People Before Profit blog

Survey: Health care premiums continue to outpace inflation and wages

Fri, 30 Oct 2015 13:01:00 +0000

The Kaiser Family Foundation's 17th annual nationwide employer survey confirms what most workers already feel: Health care costs are gobbling up more and more of their wages.

Employers are the principal source of health insurance in the United States, providing health benefits for about 147 million Americans who are under 65. But most workers share the cost of the medical services they use. That cost sharing can take a variety of forms, including a share of the premium deductibles, co-payments (fixed dollar amounts per visit), and co-insurance (a percentage of the charge for services).

In 2015, 57 percent of employers offer health benefits to at least some of their workers, statistically unchanged from the 55 percent in 2014. That includes 98 percent of large firms (200 or more workers) but just 47 percent of the smallest firms (three to nine workers).

Kaiser found single and family premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance rose by an average of 4 percent between 2014 and 2015. Since 2005, premiums have grown an average of 5 percent each year, down from the 11 percent annually from 1999-2005.

The average annual premium for single coverage is $6,251, of which workers on average pay $1,071 ($89 a month). The average family premium is $17,545, with workers on average contributing $4,955 ($413 a month). That means workers contribute on average 18 percent of the premium for single coverage and 29 percent for family coverage. Those percentages have remained about the same since 2000.

There are still some workers who don't pay out-of- pocket for the employer-provided coverage: 16 percent of covered workers with single coverage and 6 percent of covered workers with family coverage work for a firm that pays 100 percent of the premium.

Since 2010, both the share of workers with deductibles and the size of the deductibles increased sharply. About 81 percent of covered workers today are in plans with a general annual deductible. And since 2010, deductibles have risen almost three times as fast as premiums and about seven times as fast as wages and inflation. For single coverage, average deductibles were $584 in 2006, $917 in 2010, and $1,318 in 2015.

Of covered workers who are admitted to a hospital, about 65 percent pay coinsurance (a percentage), while about 14 percent pay a copayment. The coinsurance rates average 19 percent. The copayment averages $308 per hospital admission.

The same goes for visits to a primary care physician's office. There, 68 percent of covered workers have a copayment, averaging $24, and 23 percent have coinsurance, averaging 18 percent. But that was for workers. Retirees are another story. Of large firms (200 or more workers) that offer health benefits to their employees, just 23 percent offer retiree coverage in 2015. That's down from 66 percent in 1988, and 34 percent in 2006.

Don McIntosh is Associate Editor, The Northwest Labor Press

Graph: Northwest Labor Press

NLRB declares taxi drivers are employees, can vote to unionize

Fri, 30 Oct 2015 11:25:00 +0000

TUCSON, Ariz. (PAI) - For what the union involved says is the first time ever, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) declared taxi drivers are legally "employees" and have the right to vote to unionize, the Office and Professional Employees announced.

The Oct. 23 ruling, covering 200 AAA Transportation/Yellow Cab drivers in Tucson, Ariz., dismissed AAA's appeal of NLRB Regional Director Cornele Overstreet's decision for the drivers. The full board, in May, told Overstreet to re-rule on the case, under new conditions.

AAA contended that the drivers are "independent contractors" without the right to organize. Citing that ruling involving FedEx Home Delivery, the full board rejected AAA's arguments and sent the case back to Overstreet.

Overstreet's ruling clears the way for a recognition election for the Tucson Hacks Association, the Office and Professional Employees (OPEIU) affiliate conducting the organizing drive among Tucson drivers. The election is expected before the end of this year.

OPEIU says the NLRB ruling is important because it puts official approval on the fact that taxi drivers, like millions of other such exploited workers nationwide, are not "independent contractors" but are really employees whose firms govern their wages and working conditions.

Those firms - such as taxi companies, port trucking firms and warehouse owners - argue that because workers are "free" to work on and off, they're independent contractors, and cannot unionize. After hearing from both sides in the Tucson taxi case, the NLRB rejected the company's argument.

In prior cases, including in Tucson, the NLRB ruled the taxi drivers are independent contractors, but the Tucson Hacks Association, with OPEIU's help, appealed and the board reversed its prior ruling. OPEIU represents, among others, 4,000 taxi drivers in Las Vegas and San Diego.

"The key clarification was whether the individual" taxi driver "has an 'actual entrepreneurial opportunity for loss or gain,'" OPEIU said. If she does, she's an independent contractor. If he doesn't, he's an employee. The NLRB found that at both FedEx and in Tucson, the drivers did not have "real or feasible" opportunities for losses or gains. Therefore, they're employees.

Overstreet said AAA controls the drivers through its dispatch system and thus can determine their income - and raise or lower it by changing dispatching orders and procedures.

"This group of drivers did as much as they could on their own," said OPEIU President Michael Goodwin. "Within three months of turning to OPEIU, we're pleased to see a favorable decision from the NLRB and are now preparing for an election."

Photo: Taxi drivers will now be able to vote to unionize. | Frank Franklin II/AP

Experts: “New” economy is just another way to suppress workers’ rights

Fri, 30 Oct 2015 10:17:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - Progressive economists, policy strategists and labor representatives held a seminar here yesterday focusing on multi-billion dollar corporations that claim they're not employers but merely managers of computer programs that allow customers to directly hire workers as needed.

These workers, the corporations say, are not employees entitled to rights under law. They are "independent contractors working for themselves" and entitled to virtually no rights at all.

Most participants in the seminar, sponsored by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and other progressive think tanks, agreed that the so-called "new" economy is just another scheme by corporations to attack workers' rights.

They also agreed that the key to workers getting better wages, protections and conditions in the "new" economy is old-fashioned collective bargaining.

Among the largest of the computer-based corporations are the Uber and Lyft taxicab companies. They offer consumers a computer app by which they can directly contact a taxi that's on the road near them. The Task Rabbit and Up Work corporations offer similar apps through which customers can hire workers to do everything from highly complex technical jobs to handyman tasks.

The corporations contend they are the wave of the future; a future in which most people will "work for themselves." They call this future by various names: the "on-demand economy," the "gig-sharing economy," or the "peer-to-peer economy."

This "new" economy also includes "permatemps." These are people who do the same work in manufacturing plants as full time employees but are classified as "temporary" workers and "independent contractors." They receive no benefits and less pay than their full time co-workers.

Employers try to get away with these schemes all across the economy. Walmart, for example, calls its warehouse workers "independent contractors" by paying low wage firms that it contracts to hire people for warehouse jobs, pay them low wages and allow itself to take no responsibility for working conditions, salary or benefits.

California truck drivers working on the docks have also been called "independent contractors" with no rights as workers. (See accompanying video:)

At the EPI seminar, economic researcher Steven Hill explained that workers in the so-called "new" economy are only paid for actual time worked. They must pay for their own training. Furthermore, they are often forced to bid against each other for jobs. The cheapest bid wins. The result: a spiraling race to the bottom.

Hill's latest book is called Raw Deal: How the "Uber Economy" and Naked Capitalism Are Screwing American Workers.

Technology is not to blame; greed is

Many analysts say that the drift toward the "new" economy is an inevitable product of new computer technologies. However, at the seminar, EPI President Larry Mishel showed it is a product of policies that allow the wealthy and powerful to run roughshod over working people in order to pump up profits.

In fact, Mishel said, there are so many other ways that corporations are being allowed to destroy workers' rights and to give lower pay and benefits that the so-called "new" economy has accounted for only 10 or 12 percent of the whole economy since 1995.

Mishel said that "new" economy workers can only be protected by policies that protect all workers.

These policies include enforcing existing state and federal laws that clearly define the differences between an "employee" and an "independent contractor." In fact, many states are already cracking down on employers who try to avoid their responsibilities by misclassifying workers as independent contractors.

Furthermore, Mishel said, "A necessary condition for ending wage suppression is economic policies that ensure every worker who wants a job can find one. In the absence of full employment, employers do not need to offer significant wage increases to attract and retain employees."

Mishel said that the most important tool for protecting workers rights remains what it's always been: collective bargaining.

"Collective bargaining," he said, "is the central feature of a re-invigorated economy."

Working people, he said, should continue to push for laws and regulations that encourage, instead of discourage, collective bargaining.

Participants in the seminar pointed out that even without new laws there is a resurgence of union organizing in all sectors of the economy and that this will help workers who find themselves stuck in the "new economy."

