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Obama: McCain Won’t Fight for America’s Jobs

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:44:10 -0500

Posted by Seth Michaels to AFL-CIO NOW

With the economy on everyone’s minds, Sen. Barack Obama has released a new radio ad drawing a clear contrast between him and his opponent on jobs.

The ad (which you can listen to here) points to Sen. John McCain’s record of opposing rules to ensure that the federal government supports companies that create good jobs here.

When it comes to his record, American-made motorcycles like Harleys don’t matter to John McCain. Back in Washington, McCain opposed a requirement that the government buy American-made motorcycles. He said all Buy American provisions were ”disgraceful.”

The Obama campaign is airing the ad in states, like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where Harley-Davidson motorcycles are manufactured. McCain is campaigning in those states this week—and pointedly avoided a campaign visit to the Harley-Davidson plant in York, Pa., because those Buy American provisions would have required the government to purchase American-made motorcycles.

Harley-Davidson has a record of providing good manufacturing jobs. In 2005, American Rights at Work presented Harley-Davidson with their Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award to recognize the company’s success in working with employees and their unions to produce good products at facilities across America.

The nonpartisan PolitiFact confirms that McCain is opposed to “Buy American” requirements and specifically spoke out against such a rule for motorcycles in 2005.

McCain has repeatedly voted and spoken against requiring the government to buy American-made products.

As we’ve noted, McCain has supported the outsourcing of jobs. His campaign is staffed and funded by corporate lobbyists, including Rick Davis, the lobbyist whose DHL deal could result in thousands of lost jobs in Ohio, and Randy Altschuler, an outsourcing guru who advises companies on how to ship jobs overseas.

McCain’s record on trade and jobs reflects an agenda aimed at multinational corporations and the high-priced lobbyists who represent them, not the workers with whom a strong economy must be built. McCain married into millions and has spent 26 years in Congress, putting him further and further out of touch with the economic conditions America’s workers face.

Obama offers a pro-worker agenda that would protect America’s workers and create new jobs in energy, infrastructure and more. His economic plans will stimulate the economy by putting money into the hands of the working families who need it most. And he’ll fight for fair trade, not bad trade deals that don’t protect workers and tax cuts for companies that send jobs overseas.

With prices rising, wages stagnant and jobs declining, we need political leaders who will fight to protect good jobs. Obama’s record shows he’s serious about making sure the economy works for working families.

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Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

Colombian Flower Workers Celebrate New Contracts

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:34:43 -0500

Posted by James Parks to AFL-CIO NOW

For two years, flower workers in Colombia withstood a vicious anti-union campaign—and now their solidarity has paid off.

Last month, workers at the Splendor and La Fragancia flower plantations signed contracts with Dole Fresh Flowers, a subsidiary of U.S.-based Dole Food Co. and the largest grower and exporter of flowers from Colombia. After the workers at the two plantations formed unions in 2004 and 2005, the company refused to negotiate bargaining agreements with these unions. Instead, it negotiated a “sweetheart” deal with a company union that gave almost no benefits to the workers. Dole also launched anti-union campaigns that included closing its largest flower plantation after a two-year effort by workers there to form a union.

The workers, however, remained steadfast in their determination to get a fair contract. The Colombian government granted arbitration in the negotiations after Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, called on Colombia’s president to intervene.

Under the arbitrators’ ruling, the workers at the Splendor plantation will receive significant improvements in conditions and wages, including a bonus between $200 and $400, a $14 a month raise that will bring most flower workers to a monthly salary of about $215 and improvements in vacation and sick leave.

Workers at the La Fragrancia plantation will receive a 6 percent pay increase, bonuses for punctuality, additional pay for fumigation workers who are exposed to hazardous chemicals and an education stipend so that flower workers can send their children to school.

U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project (USLEAP), an advocacy group promoting labor rights in Latin America, has been urging Dole to address workers’ rights on its banana and flower plantations. Click here to learn more about USLEAP’s flower campaign.

