane gas from the coal seam with which the mine operates. Solicitor of Labor Patricia Smith says, "Although this is the first time the department has utilized this legal remedy, it will not be the last."

Global unions pressure South Korea

When the leaders of the world's top 20 economies, also known as the G-20, meet Nov. 11-12 in Seoul, South Korea, the global union movement will shine a light on the Korean government's repeated violation of workers' rights. In a letter to Korean President Lee Myung-bak, AFL-CIO Presdent Richard Trumka demanded that South Korea respect labor rights. Union activists there are routinely harassed, arrested, subjected to physical violence and given severe prison sentences. The International Trade Union Confederation says criminal sanctions against "obstruction of business" are routinely used to stop union organizing.

Anti-union measures pass

A corporate front group called "Save Our Secret Ballot" slipped in constitutional amendments in four states on Election Day - Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah - in an attempt to preempt the Employee Free Choice Act, which would give allow workers to more easily form a union. All four measures were similar to the one in Arizona. That measure, known as Proposition 113, "guarantees" the right to vote by secret ballot in "elections for public office or public votes on initiatives or referenda, or designations or authorizations of employee representation." Save Our Secret Ballot, which is headquartered in Las Vegas, has a national advisory board stacked with former Republican members of Congress, Republican state elected officials, and representatives of various conservative think tanks, including the Heritage Foundation and the Goldwater Institute.

Quote of the week

From Joe Hansen, UFCW President and Change to Win Chair

"The election will be remembered because the results were fueled not by hope, but by anger, frustration and fear. Empty and inflammatory rhetoric that derides health reform as 'Obamacare' and demonizes leaders as socialists will not right the imbalance in our economy or help working people to make ends meet."

Image: The militant South Korean trade union movement is under assault by a conservative government Jey Hwang // CC BY-NC-ND 2.0