Video: Rossana Cambron/PW

Photo: Companies around the world are using the so called "new economy" model to exploit workers. Here, cab drivers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil protest the "ride share" mogul Uber which they say pulls customers away from the safe, unionized taxi services and draws them into unregulated services while it exploits the drivers who, as so called independent contractors, have none of the rights of regular workers. | AP

Sanders addresses and marches with Verizon picketers

Thu, 29 Oct 2015 10:30:00 +0000

NEW YORK (PAI) - When's the last time a presidential hopeful walked a picket line?

How about Oct. 25, when Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind.-Vt., addressed and marched with Communications Workers (CWA) in their picket line in Manhattan against Verizon?

The veteran lawmaker is the main challenger to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in next year's Democratic presidential primaries. And the self-described "democratic socialist" is a strong and fervent supporter of workers and unions, and sponsor of pro-worker legislation.

"You've got corporate America making huge profits. Their CEOs get huge compensation packages and then with all of their money, what they do is they hire lawyers in order to make it harder for workers to survive in this country," Sanders told the crowd in Times Square.

"What this campaign" - his campaign - "is all about is saying to corporate America: ‘You cannot get it all.' That when worker productivity is skyrocketing, you've got to pay your workers decent wages, you've got to respect and negotiate with workers for decent contracts."

The 40,000 Verizon workers, represented by CWA and the Electrical Workers, are in a long struggle with the highly profitable telecom firm over its takeback demands on health care, pensions, working conditions, the company's outsourcing and more. The workers have been toiling without a contract since August, and picketing Verizon every chance they get.

The New York rally was the latest show of solidarity by the Verizon workers - and Sanders' latest show of solidarity with all workers, especially union workers. Just the day before, Sanders penned an open letter blasting management's move to kill Amalgamated Transit Union workers' pensions in Grand Rapids, Mich. (See separate story).

"In June, Verizon proposed a new union contract, but CWA takes issue with some of its key points, including suggested pay increases, the structure of pension benefits, health care contributions, whether Verizon can contract out or offshore union jobs, and employees' vacation time," a CWA statement said.

CWA is also battling Verizon on another front: Its failure to implement high-speed high-tech FiOS service in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and elsewhere, even though it made $9.6 billion in profits last year. And CEO Lowell MacAdam earned $18.3 million last year, including stock options and incentive pay, the AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch, using federal data, says.

"The company has barely moved off its initial June 22d proposal that made outrageous demands of Verizon workers. If this company is serious about reaching an agreement, it needs to start bargaining constructively and now," said CWA District 2-13 Vice President Ed Mooney, the lead union bargainer.

"Let me get right to the point: The middle class in this country is disappearing and what Verizon is doing to their workers is exactly what has got to be fought if we are going to rebuild the American middle class," Sanders, standing on the back of a flatbed truck, declared.

He also denounced Verizon for illegally firing Verizon Wireless worker Bianca Cunningham, who organized her coworkers in Brooklyn. The Brooklyn workers are bargaining their first contract and Verizon Wireless is refusing to negotiate - just like its parent firm.

"It is not acceptable to me that when workers form a union and negotiate for an entire year they can't yet get a contract. That's not what democracy is supposed to be about. That's what rotten labor law is about, and we're going to change that," Sanders said.

Photo: Bernie Sanders/Instagram

AFL-CIO’s largest union endorses Clinton

Wed, 28 Oct 2015 10:26:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - Finding that almost two-thirds of the members it polled over the last six months support her, AFSCME, the AFL-CIO's largest union, endorsed Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.

"We heard throughout our endorsement process that AFSCME members want a candidate who is committed to fixing our out-of-balance economy and raising incomes for hardworking people who are still struggling to make ends meet," union President Lee Saunders said.

"A victory for America's working families is now up to us," he added in a letter to local leaders and activists, urging them to volunteer for Clinton, the former secretary of state.

"Members want a candidate who will make it easier instead of harder to join together in strong unions and stand together for wages and benefits that can sustain our families," Saunders explained in the endorsement announcement on Oct. 24.

AFSCME members also "want the candidate who will be the most effective champion for working families, and who will be able to deliver a victory in this critically important election."

AFSCME pledged to mount a large grass-roots campaign for Clinton, to counter the overwhelming influence of corporate money in politics. Corporate sponsorship of right-wing politicians, especially Republicans, produced a huge volume of anti-worker - and specifically anti-public worker - laws since 2010. Those laws have hurt AFSCME.

"Grassroots organizing is the only answer to the hundreds of millions of dollars that will be poured into this election by the same CEOs and corporations that rig economic rules in their favor. Members felt strongly that it was time to begin turning out friends and neighbors to cast a ballot for Clinton and get involved in the 2016 elections," the union stated.

The union said the other Democratic contenders share AFSCME's values. But it did not name them and declared Clinton "a proven champion for working families, and...the candidate who can deliver on our hopes and hard work next November."

The AFSCME decision came after six months of polling, surveys, contacts with members, town hall meetings and national meetings in D.C., St. Louis, Indianapolis, Albuquerque and San Diego. The union's endorsement is important for several reasons.

Along with the Teachers, AFSCME is one of the most politically active unions in the labor federation. AFT, with 1.112 million members as of the latest official figures released earlier in 2015, is the second-largest AFL-CIO union. AFSCME then had 1.277 million.

AFSCME's and AFT's Clinton endorsements, coupled with earlier backing from the Machinists and a group of building trades unions, means unions with at least 3 million members back Clinton. That's one-third of the federation's total membership of 9.3 million.

By contrast, Clinton's main foe, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind.-Vt., who is running in the Democratic primaries, has just one union backer so far: National Nurses United, with 164,465 members.

The federation's normal presidential endorsement process says it will not endorse a specific candidate unless members of its General Board who represent two-thirds of all the federation's members back that candidate.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said earlier this year that he does not expect any federation-wide endorsement decision before its Executive Council - the smaller group of around 56 top leaders - meets in San Diego in February.

Two non-AFL-CIO unions, the Carpenters and the National Education Association - the nation's largest union - also back Clinton. AFSCME's decision drew little protest from its rank and file members, unlike the earlier endorsements from the two teachers' unions.

Photo: Charlie Neibergall/AP

Labor launches new measures to wipe out unequal pay for women

Tue, 27 Oct 2015 14:06:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - At a press conference here today, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler announced that the labor federation is launching several measures to wipe out pay inequality based on gender and to guarantee that all workers have paid family and sick leave and fair scheduling.

"As a labor movement, our approach always begins with worker voice," Shuler said. "Millions of us will come together this year and bargain for a better life."

She added that the AFL-CIO will also redouble its efforts to organize workers.

"But I understand that unions are not available for everyone," Shuler said, so the new AFL-CIO program for working women will include training women who do not have a union to conduct "good old fashioned negotiating."

She continued: "Corporate culture demands [that CEOs] cut costs and increase the bottom line. But the burden of this system, which is driven by money, is being exclusively endured by workers."

Women workers bear the heaviest burden.

Shuler said, "Women in the workplace have gained a great deal: laws to protect women's rights, new freedoms, and career opportunities that were once thought unimaginable. ... But discrimination still exists."

Women overall make 79 cents for every dollar earned by men; black women earn 63 cents for every dollar earned by men, and Hispanic women 54 cents.

Women are more often than men denied promotions or are fired because they more often must take care of their families. They must stay home from work to care for their children when they get ill, take time off to meet with teachers, and attend to hundreds of other family-related matters.

"Advancing at work shouldn't mean surrendering the rest of your life," Shuler said.

Women workers who are not given regular schedules, or who receive last-minute orders to report to work, find it particularly hard to manage family responsibilities.

Moreover, the cost of child care often makes it impossible for working women to take home enough pay to support their families.

Then there's "clopening."

This practice forces workers to come in for back to back closing and opening shifts, with only seven or eight hours between. The result? Women workers are being left with less control over how much time they can spend with their families and when they can spend it.

Shuler said that despite all the discrimination, women "too often go along to get along."

This must change, she said. "We have to make quiet acceptance the enemy.

"We need to join together and speak out for good wages, great benefits, fair scheduling and equal pay for equal work. We need to demand paid sick leave, paid family leave and quality child care.

"These things are accessible and available to us if we stand together for them," Shuler said.

She announced that to help "galvanize the power of women," the AFL-CIO is launching "a comprehensive survey about the lives of working women. This survey will take the pulse of working women inside and outside the labor movement. It will be a baseline measure of working women's lives."

Further, the AFL-CIO is going to offer training to working women who do not have a union. "We want to pass on our experiences and our skills. We are going to train, cajole, encourage, support and inspire women to win better wages, standards and working conditions."

Shuler said the labor federation will help women without a union craft their demands, determine fair ground rules and negotiate with management.