More than 60 percent of the flowers sold in the United States come from Colombia. Two-thirds of the nearly 100,000 flower workers in Colombia are women, many of them working mothers. They often are required to work 12–to–15-hour days with few breaks, especially in the weeks before holidays like Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day. As a result, many have been injured on the job and suffer health problems related to overexposure to pesticides and humiliating and degrading treatment by management. All for poverty-level wages.

California State Employees Suffer for Arnie’s Hissy Fit

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:17:06 -0500

Posted by Tula Connell to AFL-CIO NOW

Apparently, Arnie wasn’t sufficiently vicious when he unilaterally cut the pay of California state employees to the minimum wage in a drama queen move over the state budget impasse.

Now, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) is suing the state controller, who refuses to go along with the Terminator’s tantrum.

On July 31, Schwarzenneger signed an executive order cutting the pay of 200,000 state workers to the federal minimum wage of $6.65 an hour beginning in September. On top of that, the order lays off 22,000 part-time and temporary workers.

Democratic lawmakers and others, including the California Labor Federation, say closing tax loopholes—better enforcement and collection of existing taxes and new sources of revenue like the one that allows wealthy Californians to buy yachts tax free—can help close the deficit and protect services.

Celeste Knox is one of the laid-off workers (see video). The day before she was fired without notice, the single mother of two signed a contract for a house. Now, she doesn’t know if she can feed her kids.

Listen to her testimony and tell Arnie what you think here.

Obama Pushes for New Energy Solutions

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:30:20 -0500

Posted by Seth Michaels to AFL-CIO NOW

With wages declining and unemployment rising, working families are having a hard time making ends meet—and the worsening economy, made more painful by rising energy costs, has become a top concern in the 2008 elections.

In town hall meetings in Ohio, Michigan and Indiana this week, Sen. Barack Obama is discussing how rising energy costs are squeezing the budgets of working families—and how building a new energy economy can help turn the country around.

At a town hall in Youngstown, Ohio, yesterday, Obama laid out how his proposals would create new energy and new jobs.

I know that over the past eight years, you’ve lost more 236,000 manufacturing jobs in this state. But I also know that Ohio has the second highest potential of all 50 states to create new wind energy manufacturing jobs—and investing in wind power could increase workers’ wages in Ohio by more than $3.5 billion through the year 2020. I also know that with the right investments, this state could save $24 billion a year that you spend importing energy, and instead, power two million homes using wind power.

… these goals are possible…and necessary, if we want our families to thrive again—to have good jobs with good wages that let them get ahead again.

As we’ve reported before, investing in the energy economy has a ripple effect, creating new jobs and lowering energy costs while boosting jobs. The AFL-CIO Executive Council strongly supports investing in new, clean energy and creating incentives for new green technologies.

The nation stands at the crossroads of opportunity for domestic investments in innovation, new technology and energy efficiency that will save jobs, create new jobs and new industries and revitalize American manufacturing. There is no guarantee that these will be good jobs or that the investments will be made here unless we fight to make it so.

Obama recognizes this opportunity. His campaign has released a comprehensive, detailed New Energy for America plan (PDF) that combines immediate relief for families with long-term investments in a new energy economy that could create millions of green jobs.

Sen. John McCain, however, is proposing solutions that help his real constituents—Big Oil. His corporate tax cut plans would give the top five oil companies nearly $4 billion, and his energy policy proposals reflect the fact his campaign is staffed and funded by oil-industry lobbyists. McCain has skipped votes on important energy legislation.

Investigations by Talking Points Memo and others have revealed disturbing patterns in McCain’s contributions from Big Oil. Hess executives offered $285,000 to McCain and the Republican Party at a June fundraiser, shortly before a speech in which McCain said that offshore drilling would be at the center of his energy policy. And, as we’ve noted previously, a flood of Big Oil contributions followed that speech. The oil industry gave McCain more than $1 million in June alone. No wonder McCain’s energy plan benefits oil companies, not working families.

McCain’s cozy ties with Big Oil are a big contrast to Obama’s energy plan, a comprehensive set of proposals that will give relief to families, create new jobs and help move our economy forward.

