By Doug Cunningham

Jack Rasmus, author of "The War At Home:The Bush Corporate Offensive Against American Workers And Their Unions", says the health care trust funds accepted by the UAW in the auto industry represent a massive income shift from workers to corporations that undermines collective bargaining. And he says the idea is already spreading to other big companies.

[Rasmus]: “The post-war health care financing delivery system is coming to an end. It’s coming to an end rapidly. Companies like Verizon, AT&T – they’re all looking at how they can do this.”

Rasmus, who has a degree in Economics and a Ph.D in Political Economy, says the auto industry health care funds known as VEBA’s are severely underfunded. New accounting rules requiring full funding of such plans are just around the corner.

By Doug Cunningham

AFSCME’s Gerald McEntee says his union is endorsing Hillary Clinton for President and the union is in it to win it.

[McEntee]: "We're going to win this election with a big enough margin that even George Bush's Supreme Court can't take our victory away."

Clinton donned boxing gloves from AFSCME at the endorsement announcement.

[Clinton]: "When it comes to fighting for America's working families, I'll go ten rounds with anybody."

Leading Republicans are running from, not for, the U.S. House seat being vacated by the incumbent next year in Ohio's 15th District.

The seat has been held for the past 15 years by Deborah Pryce, a member of the Republican leadership who barely made it back to Congress last year. She won re-election by just a tad more than 1,000 votes, despite years of easy victories. Pryce announced this summer she wasn’t up for another campaign and would retire at the end of her eighth term.

For the first time in a decade, a group of nurses aides, housekeepers, secretaries and other service workers at Yale-New Haven Hospital, Yale University’s teaching hospital, have something to celebrate.

Their struggle exposes how employers use union-busting tactics even after it has specifically agreed to a standard of conduct. And it shows how much we need the Employee Free Choice Act so workers can have a real choice.

When American workers' jobs are shipped overseas because of the flawed U.S. trade policies that encourage employers to move offshore, the workers' primary helping hand to get back on their feet is the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program. But as Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, says:

The painful truth is that the current TAA program is not working.

Today, the House, by a bipartisan 264-157 margin approved a bill (H.R. 3920) that reauthorizes and overhauls TAA, makes improvements to current federal-state unemployment insurance (UI) system and strengthens the 1988 plant closing laws.

New mine safety legislation aimed at preventing mine disasters, improving emergency response and reducing long-term health risks such as Black Lung was approved today by the House Education and Labor Committee.

But the Bush administration's budget and staffing cuts have raised new concerns about the Mine Safety and Health Administration's (MSHA's) failure to conduct mandatory quarterly mine safety inspections in mines across the country, including one where a West Virginia coal miner was killed Sunday.