Moreover, the AFL-CIO will redouble its efforts to pass pro-worker legislation.

"Passing an equal pay for equal work law would be a huge boost for the economy as a whole," Shuler said.

She also said that the AFL-CIO will also fight for passage of the Schedules that Work Act, the Healthy Families Act, and the WAGE Act, which would raise the nationwide minimum wage to $12 an hour over a period of four years.

"This legislation, Shuler said, "would help level the playing field and give working women the opportunity to live healthy, happy and productive lives."

Shuler is the first woman to be elected as AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer and the youngest officer to ever sit on the Executive Council.

She ended the press conference by saying. "... Forty-five years ago, U.S. Representative Shirley Chisholm said: 'Discrimination against women ... is so widespread, that it seems ... normal, natural and right.

"But women are a formidable force. Together ... [we can] build an America where all working women can sustain their families and realize their dreams. ... Tomorrow, if we do our job, this will seem 'normal, natural and right.'"

Photo: Female cashiers and baggers at a supermarket in Concord, New Hampshire. | AP

Nurses, at New Orleans gathering, reaffirm backing for Sanders

Tue, 27 Oct 2015 12:48:00 +0000

NEW ORLEANS - Meeting in a national convention Saturday, more than 150 National Nurses United delegates from across the U.S. voted unanimously to re-affirm the union's endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders for President.

The vote, by the nation's largest organization of nurses, followed a video greeting to the RNs by Sen. Sanders in which he praised NNU as "one of our nation's great unions," and said he has been "proud to work with National Nurses United fighting to expand Medicare" and collective bargaining rights for nurses. The entire video message may be viewed at https://vimeo.com/143471247.

"There is no job in this country that is more demanding, more important and more fulfilling than being a nurse," said Sanders. "You take care of our young children when they get sick, you take care of our patients in their time of need, you take care of our veterans, when they come home from war with no legs, no arms, and no eyesight."

NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro noted how the Sanders campaign has been embraced by nurses across the country who have held more than 70 house parties for the campaign, attended and spoke at mass rallies for Sanders from coast to coast, and marched for Sanders at the first Democratic candidate debate in Las Vegas.

"He truly amplifies nurses values of caring, compassion and community," said DeMoro, "Bernie's campaign has also unified families. Nurses are working with their high school and college age children to support and promote the campaign, bringing families across generations."

Both the video, and a convention resolution brought a standing ovation from the convention delegates and in testimony by nurses before the convention vote.

"I am incredibly proud, for the first time in my whole life, that there is finally a candidate speaking to the values I've held my whole life," said California RN Katy Roemer. "I hope everyone will work as hard as they can to elect Bernie."

"I want to tell everyone here that I am a Republican," said Georgia RN Irma Westmoreland. "I have voted my whole life as a Republican. This is the first time I am going to vote for a Democratic president. Bernie is for nurses' values."

"The reason I support Bernie Sanders is his stance on Black Lives Matters," said Chicago RN Martese Chism. "They say Bernie does not have the black support, well, I'm here to say that the black support is here for Bernie."

"Bernie Sanders is looking out for me, and that's the reason I'm supporting him," said Florida RN Marissa Lee. "He's looking out for the little people, and that's you, me, and everyone else."

"It's the first time actually in my life that I feel very excited about a candidate," said California RN Monica Rizzo. "I want to talk specifically about the College for All Act. I have a son recently graduated from high school and I am faced with the reality of putting him through college as a single parent. And I can't do it" noting Sanders proposal for free tuition at all public colleges and universities.

In his video message, Sanders emphasized some of his key campaign themes. "With your support we are going to create a political revolution in this country which says loudly and clearly enough is enough, our government belongs to all of us, and not just the top one percent. Yes we are going to make healthcare a right for all people. Yes we are going to make public colleges and universities free and substantially reduce student loan debt in America. Yes, we are going to make it easier, not harder, for nurses and millions of Americans to join unions and collectively bargain for better wages and benefits."

NNU delegates also passed resolutions re-affirming the union's longstanding support for winning an expanded Medicare for all, a Robin Hood tax on Wall Street speculation, action to address the harmful effects, including substantial health damage from environmental pollution and climate change, and opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact and attacks on collective bargaining rights.

Resolutions were also passed in support of attacking the pervasive problems of racial and economic justice symbolized by the Black Lives Matter movement as well as opposing racial disparities in health, employment, environmental protections, and incarceration, and support for Planned Parenthood in the face of attacks on the organization with nurses noting the critical role of Planned Parenthood in providing essential women's health care, and on ethical principles for RN professional practice.

The convention was held in New Orleans, in support of the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina during which NNU's disaster relief program, Registered Nurse Response Network, sent more than 300 RNs to Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, to provide medical support for those affected by the super storm.

Photo: Nurses, at their convention, vote "Yes" to reaffirm the union's backing for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders' presidential bid. | NNU website

Today in labor history: The Erie Canal unites Midwest to East Coast

Mon, 26 Oct 2015 11:55:00 +0000

On this date 190 years ago, in 1825, the Erie Canal, first major man-made waterway in the U.S., was opened, providing a navigable water route from Buffalo, on Lake Erie, across New York State to Albany on the Hudson River, which feeds into the Atlantic Ocean. All along the route cannons were fired and celebrations were held for the opening.

Construction of the 363-mile-long canal started on July 4, 1817, and eventually cost $7,602,000. Before railroads flourished, the Erie Canal enabled both farm and industrial products from the quickly growing Midwestern states to reach markets on the East Coast and abroad. The canal also facilitated internal migration of population westward.

East to west, from the Hudson to Lake Erie, the land rises about 600 feet. Locks could handle up to 12 feet, so even with the heftiest cuttings and viaducts, at least 50 locks would be required. Such a canal would be expensive to build even with modern technology; in 1800, the expense was barely imaginable. Pres. Thomas Jefferson called the idea "a little short of madness" and rejected it; however, New York Governor DeWitt Clinton became interested in the project. The opposition ridiculed the project as "Clinton's folly" and "Clinton's ditch." In 1817, though, Clinton received approval from the legislature for $7 million for construction.

Canal workers cut the channel 40 feet wide and 4 feet deep. They piled removed soil on the downhill side to form a walkway known as a towpath, and some of it provided landfill for New York City.

Its construction, through limestone and mountains, proved arduous and daunting for the canal workers. Construction used some of the most advanced engineering technology from Holland. The stonework was accomplished hundreds of immigrant German masons, who later built many of New York City's buildings. All labor on the canal depended upon human and animal power and the force of water. As the canal progressed, the crews and engineers working on the project developed expertise and became a skilled labor force.

The men who planned and oversaw construction were novices, both as surveyors and as engineers. There were no civil engineers in the U.S. then. But despite their inexperience, they overcame each technical obstacle and produced a perfectly working design. According to planners, using an earth scraper and a plow, a three-man team with oxen, horses, and mules could build a mile in a year.

Increased immigration filled the need for labor: many of those working on the canal had recently come to the States from Ireland. Construction continued at an increased rate as new workers arrived.

The workers lived on the edge of subsistence financially; physically, canal work was back breaking, dangerous, and at certain times fraught with the near certainty of cholera and malaria, which carried off sizable chunks of the work force during virulent years.

In 1824, before the canal was completed, a detailed Pocket Guide for the Tourist and Traveler, Along the Line of the Canals, and the Interior Commerce of the State of New York, was published for the benefit of travelers and land speculators.

Once the entire canal was officially open, a flotilla of boats led by Gov. Clinton aboard the Seneca Chief sailed from Buffalo to New York City in ten days. Clinton ceremonially poured Lake Erie water into New York Harbor to mark the "Wedding of the Waters." On its return trip, the Seneca Chief brought a keg of Atlantic Ocean water back to Buffalo to be poured into Lake Erie by Buffalo's Judge Samuel Wilkeson, who would later become mayor.

The Erie Canal was acclaimed as an engineering marvel that united the country and helped New York City to become a financial and trade capital. The port of New York became essentially the Atlantic home port for all of the Midwest. Because of this vital connection, and later the railroads, New York would become known as the "Empire State." At the western end, Buffalo grew from just 200 settlers in 1820 to more than 18,000 people by 1840.

As the canal brought travelers to New York City, it took business away from other ports such as Philadelphia and Baltimore. Those cities and their states started projects to compete with the Erie Canal. In Pennsylvania, the Main Line of Public Works was a combined canal and railroad running west from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh on the Ohio River, opened in 1834.

On Jan. 28 and 29, in 1834, Andrew Jackson became the first president to use federal troops against protesting workers. The workers were protesting not just their low pay but also the intolerable working conditions on an important canal construction project.