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Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

Obama to AFL-CIO Council: He’s Counting on Union Movement

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:10:54 -0500

Posted by Mike Hall to AFL-CIO NOW

Barack Obama told the AFL-CIO Executive Council he is counting on the union movement’s largest-ever voter mobilization to play a key role in his drive to take back the White House for working families on Election Day.

Speaking via video conference at the council’s two-day meeting in Chicago this morning, Obama pledged his support for the Employee Free Choice Act, new fair trade policies that don’t reward companies for shipping jobs overseas, a major job-creating investment in rebuilding and repairing infrastucture and a new energy economy.

The Executive Council also approved statements covering collective bargaining for federal workers, the growing fiscal crisis for state and local governments, education initiatives, the recent decision by the Air Force to award a multibillion-dollar air tanker contract to a foreign-led partnership and the Bush administration’s recent made-in-secret rule on worker exposure to toxins.

Today’s session focused on the fall elections and Labor 2008, the AFL-CIO’s political mobilization to inform union voters about the issues and candidates—especially the huge differences between the pro-working family Obama and the long-time anti-worker presidential candidate John McCain.

A combination of member-to-member contact at the workplace, the front porch and on the phone—plus communication from local union leaders via mail and newsletters—is designed to move as many union family voters to the polls as possible.

The council heard about plans that put a special focus on key battleground states where union voters make up as much as 35 percent of the electorate. Those key states include Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin (D) addressed the council today. Last night at a special reception and this morning during the meeting, council members heard from several U.S. Senate candidates who are in races to unseat long-time anti-worker incumbents, all of whom voted last year to block the Senate from voting on the Employees Free Choice Act.

The Senate hopefuls, who are working with strong labor backing and working family support in their states, are:

Kay Hagen (D), running in North Carolina against Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R), who has a 21 percent lifetime working families voting record.
Bruce Lunsford (D), running in Kentucky to unseat Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader who has an 11 percent lifetime working families voting record.
Jeff Merkley (D), running in Oregon against Sen. Gordon Smith (R), who has a 24 percent lifetime working families voting record.
Former New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen (D), running against Sen. John Sununu (R), who has a 10 percent lifetime working families voting record.

Rep. Tom Allen (D), who is running in Maine against Sen. Susan Collins (R) and her 34 percent lifetime working families voting record, was scheduled to appear, but fierce storms in the Chicago area snarled air traffic, and he was unable to appear.

This afternoon, the council approved a statement that addressed the growing fiscal crisis faced by state and local governments. In it, the council noted that many states, with billions of dollars in deficits because of the staggering economy, are cutting vital public services or rising taxes.

These actions not only reduce spending and investment and weaken the safety net at a time when people need more help, but contribute to further contraction of the economy.

Council members called on Congress to act to help the states by increasing federal funds for Medicaid. It also supported a package of stimulus funding for food stamp administration, child support enforcement, expanded unemployment insurance and modernization, employment services, emergency housing needs, education for at-risk and special needs children as well as higher education, and funding for infrastructure improvement and repair projects. It also called for enactment of Medicaid funding legislation now before Congress in two bills, H.R. 5628 and S. 2819.

Airport screeners, also known as Transportation Security Officers (TSOs), continue to be denied collective bargaining rights because of what the Bush administration says are “national security” concerns. The council issued a statement saying that majorities in both the House and Senate voted in 2007 to restore basic workplace rights to the 43,000 TSOs, but a Bush veto threat led to the provision being stripped from the bill. The council says:

The continuation of this systematic denial of fundamental labor and workplace rights undermines collective bargaining rights and workplace protections of all federal workers.

The AFL-CIO calls on Congress to immediately pass H.R. 3212, a bill introduced by Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) that grants TSOs the rights of other workers in DHS (Department of Homeland Security) and pledges to oppose other political attempts to use national security fears to curtail the collective bargaining rights of other federal workers.

In another statement concerning the rights of federal workers, the council called for an immediate resumption of contact talks between the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA). In 2006, the FAA walked away from the bargaining table and imposed new work rules that cut pay, eliminated certain rest periods and forces controllers to work overtime and six-day weeks. The deplorable work environment is behind the huge loss of experienced controllers—more than 2,500 have left the agency—and created a massive controller shortage that has put the flying public at risk.

The FAA also is refusing to resume bargaining with workers represented by Professional Aviation Safety Specialists (PASS) and AFSCME. Says the Executive Council:

It should be a priority of this Congress to include, on any moving piece of legislation, language that would require the FAA to return to the bargaining table to negotiate in good faith with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) and submit to neutral, binding arbitration in the event of an impasse. To protect the safety of the aviation system, an overarching change must be made in order to allow all FAA bargaining units to participate in an equitable contract negotiations process.

Council members also called for a wide array of public education and training initiatives and reforms on the national, state and local levels to equip students and workers with the skills needed to compete in the rapidly changing 21st century workplace.

To meet this challenge, our nation needs a cohesive national strategy that links substantial investment in job creation to an improved educational system and significant public resources directed toward skill-development programs. Implementing that strategy will require farsighted presidential leadership; a substantial financial commitment; a new working partnership among stakeholders in labor, business, education and government; and the kind of bipartisan comity that has been absent too long from our national life. Otherwise, the future will not be kind—either to job seekers without skills or to a nation without the will to create the workforce it needs.

Earlier this year, the Air Force created an uproar when it awarded a multibillon-dollar contract for a new generation of air refueling tankers to Northrop Grumman/EADS (the European maker of Airbus) over U.S.- based Boeing Co., threatening 44,000 U.S. jobs. Following a Government Accountability Office investigation that uncovered numerous improprieties that favored EADS, the Air Force is re-bidding the contract. Says the council:

It is a sensible requirement that will help ensure the viability of our industrial base and in this instance, the high-skill, high-wage jobs associated with the aerospace industry.

The council also adopted statements:

Condemning the Bush administration’s made-in-secret proposed rule that could expose workers to higher levels of dangerous chemicals and other toxic substances;
Calling for additional funding for the Bureau of Prisons to provide better safety and security for the 34,000 corrections officers and workers who are being assaulted, injured and even killed at alarming rates;
Urging the Department of Justice and other agencies to block a recent DHL/UPS agreement that threatens the jobs of some 10,000 pilots and other workers at two freight air carriers;
Calling on Congress to pass legislation to strengthen the Social Security Administration and reverse years of Bush administration underfunding that threatens service to and benefits for seniors and people with disabilities;
Urging Congress to end a corporate tax dodge that allows companies to count their multimillion-dollar CEO golden parachute pensions as liabilities against their workers’ pension plans.

Wal-Mart’s Attempt to Kill Employee Choice Backfires

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:56:52 -0500

Posted by James Parks to AFL-CIO NOW

When Wal-Mart tried to squelch the Employee Free Choice Act by requiring its employees to sit through mandatory meetings that stress the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized, it didn’t expect the idea would backfire.

But after The Wall Street Journal broke the story Friday, folks who had never heard of or discussed the Employee Free Choice Act began talking about it and learning why it’s needed. (You can take action now and tell Wal-Mart to stop intimidating its employees. Sign a petition here.)

Check out Keith Olbermann, for example. On his show “Countdown,” he interviews Chris Hayes, Washington editor for Nation magazine (see video). Hayes says:

It’s delicious that they [Wal-Mart] show exactly why the Employee Free Choice Act is so needed. The mechanism of intimidation an employer has over an employee is so powerful that running a union election has become incredibly difficult, almost impossible.

When your employer can have a mandatory meeting and sit you down in a room for hours on end showing anti-union propaganda or telling you who they think you should vote for. And you have to listen to them because you can’t walk out of that room and not get fired. Those are precisely the conditions the Employee Free Choice Act is designed to remedy.

Or Rachel Maddow, who delivered a detailed discussion on why we need the Employee Free Choice Act on her show last Friday on Air America.