The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal was intended to facilitate the shipping of goods from the Chesapeake Bay to the Ohio River Valley.

In 1842 a continuous rail line (which later became the New York Central Railroad) opened the whole way to Buffalo and provided for faster travel. Yet as late as 1852, the canal carried 13 times more freight tonnage than all the railroads in New York State combined, and continued to compete well with the railroads until the beginning of the 20^th century.

The canal helped bind the still-new nation closer to Britain and Europe, as Midwestern wheat flowed to the Old World. Concern that erosion caused by logging in the Adirondacks could silt up the canal contributed to the creation of a New York National Historic Landmark, Adirondack Park, in 1885.

Many folk tales and songs were written about life on the canal, as well as writings by well-known authors. The popular 1905 song "Low Bridge" by Thomas S. Allen memorializes the canal's early heyday, when barges were pulled by mules rather than engines.

The late environmentalist Virginia Warner Brodine wrote the novel "Seed of the Fire" (International Publishers NY) based on the actual struggles of Irish immigrants and other workers in the canal camps of Ohio in the 1820s.

A 36-mile stretch of the old canal is preserved by New York State as Old Erie Canal State Historic Park. In 1960 the Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site, a section of the canal in Montgomery County, was one of the first sites recognized as a National Historic Landmark.

Sources: Chase's Calendar of Events, Wikipedia.

Photo: View east of eastbound Lockport on the Erie Canal by W.H. Bartlett, 1839; cropped by Beyond My Ken. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons.

Yale graduate student teachers rally for union election

Fri, 23 Oct 2015 12:45:00 +0000

Yale graduate student teachers and research assistants got a big boost in their decades-long quest for union rights Oct. 15 at a huge rally in Beineke Plaza attended by hundreds of supporters and allies. The slogan of the day was for a "no intimidation vote."

The Graduate Employees Student Organization (GESO) marched into the plaza to cheers, having first gathered at the home of Yale University president Peter Salovey on Hillhouse Avenue.

They held high in the air the names of the departments where they work and proceeded to the administration offices at Woodbridge Hall to deliver a 15 foot by 4 foot board filled with photos of over two-thirds of the graduate students who are seeking a fair election without intimidation.

The success of the campaign is evident in the misleading posters plastered around the University by the administration boasting of the wages and benefits afforded to the graduate assistants. Yet, powerful speeches by the graduate student workers underscored the inability to support a household, the need to expand medical coverage to include mental health, the need for secure teaching assignments, and ending race and gender inequities.

With the addition of hundreds of graduate student workers to the union rolls at Yale, the ability to negotiate strong contracts next year would be improved for all University workers including Unite Here Local 34 clerical and technical workers and Local 35 service and maintenance workers. They turned out in numbers to support the GESO demands.

The Yale administration has claimed in the past that the graduate students are not workers, but that argument has been shown false as graduate students at the University of Connecticut and New York University have won union representation in recent years.

Attending the rally in solidarity were the Young Workers organization of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, elected officials including Mayor Toni Harp, U.S. Senators Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal, many individual unions, and a large contingent from the community organized by New Haven Rising.

Volunteers with New Haven Rising spent the summer door knocking in largely Black and Latino neighborhoods where there is high unemployment, getting hundreds of pledge cards signed in support of GESO, and demanding that the University hire from their communities and abandon plans to transfer 986 union jobs in the medical campus to the non-union Yale New Haven Hospital.

The fact that jobs is at the top of voters' minds was shown in the Democratic primary election results, where the labor-community coalition on the New Haven Board of Alders increased its majority, and incumbents who are part of that coalition that has made jobs, youth and safety its top concerns were all re-elected.

Photo: Joelle Fishman/PW

NYC union pension systems to invest $150m in affordable city housing

Fri, 23 Oct 2015 10:33:00 +0000

NEW YORK (PAI) - Five New York City union pension systems will invest some $150 million in projects to erect 20,000 units of affordable housing in the Big Apple, the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust (HIT) said.

The money is being sent to the HIT to leverage some $1 billion in total investment in the housing in all five boroughs, the trust added. Union labor will build the housing in an economically targeted investment program.

Economically targeted investments are designed to address market inefficiencies by providing capital or liquidity to under-served communities and populations across the city, added city Comptroller Scott Stringer, its chief financial officer.

Stringer also advised the union pension systems on the projects. Working with the HIT on investing in housing "is a fiscally smart marriage of resources and housing policy," he added. The investments provide market returns to the pension funds, HIT noted.

The HIT invests in affordable housing, and sometimes other projects, nationwide. All the projects are built totally with union labor. But the new New York investment marks the first phase of a new HIT strategy for investing in the city over the next seven years, Housing Trust chief executive Stephen Coyle said.

The strategy, developed by HIT, union leaders, developers, community groups and Stringer's staff, "aims to preserve the affordability of 12,500 to 15,000 housing units, construct 5,000 to 7,500 new housing units" and to "work with city and state agencies to finance and improve affordable public housing."

HIT estimated the 7-year plan would produce 7,300 union construction jobs, double that number in total jobs and $1 billion in wages and benefits to workers.

Photo: HIT project, The Dempsey Apartments, an affordable housing development in the central Harlem community. The six-story building has 80 units of housing for neighborhood residents and incorporates sustainable features including a well insulated and well sealed envelope, energy efficient lighting and mechanical equipment, and EnergyStar appliances.

Project launched to put raising minimum wage on state ballots

Fri, 23 Oct 2015 10:08:00 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO - With funding from the United Healthcare Workers union (UHW) in California, The Fairness Project was launched today to help raise the minimum wage through ballot initiatives in states, cities and counties across the nation. UHW is a local of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

Even though some 35 million working Americans are living in poverty, Congress and most state legislatures have failed to do anything about raising the minimum wage. However, 24 states and many more cities and counties allow voters themselves to put issues on the ballot if they get the required number of signatures to do so.

At the press conference announcing the launch of The Fairness Project, Executive Director Ryan Johnson said the organization will start by supporting already existing ballot initiative campaigns in Maine, California and the city of Washington, D.C.

In all three places, community groups are working hard to collect enough signatures to put on the ballot the question of raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, with automatic increases tied to the cost of living.

What's more, the initiatives also include measures that would eliminate the subminimum wage. This is the minimum wage employers are allowed to pay workers who receive tips from customers. Originally, the federal tipped worker minimum wage was 60 percent of the full minimum wage. However, it was frozen at $2.13 per hour in 1991, which today equals about 30 percent of the full minimum wage.

Local ballot initiatives have been a powerful tool for raising state minimum wages.

According to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, minimum wage measures have been tried 20 times in 16 states since 1996. All but two were successful.

Last year alone, worker advocates used ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage in Arkansas, Alaska, Nebraska and South Dakota. It would have been impossible to raise the minimum wage in those states through their legislatures, given their political composition.

However, voters strongly supported the measures.

In fact, voters across the U.S. strongly support raising the minimum wage. Polls show that 75 percent of Americans think it should be done.

The Fairness Project will help the campaigns in Maine, California and D.C. by providing sophisticated polling and data collection, help with computerized fund raising and help with creating websites and social media.

Most important, the Project will work to make sure that raising the minimum wage remains a front and center issue during the upcoming elections.

Supporting The Fairness Project "is the best value in American politics," says UHW-SEIU President Dave Regan. "[We aim to] put a question in front of half the country that simply can't be moved through legislatures because of big money in politics."

Photo: Demonstrators rally for a $15 minimum wage before a meeting of the state Wage Board in New York. | Seth Wenig/AP

Survey results reveal working women’s health info needs

Wed, 21 Oct 2015 14:07:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - A survey of working women, jointly run by the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) and HealthyWomen, an online resource for women's' health, reveals working women most want information on diet and nutrition, fitness and exercise and issues around aging, the two groups report.

The survey results, along with additional steps to implement its findings and make the information available to woman workers nationwide, will be a topic of discussion during CLUW's convention in Sacramento, Calif., Nov. 18-21. The panelists there will speak on CLUW's "Spread the Word" campaign on women's health issues.

Of the 2,035 people who took the month-long survey in September - double the number the groups expected - 63 percent selected diet and nutrition as data they most seek online.

The other two topics trailed behind. Women particular seek news stories and analysis of health issues, and often use Facebook to do so, the survey found.

CLUW will use the information to implement a health resource on its website and its Facebook page, President Connie Leak said. It will include health story headlines, healthy recipes, fitness motivation and tips for how to age well. It will also offer a link to HealthyWomen's weekly newsletters.