Writing at Firedoglake, Michael Whitney from American Rights at Work, points out that this kind of intimidation is nothing new for Wal-Mart.

The bill does what its name says: It gives employees a free choice if they want to join a union. For decades, that choice has rested only with employers like Wal-Mart. Guess what their answer usually is?

Unfortunately for Wal-Mart workers, this kind of intimidation is nothing new. It’s actually part and parcel for Wal-Mart’s business plan. When Wal-Mart employees stand up for themselves and try to form a union, they face threats, propaganda, discrimination, intimidation and even firings in retaliation.

American Rights at Work has an action here in which you can ask the Federal Election Commission to investigate Wal-Mart’s electioneering.

Writing at cbsnews.com, Kevin Drum agrees that Wal-Mart’s intimidation is “par for the course.”

Few companies are as rabidly anti-union as Wal-Mart, and there was never any doubt where their sympathies lie on this issue. They have a habit of firing workers who try to organize their stores, closing down stores that vote to organize anyway, and outsourcing entire departments when multiple stores vote to organize.

Even pro-business groups are talking about the Employee Free Choice Act. Investment adviser Peter Cohan says Wal-Mart should rethink its opposition to the bill. Writing on bloggingstocks.com, he says:

It clearly fears the Employee Free Choice Act, which “companies say would enable unions to quickly add millions of new members,” according to the Journal. If [the Employee Free Choice Act] should pass under an Obama administration, would all Wal-Mart stores suddenly become unionized? And if some of them did, would that really be so bad for Wal-Mart’s business? Its workers would then have higher incomes, meaning they could buy more at its stores.

With its latest anti-Obama warnings, Wal-Mart’s executives seem to be at war with its customers. And that’s not good for its business or its shareholders.

And Fox Business.com—yes that Fox—ran a press release from a union group that condemned Wal-Mart’s action and pointed out:

It should be no surprise that Wal-Mart would stretch the limits of the law in an attempt to deny their workers’ rights and kill the Employee Free Choice Act. The company knows what all union workers know: Workers in unions earn 29 percent higher wages on average, are 62 percent more likely to have employer health coverage, and four times more likely to have a pension.

Shame on Wal-Mart. The industry leader’s attempts to skirt the law and use scare tactics to alter the outcome of the election is nothing less than disgraceful.

Wal-Mart’s actions coincide with a broader effort by corporate groups to stop the Employee Free Choice Act. In state after state, deep-pocket front groups, such as the Center for Union Facts and the Employee Freedom Action Committee, are running ads that assail candidates for their support of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would ensure the freedom of workers to form unions without employer harassment.

Drunk and Cheap. Bad Date? Nope. Chamber of Commerce Staff

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:14:53 -0500

Posted by Tula Connell to AFL-CIO NOW

They may be party animals when chugging $8,204 worth of booze, but after the hangover is over, the staff at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce goes back to being their ugly anti-worker selves.

Seems that some 100 or so Chamber of Commerce staff recently ran up an $8,204 tab at The Exchange, a sports bar within staggering distance from the Chamber’s architecturally ever-so ponderous Washington, D.C., headquarters.

And when the bosses got the tab, they weren’t happy. After all, the image of Chamber staffers soaking in thousands of dollars worth of Red Bull and pitchers of vodka that sources say the party-goers ordered, strays a bit from the pinstriped image the Chamber sells its members. And then there’s that problem of justifying such a large, booze-soaked expense to its frugal members out in DeKalb, Ill., or Anaheim, Calif.

So, when confronted with the bill, the staff did what the Chamber always does—blame workers. That’s right. The Chamber now is saying The Exchange waitstaff was tipped too much.

Should have thought of it. The problem is not the thousands of dollars the Chamber of Commerce staff wasted on getting wasted, it’s the 18 percent tip for the waiters and waitresses that’s the real crime.

If the Chamber had its way, the waitstaff who put up with a mass of drunken fools should do it for free. And be happy about it.

Just like the rest of America’s workers.

Workers Urge Democrats to Focus Platform on Employee Choice, Jobs, Health Care, Trade

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:02:55 -0500

Posted by James Parks to AFL-CIO NOW

In recent decades, corporate power has grown at the expense of ordinary workers, who see the results every day—in exported jobs, stagnant wages, lost pensions and unaffordable health care. And union members have urged the Democratic Party and its nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, to make restoring that balance a major part of the party’s platform, campaign and policy agenda.

The keys to rebuilding the economy, they said, include passing the Employee Free Choice Act and enacting new economic, health care and trade policies that benefit everyone. Speaking before the Democratic Party’s platform drafting committee last Friday, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker said:

We know that at some point the recession will end, but without a restoration of worker bargaining power, we will see a repeat of the last recovery—a recovery that was only experienced by the top 10 percent of income earners.

The single, most important priority for the labor movement next year will be reforming our labor laws to empower workers and allow them to form unions free of harassment, intimidation or fear of firing.

The 2008 Democratic platform must make the important connection between restoring the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively and restoring fairness and balance to our economy. I urge you to include the Employee Free Choice Act as a central plank of the platform.

Holt Baker was one of nine union leaders and rank-and-file workers who addressed the Democratic Party’s platform drafting committee in Cleveland on Aug. 1–2. They all told the committee that a major change is needed in the way the country treats its workers.

With unemployment at its highest level in four years, the need for good jobs is clear. In July alone, the nation lost 51,000 jobs, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Bloomberg reports that the combination of job losses and decreasing property values, stricter lending rules and near-record energy prices have sent consumer confidence levels close to the weakest in 16 years in July.

Misti Wells, a single mother of three from Eaton, Ohio, told the committee she is a “first-hand account of how bad things have gotten.” She took a buyout in 2006 from the General Motors factory where she worked and went back to school. But, degree or not, Wells still doesn’t have a job, her unemployment checks have run out and her landlord can’t afford to keep letting her skip paying her rent.

Says Wells:

My kids will go stay with their dad but I might be sleeping in a cardboard box. And that’s the problem. There’s no help for people trying to help themselves. Every day I spend trying to find a job and there simply aren’t any out there.

Health care is another major issue on the union movement’s agenda. Forty-seven million Americans are without health care insurance. Holt Baker reminded the panel that the AFL-CIO, earlier this year, conducted a health care survey and received letters from more than 27,000 people decrying the lack of coverage and high costs. They also wrote of friends and family putting off treatment for serious diseases because they could not afford to pay. Says Holt Baker:

These letters are a challenge to our country—and they are a special challenge to the next president. Here we are, the richest country in the world. We can find $10 billion a month to spend on a war in Iraq, but we leave millions of our own citizens to fight a war against asthma, cancer, HIV/AIDS and diabetes without even basic health care coverage.

Just ask Bruce Bostick, a retired steelworker from Ohio, who told the platform committee he retired after 30 years at Republic Technologies in Ohio, only to have the company declare bankruptcy and drop his pension of $1,100 a month to a meager $125 a month. He also lost health care coverage. Although he describes himself as in good shape and never having had any life-threatening diseases, he is finding it impossible to locate a health insurance company that will cover him.

Edward Coyle, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, said retirees all across the country are struggling with the skyrocketing costs of health care, prescription drugs, gas, groceries and home heating costs. Older Americans on fixed incomes are bearing the heaviest brunt of our nation’s failed economy. Many seniors worry that they are the last generation that will ever be able to retire after a lifetime of work.

Coyle, who was speaking in his role as chair of the Leadership Council on Aging Organizations, added:

In the growing economic uncertainty of retirement, we urge the Platform Committee to call for strong federal oversight of private pension plans, oversight that protects workers’ retirement savings from the corruption of corporate lawbreakers. Additionally, we urge the Platform Committee to strongly affirm a commitment to Social Security. This includes rejecting the misguided calls by President Bush and Sen. [John] McCain to privatize Social Security.