"CLUW truly believes that empowering union women means making sure they have the health information for themselves and their families that they need and want. The outstanding response to the survey makes it clear that we have hit on a topic of particular importance to union women. Many thanks to everyone who answered the survey, as well as to everyone who got it out in the labor movement," Leak said.

Of the 2,035 survey respondents, 566 were CLUW members from 36 different states and 45 different unions.

In most states, even $15 an hour is not enough

Wed, 21 Oct 2015 10:19:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - Low-wage workers nationwide have been campaigning for a $15 hourly "living wage" and the right to organize without employer labor law-breaking. But a new think tank report says that in most states, $15 is not enough - even for one person.

As a matter of fact, adds the report, Pay Up: Long Hours And Low Pay Leaves Workers At A Loss, the national average hourly living wage for a single person should be $16.87, at least as of the end of last year. In D.C., Hawaii and Maryland, it should be over $20.

For families, the situation is even worse. In Massachusetts, for example, a single mother with two kids would need to earn $43.30 an hour to achieve a living wage.

The Alliance for a Just Society has issued such wage reports since 1999, but this is its first to discuss living wages. The issue is important: A living wage - or lack of it - is a key factor in income inequality, the yawning gap between the rich and the rest of us, nationwide.

"Workers are struggling, and it is past time for change. Increasing the federal minimum wage to a living wage and abolishing the tipped subminimum wage will be a strong step in the right direction, while unionization and enforcement of equal opportunity statutes will ensure that all workers have access to benefits and protections in the workplace," the report says.

Its specific findings and some case studies of various states show:

- A national living wage for a single adult is $16.87 per hour, based on a weighted average of living wages nationally. The living wage for a single adult ranges from $21.86 hourly in D.C. and $21.44 in Hawaii to $14.26 in Arkansas. The living wage is defined as the wage a worker needs to provide for the necessities of life while working a normal week.

- Besides Arkansas, the only states where the living wage for a single adult would be under $15 an hour are Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, both Dakotas, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wyoming. Though the report did not say so, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, West Virginia, and Ohio are not so- called "right-to-work" states.

- Tipped workers are even worse off. The federal tipped minimum wage is $2.13 an hour, compared to the federal minimum wage of $7.25, which hasn't risen in almost a decade. Though the report does not say so, the tipped minimum has not risen in 22 years.

"A worker supporting only herself would have to put in 93 hours a week at the federal minimum wage to make ends meet, and a tipped worker could have to work more hours than there are in a week to support herself if tips aren't enough to make up the difference," it says.

In Hawaii, that same worker would toil 110 hours, and in Virginia, 103, it adds.

- Working women in particular suffer from the low wages. Women are half of the nation's 4.56 million retail salespeople and their median wage is $10.29 an hour. One third of the retail salespeople are low-wage earners. And 97 percent of the 582,000 nation's child care workers are female. Their median wage is $9.48 hourly. Only 5 percent of the nation's 3.13 million fast-food workers earned a living wage, and "virtually none of them" were people of color, the report notes. Their median wage is $8.85 hourly,

- Tipped and fast food workers not only earn a lot less, but they're more likely to suffer wage theft, putting them even farther from a living wage than they already are. "In compliance sweep by the U.S. Department of Labor from 2010-2012, 83.8 percent of investigated restaurants had some type of violation. Similarly, a 2008 survey found that 30 percent of workers in the sample were not even paid the tipped worker minimum wage, and 12 percent reported that employers or supervisors stole their tips," the report notes.

For more than a dozen states, the report calculated living expenses for single adults, a single parent with a baby, a single parent with a baby and an elementary-school age youngster and a two-parent, two-child family. In each case, the living wage the family would need far outstrips that state's minimum wage, even in states with minimums above $7.25 hourly.

In Illinois, for example, the living wage for a single adult would be $16.93 hourly, double the state's minimum ($8.25) and above the proposed minimum in Chicago. The single working Illinois adult would need to gross $2,934 monthly, at the $16.93 rate, to earn a living wage.

The adult Illinois worker would spend $752 on housing and utilities, $625 on transportation, just under $500 on federal, state and local taxes, $438 on clothing and household goods and $209 on food. The report assumes the worker could sock $243 away in savings.

"The reality is that we live less than a paycheck-to-paycheck life," Stacy Ellis, a 42-year-old single mother of several kids and a veteran fast-food worker in Albany, N.Y., told the report's authors. "I make $8.75 an hour and we are barely surviving," even though she loves interacting with her customers at McDonald's.

"My wages only pay for our living expenses - not shampoo, or a pair of shoes or a school field trip - and there is no way to get ahead...My kids are forced to go without normal things kids need. My youngest has never had new clothes, just for her. She gets hand-me- downs from her older siblings, and a lot of the time they are from my 10-year-old son.

"It isn't right. I work hard, and I want to be able to provide for my own family without assistance - so when I work hard, I can see the benefit of that work. Everyone who works deserves a living wage, and the opportunity to do better for themselves and their family."

Ellis said she is re-enrolled in college to finish a degree and become a social worker to help at-risk youth. "If I made $15 an hour, I could take care of my family's needs, finish school, and build a stronger future that doesn't require public assistance," she points out.

For her, the report calculated, even $15 is not enough. For a single adult in New York, $19.90 is a living wage. For a single mom with two kids, it's almost double that ($38.13).

Photo: Fight for 15 demonstration in Los Angeles. | Answer Coalition.org

Groups battle "Jim Crow" segregation in restaurant industry

Tue, 20 Oct 2015 16:26:00 +0000

Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC United) released today the results of a study conducted in collaboration with Dr. Chris Benner of the University of California, Santa Cruz and the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, entitled, "Ending Jim Crow in America's Restaurants: Racial and Gender Occupational Segregation in the Restaurant Industry."

While Jim Crow regulated the enforced separation between white and African- American patrons in restaurants, today restaurant workers are effectively separated by race and gender by a partition between livable-wage and poverty-wage positions. A joint project of ROC United and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights will establish the 'Restore Oakland Center' in East Oakland as a programmatic intervention to confront this issue.

The restaurant industry employs nearly 11 million workers and is one of the fastest growing sectors of the U.S. economy. Despite the industry's growth, restaurant workers occupy seven of the ten lowest-paid occupations reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the economic position of workers of color in the restaurant industry is particularly precarious. Restaurant workers experience poverty at nearly three times the rate of workers overall, and workers of color experience poverty at nearly twice the rate of white restaurant workers.

"It's certainly not a coincidence that the largest employer of people of color is also the absolute worst paying industry in the country," said Saru Jayaraman, founding co-director of ROC United. "And while we know that the restaurant industry can do better, the very limited living-wage jobs available within the restaurant industry are systemically off-limits to people of color and women. That's why over the last decade of organizing and conducting research on the restaurant industry, occupational segregation by race has emerged as one of the highest priority challenges faced by restaurant workers nationwide."

By focusing on the nation's largest restaurant industry, California, which includes several cities that are repeatedly named among the top dining destinations nationwide and one of the most diverse populations of any state in the country, the findings in this report have national significance.

Based on government data analysis, a limited pool of employer interviews, and interviews with experts, the initial findings explored in this report suggest the need for further research to more deeply understand the restaurant industry's occupational segregation problem and how to address it.

Key findings include:

The greatest racial and gender wage inequality is in the highest wage occupational categories-namely fine-dining server and bartender positions. The restaurants with the highest wages and greatest number of employees had the highest rates of segregation in both Front-of-the-House service positions and Back-of-the-House kitchen positions.

Worker interviews point to real structural barriers that workers of color face in accessing livable-wage fine-dining service positions, including lack of training, social networks, transportation, childcare, interactions with the criminal justice system, and more. Those real barriers result in employers lacking pools of candidates of color for hiring into fine-dining service positions.

In California, Latinos experience the highest levels of directly observable occupational segregation, with substantial under-representation in the higher-paying server and bartender occupations, while African Americans are largely absent altogether from meaningful participation in full-service restaurant occupations and overrepresented in limited-service/fast-food occupations.

As a result of this segregation, overall after adjusting for education and language proficiency, workers of color receive 56percent lower earnings when compared to equally qualified white workers. Women of color, on average, earned 71percent of what white men earn, amounting to a $4-per-hour wage differential.

States like California that have higher minimum wages have lower gender and race wage inequality than the national average, but the disparity is still quite high.

The report also offers possible solutions specific to workers, employers and customers, including:

For employers: incentives, mandates, and prohibitions to combat bias, as well as specific implicit bias trainings as have been adopted by a some police forces and other sectors to ward against the perpetuation of inequity.

For workers: Policymakers should support workforce development programs such as ROC's COLORS Hospitality for Workers (CHOW) program that provide free or low cost, quality Front-of-the-House hard and soft skills training for all workers, but primarily targeted at workers of color and women, to advance within the industry.

For customers: education and engagement to enlist the support of like-minded consumers in creating a climate where racial equity is lauded and rewarded, including ad campaigns and direct customer engagement with employers regarding fair hiring policies.

There is a coalition of groups including ROC United, the Center for Social Inclusion, and Race Forward, that is proposing to conduct deeper research to understand the multiple layers of implicit and explicit biases that limit opportunities for workers of color. This research would, in turn, point to local policy solutions to pilot in the city of Oakland.

In addition, in partnership with the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights (EBC), ROC United is developing the Restore Oakland Center as a comprehensive program that will address the barriers to livable-wage employment experienced by workers of color in the Bay Area. Restore Oakland is envisioned to be a multi-service center located in East Oakland that will house a restaurant run by ROC that serves as a home for the CHOW job-training program, incubation of worker-owned enterprises, wrap-around services such as healthcare and childcare, affordable housing, and a restorative-justice space facilitated by EBC. The Restore Oakland Center recently received a $1 Million investment by an anonymous donor to the San Francisco Foundation, as well as a $500,000 investment from the Google Foundation.

"Through these integrated programs and services, Restore Oakland will provide space and create opportunities for Oakland residents, particularly formerly incarcerated people and their families, to achieve economic stability and self-empowerment through an industry that can offer security and long-term growth," said Zachary Norris, Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.

The full report can be found here.

Photo: Restaurant Opportunities Centers United.

Advanced Skills Workforce Center: "Diversity within the trade"

Mon, 19 Oct 2015 14:49:00 +0000

St. LOUIS - Earlier this year the Painters' District Council 58 helped to establish the Advanced Skills Workforce Center (ASWC), a 501(c)3 non-profit organization committed to providing essential training and related support to working class youth, particularly youth of color, who want to explore a career in the painting industry.

The ASWC "provides the tools, the discipline and a pathway out of poverty for folks eager for the opportunity to better their lives," Steve Wayland, the director of business development at Painters' DC58 told the People's World.

Twenty-five participants have completed the unpaid fourteen week program so far. Twelve additional participants are in the current class. The program has three sessions a year; each session is five days a week, eight hours a day.

"We are trying to promote diversity within the trade," Wayland continued. A majority of the ASWC participants are young African American men.

Participants learn painting and drywall skills and essential soft skills, including how to write a resume', dressing appropriately during contractor interviews, showing up to job-sites on-time prepared and ready to work, etc. - all of which increase participants likelihood of building a career in the industry. Participants also receive the following industry recognized certifications: OSHA 10, First Aid, CPR, Scaffold and Lift. OSHA 10 is a ten hour department of labor construction training program that provides entry level general awareness of health and safety regulations, while Scaffold and Lift, or scissor lift, familiarizes participants with mobile scaffolds, operating procedures, hazards, maintaining and disassembling.

Graduates of the ASWC program join the Painters' union as apprentices once placed with contractors and begin making between $13 and $14 an-hour, about double the current St. Louis minimum wage of $7.65. They also receive annual pay raises and benefits.

Ninety percent of ASCW program graduates have been placed with contractors.

Joshua Washington is one of those graduates. "The ASWC program was the best opportunity I had, an opportunity to get my life together."

Washington, who used to work part-time with a moving company making $10 an-hour, is now working with a union contractor making $13.38, and is expecting a pay raise to $19 an-hour next year.

"This is an opportunity to learn a trade and make a living wage," Washington added.

The ASWC actively works to build relationships with community organizations, too. The current program is housed through a partnership with the Demetrious Johnson CharitableFoundation, a north-side non-profit founded in 1992 to provide inner city youth with mentoring, financial literacy, vocational / tutorial and scholastic assistance.

Additionally, the ASWC has partnered with the St. Louis Workers' Education Society(WES), a community-labor worker-education organization, to identify potential participants from south-side St. Louis Aldermanic Wards 9, 15 and 20.

"People want good paying union jobs with benefits," Wayland said. "We work with community groups, like the Workers' Education Society, to identify folks from the neighborhood, get them the training they need and then place them on a career path out of poverty."

Progressive Alderwomen Megan Green (ward 15) and Cara Spencer (ward 20) are meeting with leaders from the Painters' and WES to begin discussions regarding identifying participants from their wards.

"Word just keeps spreading," Wayland continued. "In fact, some of our participants have left similar paid programs to come to ours, an unpaid program. They now we are serious about getting folks the skills they need and then getting them placed with contractors."

As a result of this project, Painters'District Councils from across the country are looking to partner with community groups in their Districts and explore more non-traditional ways of organizing like in St. Louis.

"The success of our program and placement is higher than any other program around, as a single trade," Wayland concluded.

"This is such an exciting project, a wonderful opportunity to make a real change in people's lives," Don Giljum, secretary-treasurer of the Workers' Education Society told the World.

Giljum, retired business manager for the Operating Engineers' International Union Local 148, added, "We are honored to be a part of this program. We are honored to help end the cycle of poverty faced by so many folks in the community, especially people of color. This program has the potential to dramatically change people's lives for the better."

"This project can also act as a model for other labor-community partnerships across the country. This is what we have to do to rebuild the labor movement while grounding it within the community," Giljum concluded.

Participants also get help completing their GED or high school diploma, while giving back to the community by volunteering.

"Employment is a struggle we all face collectively," Wayland added. "Employment, raising the minimum wage, the fight against so-called 'right-to-work' - all of these struggles are connected. This is a collective effort between community and union partners. And it's succeeding."

"The program taught me how to be a professional," Washington concluded. "This is a profession. This is a career. This is the best thing that's ever happened to me."

Photo: Tony Pecinovsky/PW

Maryland elected officials decry Safeway supermarket’s corporate greed

Mon, 19 Oct 2015 09:55:00 +0000

UPPER MARLBORO, MD. - "This is an example of corporate greed," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D.-Md, at a rally here in support of some 900 Safeway supermarket employees who have been notified they will lose their jobs a few days before Christmas.

The employees are warehouse workers and truck drivers employed at the chain's distribution center located here in Upper Marlboro, the county seat of Prince George's county, a majority African American jurisdiction..

The Safeway supermarket chain is one of the largest in the mid-Atlantic region. Even though the distribution center has been generating an estimated profit of $100 million a year, the corporation plans to shut it down and move to Pennsylvania.

At the rally, Prince George's County Executive Baker said that for years Safeway has been receiving tax concessions and other incentives to remain, but without warning or discussion it announced it is pulling up stakes, "leaving high and dry the men and women who made the company a success.

"This is totally unacceptable. This is nothing but corporate greed."

Rep. Donna Edwards, D.-Md., echoed the remarks of Van Hollen and Baker, as did former Maryland Lt. Governor Anthony Brown, several state delegates and senators and several members of the Prince George's County council, including the chairperson.

State Delegate Jimmy Tarlau said, "This is a perfect example of the redistribution of wealth - from workers to the corporate class."

Rob Washington, one of the workers who received a layoff notice, said, "I've dedicated myself to this business for over a decade. When I was hired, I was assured there was a future here for me. I work hard; we all do."

Washington pointed to his young son, standing beside him. "Now I have to figure out how to feed my child, how to support him," he said.

"We built a strong union here," Washington continued, "The company is moving out to get rid of it." The workers are members of Teamsters Locals 639 and 730.

Along with officers of the Teamsters locals, also attending the rally were representatives of the Operating Engineers, the Service Employees International Union and Local 400 of the United Food and Commercial Workers.

"Here in Maryland, labor is united," said Richie Brooks," president of Teamsters Local 730.

"When you mess with one of us, you mess with us all."

Photo: Larry Rubin/PW

Graduate students at private universities rally for union rights

Fri, 16 Oct 2015 13:28:00 +0000

CHICAGO - Thursday afternoon, graduate students at the University of Chicago took part in a rally in solidarity with dozens of other private university campuses around the issue of unionization. They used the hashtag "#weareworkers."

Thanks to a partisan 2004 NLRB decision, graduate students at private universities are considered students only and not workers eligible for collective bargaining despite their obvious contributions in areas of research and social service. While their public university counterparts in many states have made significant strides toward legal equality with administration, the graduate students at U. of C., Brown, City University of New York and more are stuck at square one.

Public university graduate workers also held solidarity actions on campuses to support the #weareworkers movement as well as to bolster the labor movement on their own campuses.