The nation needs a new direction on trade, the workers said. David Landrum, a 24-year veteran at the General Electric plant in Bloomington, Ind., who says his plant is closing in a year, laid it out straight when he said:

My factory and others shutting down is from bad trade deals, pure and simple. Our good paying and respectable jobs are being sent to Mexico, so that employers can avoid paying decent wages and benefits.

United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard says Landrum’s analysis is right on.

How can we lose more than 3.5 million manufacturing jobs and see more than 40,000 facilities shuttered and ask our citizens to support trade policies that have shipped their jobs overseas? How can we let policymakers tell our children that they should work hard and go to college to get one of the “jobs of the future” when those jobs, increasingly, are being done offshore as our nation’s advanced technology trade deficit with China alone amounts to more than $67 billion?

While the public has increasingly shown its concerns with the direction of our nation’s trade policies, our elected leaders do not stand united on what course to pursue. We must confront the need to reject the status quo approach to trade and adopt a new framework that is pro-worker, pro-trade, pro-growth, pro-equity.

Death and the Bush Administration

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:04:26 -0500

Posted by Tula Connell to AFL-CIO NOW

Last week, a confluence of events reminded the U.S. public that it’s not just the food we eat that’s increasingly dangerous in our daily lives—inadequate safety on the job still is killing America’s working people.

The week ended with two more deaths from construction cranes, this time in Illinois. These fatalities came within days of four deaths due to a crane collapse in Houston—and raises to 18 the number of workers who died from crane-related deaths so far this year, according to an estimate by The Wall Street Journal, which doesn’t include bystander deaths.

Also last week, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued 120 citations for safety violations at the Imperial Sugar Co. plant in Port Wentworth, Ga., where high levels of sugar dust fueled an explosion Feb. 7 that killed 13 workers. OSHA fined the company $5 million—but refuses to set a dust safety standard to help prevent such incidents from occurring in the future.

In addition, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) released a report on last year’s Crandall Canyon Mine disaster that killed six miners, placing the blame squarely on the coal mine operator, Murray Energy Co., and the engineering company hired to develop the mining plan. (Murray Energy CEO Robert Murray attributed the disaster to an earthquake and refused to go to Capitol Hill to testify before lawmakers.) The agency levied $1.6 million in fines against the mining company and $220,000 against the engineering firm. Three rescue workers later were killed trying to reach the site in Utah.

Juxtaposed to these events was a report by The Washington Post that revealed the Labor Department is fast-tracking a secretly written rule—long sought by the business community—that could increase workers’ exposure to dangerous chemicals and toxic substances on the job and tie the hands of future administrations trying to improve workplace safety.

Even as workers die on the job, the Bush-Elaine Chao Labor Department plots to ensure the administration’s legacy of failed safety enforcement, minimal penalties and wink-and-nod appointments of wolves to guard safety agencies like MSHA continues long after it’s gone. Rewarding their corporate cronies is the gift that keeps giving.

And in the nepotistic Bush world, Chao’s husband, Sen. Mitch McConnell, is so beholden to the failed Bush ideology that he won’t even come to the aid of his own constituency: Kentucky coal miners.

A 2006 article by Lexington Herald-Leader staff writer John Cheves explores how McConnell and Chao have operated as a “tag team,” sacrificing worker safety in favor of employers’ interests.

When it comes to workplace-related issues such as mine safety, the McConnell-Chao marriage presents an intriguing target for industry donors. At the Labor Department, Chao has taken what some reports say is a relaxed attitude toward the regulation of coal mines and an approach that labor unions perceive as hostile.

Sometimes Chao achieves what her husband cannot in the Senate, such as a wage freeze her department instituted on certain farm workers.

Chao attends her husband’s fundraisers, chats with his donors and seeds her agency with his former aides. Chief among them is Deputy Labor Secretary Steven Law, whose last job was helping McConnell tap donors—Bob Murray included—at the National Republican Senatorial Committee. They collected an impressive $187 million in four years there.