Union solidarity contingents in attendance at U. of C.'s rally included SEIU and Teamsters, as well as the American Association of University Professors and American Federation of Teachers.

The graduate students held a speak-out in the main quad that drew over 50 attendees. They marched toward the administration building where they unfurled a large banner onto which they scribed their hopes for the future addressed to U. of C. administration.

Jazmine Salas, a second-year Masters student at the School of Social Work, spoke to People's World about the hectic, draining, and financially precarious life of a non-union graduate student.

"We are required to do field work twice a week, about twenty hours a week of unpaid labor to social service agencies. This makes it difficult for students who are low income or who come from working class backgrounds like myself because its hard to then have to work with twenty hours a week already gone. Currently I can only work one day out of the week not counting the weekends."

Another issue is that social service agencies will shop around for free labor in the form of interns rather than hire employees, further reducing the chances for employment post-graduate school.

"We have taken this to the administration and they are really reluctant to provide any support. Knowing that the Social Work school does have the freedom to structure the fieldwork however they wish, hearing that they're so hesitant to change things for the betterment of their students is just really frustrating," said Salas.

Alejandra Azuero is a second-year Anthropology graduate student from Colombia who found that rumors of the depoliticized nature of University of Chicago were not exactly true.

"It's been a political awakening of sorts. As a non-American in the U.S., getting involved with the union has made me feel both like a stakeholder and someone who ought to take ownership of her time in the U.S."

The union has also allowed those participating to consciously address their place in the community and to confront the "complicated and often disturbing politics." Located in the south side of Chicago, Alejandra characterizes U. of C. as "an impinging institution" referring to the areas around the school facing gentrification.

"It is a way not of resolving the contradictions outright, but a way of living amongst them without ignoring them."

The students say they plan to continue to rally and build coalition until their status as skilled laborers is recognized.

Photo: Patrick J. Foote/PW

Labor questionnaires show Dem hopefuls agree on many major issues

Thu, 15 Oct 2015 10:35:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential hopefuls, particularly Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, largely agree on major issues, ranging from labor law reform to rebuilding infrastructure to changing federal education law, their answers to an AFL-CIO questionnaire show. But they differ in emphasis and in details.

The questionnaires, posted in the Communications Workers website's election survey of its members, went to every presidential hopeful in both parties. The four Democrats and Republican Mike Huckabee replied by the Sept. 15 deadline, a month before the first Democratic presidential debate, held in Las Vegas on Oct. 13.

CWA posted them, with links to each candidate's home page, even of non-responders. It invited members to read everything before telling CWA whether - and whom - to back.

One Democrat, former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee, did not respond to the AFL-CIO. Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, was the sole Republican to reply, just as he was the sole Republican to speak to the AFL-CIO executive council in August.

Clinton, the former secretary of state, New York senator and U.S. First Lady, was the most general in her answers. The current front-runner in national Democratic polls, Clinton frequently promised to roll out more specifics in coming weeks.

For example, she supports rewriting labor law, but did not say how. "We need to strengthen unions' ability to organize and collectively bargain. The great American middle class was built in large part by workers exercising their right to organize and bargain for higher wages and better conditions," Clinton said.

"When more workers were in unions, more workers were in the middle class and their wages went up. And economists have said the decline in union density is a key factor in the rise in income inequality. When workers have a voice on the job, we are all better off."

Her main challenger, Vermont's Senator Sanders, an independent running in the Democratic primaries, was more specific. He used his answer to a question about preserving Social Security and traditional defined pension benefit plans to argue for labor law reform.

"The most important thing we can do to preserve and expand defined benefit pension plans is to make it easier for workers to join unions," Sanders said. It's "severely undermined."

His solution - which he introduced as legislation on Oct. 6 - is to formally legalize card-check recognition when a petitioning union collects NLRB election authorization cards from a majority of workers at a workplace.

"This is not a radical idea," said Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist. "Card check was the law of the land from 1941 to 1966." He also supports strong penalties for labor law-breakers "during organizing and first contract drives" and reform to "make it easier...to negotiate a first contract." He was not specific on what that reform would be. His bill calls for first-contract mediation, then mandatory arbitration if the two sides cannot agree on their own.

O'Malley, the former - and very pro-labor - Maryland governor, was also more specific. Besides the same reforms Sanders advocates, O'Malley would increase penalties for labor law-breaking firms and strengthen the National Labor Relations Board's enforcement powers. O'Malley also would expand labor law to cover "alt-labor organizations, worker centers and collaborative labor-management models."

Webb, the former Reagan Navy Secretary and Democratic senator from Virginia, touted his union card-holder credentials, reminded readers he supported the 1989 Mine Workers' Pittston coal strike and added he walked union picket lines while running for senator in 2006.

He too advocated strengthening labor law, adding workers and unions should have guaranteed seats on corporate boards, as in Germany. "This in and of itself encourages a different viewpoint of organized labor, not as an enemy but as a partner in corporate growth."

Huckabee was the dissenter on labor law. His state, Arkansas, passed the first so-called right-to-work law, in 1944, primarily to prevent African-Americans from empowering themselves by unionizing. He told the AFL-CIO that expanding the right to organize should be up to states.

"The president should foster a more cooperative and complementary relationship between labor and management," Huckabee said in the questionnaire. "The president can help create a healthy and civil tone of respect towards labor and make clear that workers will be respected and treated with dignity not only in hiring, but in retention."

And while the four Democrats support public sector collective bargaining, Huckabee said "each state should determine its own path" on that. He would let public workers join unions, but would ban the right to strike. One former GOP presidential hopeful, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, made his war on public workers' unions the center of his now-dead drive.

Consolidated replies on some of the other issues included:

● Including Huckabee, four of the five hopefuls - everyone but Clinton - opposed the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, and several opposed fast-track presidential trade promotion authority, too. In early October, however, Clinton announced she also opposes the TPP.

Workers and unions are vigorously campaigning against the TPP as the latest and worst in a 22-year string of 'free trade' pacts that lack worker rights and let multi-national firms export U.S. jobs overseas, driving down living standards and driving workers to unemployment.

"The TPP is much more than a 'free trade' agreement," Sanders said. "It is part of an effort to boost profits for large multinational corporations and Wall Street by offshoring jobs, undercutting worker rights and dismantling labor, environmental, food safety, health and financial laws.

"We must fundamentally rewrite our trade policies. Our goal must be to ensure that American-made products, not American jobs, are our #1 export," he declared.

● Four of the five hopefuls offered a mix of solutions for revitalizing the U.S. economy and directing more of its benefits to workers and the middle class. Their solutions included expanding infrastructure, investing in K-12 education and investing in clean energy.

Sanders also advocated raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour "over a period of years," expanding eligibility for overtime pay to anyone earning $1,090 a week or less, gave strong support to the Paycheck Fairness Act and pay equity for working women and said he would fight for legislation to ban employer misclassification of workers as "independent contractors." And he wants to expand Davis-Bacon and Service Contract Act prevailing wages.

O'Malley also favors raising the minimum wage to $15 and more overtime eligibility. He would raise money for economic revitalization through taxing financial transactions - a favorite cause of National Nurses United - and equal tax rates on capital gains and regular income.

Webb emphasized worker retraining and measures to aid the 25 percent of U.S. high school students who still do not graduate. He also added coal and nuclear energy to the investment mix, while Huckabee added coal.

The Arkansan was the odd man out on overall economic solutions, too, constantly returning to what he called The Fair Tax, and describing it as a national consumption (sales) tax that would replace the payroll tax and other taxes, and thus "empower" workers.

● Candidates agreed manufacturing must be revitalized, but disagreed how. Sanders touted investing in clean energy programs and plants, not including nuclear power, and said doing so could create thousands of factory jobs. Webb added nuclear to that investment mix.

Clinton advocated investing in infrastructure to help industry, enacting a new federal "advanced manufacturing" tax credit and "cracking down on loopholes that reward companies for shifting jobs and earnings overseas."

O'Malley says he wants "a 100 percent clean energy economy by 2050" along with retrofits of all federal buildings, a continued ban on exports of U.S.-produced oil and gas, and "a federal cap on carbon emissions."

● Clinton, Sanders and O'Malley all opposed channeling public dollars to private schools via vouchers. Webb was silent on the issue. Sanders and O'Malley also opposed tax credits for private school tuition. Vouchers and private school tax credits are key issues for the two teachers unions, AFT and NEA. Vouchers were one issue where Clinton was specific.

"I strongly oppose voucher schemes because they divert precious resources away from financially strapped public schools to private schools that are not subject to the same accountability standards or teacher quality standards. It would be harmful to our democracy if we dismantled our public school system through vouchers, and there is no evidence that doing so would improve outcomes for children," she declared.

Republican Huckabee said "I believe in school choice so that parents in poverty can find the best educational option for their children," a coded way of saying he backs vouchers.

● Clinton and Sanders criticized the 2001 No Child Left Behind law's emphasis on teaching to the test. Webb was largely silent, using his education answer to concentrate on the high school dropouts. O'Malley emphasized channeling federal education funds to kids and schools that need it the most, and was also silent on teaching to the test.

● Three Democrats were vague on revising the Affordable Care Act and especially on the "Cadillac Tax," scheduled to kick in starting in 2018, on high-cost health insurance plans. Huckabee said the Supreme Court "bailed out Congress" by approving the law.

Clinton would "re-examine the Cadillac tax and...change the tax code so it advances the interests of lower-income and middle-class workers." O'Malley agreed. Webb was "amenable to revising" ACA portions "so it better serves needs of working Americans," but said no more.

Sanders spent his health care section touting his favorite cause, government-run single-payer health insurance, labeled "Medicare for all." But, realizing it wouldn't be enacted soon, he was less sure about repealing the Cadillac tax, a top legislative goal of many unions.

The tax is part of ACA's "balance of revenue and spending provisions that led to reduced cost to the federal government over time," said Sanders. "To preserve those savings, we must ensure any changes to revenues, such as in the excise tax...are not made in such a way that they lead to reductions in subsidies in other areas, such as the health exchanges."

● Sanders went into detail about his legislation to increase the profitability and save jobs at the U.S. Postal Service - a measure that postal unions, led by the Letter Carriers, strongly

support. His bill would repeal the congressionally imposed 10-year $5 billion yearly payment USPS must make to pre-fund 75 years of future retirees' health care benefits. It also would let USPS expand into other lines of work, such as notarizing documents and postal banking.

Health care pre-funding dragged the Postal Service into the red and led the former postmaster general to close post offices, slow mail delivery, cut jobs and outsource work to low-paid non-union Staples employees. "We've been told all these horrendous cuts are necessary because the Postal Service is going broke. That is a lie," Sanders declared.

O'Malley agreed with Sanders. Clinton would "ban contracting out" of postal jobs, but stopped there. Webb was silent. Huckabee said the Postal Service is doing a good job.

Photo: John Locher/AP

Restaurant work abuse: an unpalatable plate

Wed, 14 Oct 2015 14:47:00 +0000

When you go out to eat at a fancy sit-down restaurant, you assume the staff is well paid and taken care of. I had foolishly assumed that when one tips the wait staff, that the tip is bonus to their hourly wage. This impression is a false impression. During a recent Greater Minnesota Workforce Center Fundraiser, I listened to Saru Jayaraman, one of the founding member of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United. For wait staff in 17 states and two territories, the hourly wage is $2.17. What this means for the wait staff is, if the customer doesn't tip at least $5, the wait staff hasn't even reached minimum wage.

The tipping system originated from medieval Europe where rich Lords and Barons would pay their dining servants with tips. During the colonization of the Americas, the practice of tipping was brought with. During the 1800s, an anti-tipping movement caught fire throughout Europe. The anti-tipping movement in the United States was squashed by the restaurant industry arguing that hard workers would make a higher salary. In a 2015 survey of the worst 10 jobs in America, nine were restaurant jobs in which only one job was in fast food.

Aside from being cheated from a minimum wage, wait staff do not have paid sick days or vacation. Workers are reprimanded or fired if they call in sick. The problem is so widespread that most cases of the Norovirus can be traced back to sick employees. Norovirus is transmitted by infected diarrhea and vomit. Workers with vomiting and severe diarrhea frequently show up to work because if they don't work, they don't get paid. In a case in Miami Beach, Florida a cook worked for over a week with typhoid fever. If diseases of antiquity weren't the worst of it, worker abuses are rife in the restaurant industry.

No one should be harassed or inappropriately touched while working. Unfortunately women and people of color are all too frequently the targets of sexual, racial, and other verbal harassment. These abuses often go unreported in fear of retaliation from management.

Restaurant workers are also often victims of wage theft. Wage theft in the restaurant industry takes many forms, the most common being working off the clock. Workers in fear of losing their jobs work without compensation and workers compensation protection by working off the clock. Wage theft also occurs commonly in paychecks by forcing workers to take automated payments via a pre-paid credit card, which incur fees for cash withdrawal.

So what can you the consumer do to help end restaurant worker abuses?

Take a proactive approach when eating out at your favorite restaurants. Ask management if they pay their wait staff at least minimum wage. If the restaurant doesn't pay minimum wage, consider either eating somewhere else or make sure you leave a tip that fairly compensates the wait staff for their time. Leave your tips in the form of cash rather than a credit card swipe. Often restaurants will push credit card processing fees onto the wait staff, furthering wage theft. Always remember this golden rule, If you don't have money to tip, you don't have money to eat out.

And last but not least, join the movement to raise the minimum wage.

Photo: Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC United) Facebook.

Workers take seats at the table at White House summit

Tue, 13 Oct 2015 15:25:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - At the White House Summit on Worker Voice last week President Obama declared: "If you're not at the table, you are on the menu."

He was quoting Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, one of many top union leaders attending the day-long session. Also participating were organizers of low wage workers, researchers, academics, several business leaders, Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Al Franken, D.-Minn., and Representatives Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, Gregory Meeks, D.-N.Y., and Frederica Wilson, D.-Fla.

No one mentioned the Trans Pacific Partnership, a trade deal pushed through by Obama and adamantly opposed by organized labor because leaders say it will cost jobs and lower occupational safety and health standards. Many observers here postulated that the President held the Summit now in order to maintain labor support for his administration.

Obama acknowledged that workers' rights have been weakened by anti-union laws and policies, but throughout the Summit he repeated his opinion that the main culprit has been "the combination of globalization and automation" that allows corporations "to do more with less." He said what's needed is a "refashioning" of the "social compact so that workers are able to be rewarded properly for the labor that they put in."

Obama suggested that employees and employers work together to create a new "culture" on the job that allows workers to have a voice.

He agreed with U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez, Summit moderator, who said that "there are many different kinds of worker voice."

Nevertheless, Summit participants responded with sustained applause when Sarita Gupta, executive director of Jobs with Justice, said "the strongest form of workers' voice is having a union on the job."

Vice President Biden agreed.

"It's a simple proposition," he said. "With the ability to sit on the other side of the table with employers and collectively bargain, you have some power. At the end of day, that's how progress is made."

Biden continued: "Business has declared war on labor's house. Everything has been done to undermine workers being represented by people sitting across from employers. The deal used to be that the more workers produced, the higher their wages got."

But that's changed, said the Vice President. "Between 2003 and 20013 corporate American made $4.6 trillion dollars. They used 54 percent of this to buy back their own stock and 37 percent to pay dividends. That leaves 9 percent to pay for everything else, including workers' wages and training. This happened because collective bargaining has been undermined."

Biden said, "There's a great resurgence taking place in the American economy, but we can't keep the average American out of benefitting. That's why we need more protection for workers' rights."

Robert Hathorn, who works at the Nissan automobile plant in Canton, Miss., gave first hand testimony that his rights, and those of many other Nissan employees, are being trampled. He said he joined the effort to win collective bargaining representation by organizing a UAW local at the plant.

The company will not allow him to do this. Although Hathorn does the same work as many others at the plant, management has classified him as a "temporary" employee, an "independent contractor," with virtually no rights under current law. He was fired for engaging in union activities, but was able to win his job back.

Hathorn is among a growing number of workers known as "perma-temps," or "on demand" workers. So are nannies, child care workers and domestic workers.

During the "conversation with the President" segment of the Summit, Obama said he has no ready-made answers for guaranteeing that perma-temps have a voice or that they receive livable wages and benefits. Same goes for people who choose to freelance in many industries.

What's more, the President said, he has no ready-made plans for helping workers as a whole to win a more effective voice. He urged Summit participants to submit ideas to him over the next several months.

The last person to speak from the audience during the "conversation" segment was Gustavo Torres, executive director of Casa de Maryland, an organization that advocates for and provides services to newly arrived immigrant workers.

Torres said "Having a voice comes from having power. With a voice, we can share the wealth."

President Obama closed the Summit on Worker Voice by saying, "I see this as the beginning of the conversation, not the end."

Photo: Fast food worker Terrence Wise at the Summit on Worker Voice at the White House in Washington, DC, on Oct. 7. Jobs with Justice.