The area of mine safety has taken the greatest beating since the Bush-Chao duo took office. In 2006, the year of the Sago Mine disaster, some 47 coal miners died in 2006—a 210 percent increase from 2005. Further:

Chao’s Labor Department missed the Dec. 15 deadline to issue new federal rules for better trained mine rescue teams at the nation’s coal mines.
Between 2000 and 2008, the MSHA has failed to issue more than 4,000 fines for violations of mine safety laws—including a mine where a Kentucky coal miner died in 2005.
Bush even threatened to veto new mine safety legislation passed by the House to build on the 2006 MINER Act that passed in the aftermath of the Sago, Aracoma and Darby coal mine disasters.

In a House Education and Labor Committee hearing last October on the Crandall Canyon disaster, Sheila Phillips, mother of miner Brandon Phillip who perished in the collapse, told House members:

It’s just hard to have hope, and have your heart broke every day, and have your grandson grow up without a dad….I just miss him…I would like to know where my son is in that hole, so I can leave a marker on that mountain.

Each day in 2006, 16 U.S. workers were fatally injured on the job—5,840 that year, the latest for which data are available. That’s an increase from 5,734 in 2005.

That the number of on-the-job deaths is rising should be an embarrassment and a source of shame for the leadership of any western industrialized nation. That Sheila Phillips cannot place flowers on her son’s grave should keep any U.S. administration awake at night.

But not this one.

(This is a cross-post from the Firedoglake blog.)

Verizon Contract Talks Continue Past Strike Deadline

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:59:57 -0500

Posted by James Parks to AFL-CIO NOW

Negotiators returned to the bargaining table today in an effort to agree on a fair contract for the 85,000 employees who work for Verizon along the East Coast from Massachusetts to Virginia.

Just minutes before the current contract was set to expire Aug. 2, the workers, members of the Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the Communications Workers of America (CWA), agreed to “stop the clock” and postpone a strike while negotiations continue. Last month, members of both unions voted to authorize a strike if a fair agreement isn’t reached. CWA President Larry Cohen says:

We hope to achieve a fair settlement, but [the strike vote] demonstrates our members’ solid support for their bargaining teams and their own strong determination to achieve a fair settlement with Verizon.

Last week, the workers launched a series of “rolling” rallies to build solidarity for the workers, 70,000 of whom are represented by CWA and 15,000 by IBEW. Local AFL-CIO labor councils and state federations are strongly supporting the Verizon workers in the Northeast.

Carrying signs proclaiming “Do not underestimate us” and “We want a fair contract,” the workers rallied in some 150 cities. On July 31, more than 1,000 workers rallied at Verizon’s New England headquarters in Boston, led by motorcycles. The same day, members of IBEW Local 2336 held a rally and cookout in Washington, D.C., and members of both unions rallied in Newark, N.J.

On the eve of expiration of the contract with Verizon, workers held a candlelight vigil in Boston. Says Ed Fitzpatrick, president of IBEW Local 2222:

Our parents and grandparents sacrificed to make this a company with good jobs and benefits. We won’t turn our backs on them. We will stand united for as long as it takes.

The unions are working hard to preserve the quality wages and benefits that telecom workers have achieved through 35 years of collective bargaining, but they also are keeping their eye on the future of the industry. As Verizon transitions from a traditional phone company to a high-tech provider of video, Internet and wireless communications, workers are fighting for the union jobs of the future.

A key issue in the negotiations includes Verizon’s outsourcing the jobs of union members in New York and other states to nonunion call centers in the United States and in India, Mexico and the Philippines. The workers also are fighting company proposals to cut back on health care benefits. Michael Garry, president of CWA Local 1126 in Utica, N.Y., puts it this way when he spoke with the Syracuse Post-Standard:

You can have the best contract in the world, but what good does it do you if you don’t have a job?

Stressing the importance of the show of solidarity, Myles Calvey, business manager for IBEW Local 2222 and chair of the IBEW Telephone Workers’ Bargaining Committee, said in a message to members:

The main reason management has been forced to deal with our issues is because the membership has shown them that we are united and determined to win yet another contract that takes us into the future.