Labor Union Blog

By Doug Cunningham

The National Air traffic Controllers Association says that while over-scheduling is a big reason so many flights are delayed these days, controller understaffing is also a factor. The unions says the number fo fully trained experienced air traffic controllers is at an 11 year low, with 1100 fewer than were on the job in 2001. At JFK in new York, for example, there are 32 percent fewer controllers while air traffic at JFK has increased by 40 percent since 2001.

By Doug Cunningham

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says Bush’s veto Wednesday of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program denies urgently needed medical care to poor children. Sweeney says healthy children is not a political issue, it’s about helping kids. The Bush veto also kills an expansion of the Family and Medical Leave Act for families of wounded military personnel. Sweeney called the veto callous and indefensible.

By Doug Cunningham

The Service Employees International Union wants Congress to hold hearings and consider oversight actions on increasing ownership of nursing homes by private equity investors. SEIU says care is deteriorating at nursing homes owned by private equity groups. SEIU is concerned that this trend is diverting taxpayer money toward the enrichment of private equity CEO’s at the expense of quality care for the elderly. The Carlyle Group is buying out HCR Manor Care, the nation’s largest – nursing home provider. SEIU’s Anna Burger says Medicare and Medicaid resources meant to care for some of the most vulnerable Americans are being instead diverted to the private benefit of wealthy investors and Congress needs to act to correct it.

By Doug Cunningham

There’s been a significant shift in the politics of the past two decades toward a more progressive, labor friendly direction. And that, according to Celinda Lake of Lake research Partners, means that the 2008 presidential election will be about the revival of the American Dream. Change To Win’s Anna Burger says an overwhelming majority of Americans now believe that corporate power has run amok and that unions are the antidote to restore the American Dream for workers.

[Burger1]: “There’s been a whole campaign to de-unionize the workforce and to prevent workers from having a voice.

By Doug Cunningham

Thirty-two hundred South African mines were trapped underground Wednesday when a pipe fell, damaging the mine shaft at the Elanstrand mine operated by Harmony Gold Mining Company. The mines are among the deepest in the world and 113 miners there were killed last year in various accidents and earth tremors. Food and water is being lowered to the miners, who are gathered in an emergency assembly area deep underground. Harmony says an adjacent mine shaft has to be “reconfigured” to rescue the 3200 miners. The trapped miners will have to be rescued in cages that will carry them up the adjacent shaft to the surface. And Harmony says it doesn’t know how long that will take.

George Kourpias, president of the Alliance for Retired Americans, a 3.4-million members grassroots advocacy organization for current and future retirees, describes the extent and effects of drug company price gouging, as found in a new Alliance for Retired Americans Educational Fund report. Kourpias is a former president of the Machinists.

By now, the fact that drug companies are profiting at the expense of patients is probably not surprising.

What is shocking is the extreme extent of price gouging by pharmaceutical companies–and the direct effect it is having on retirees.

Several family members of the six coal miners and three rescue workers killed at the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah told the House Education and Labor Committee today how the disaster has devastated their families and called for a through investigation into the failures of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) and the actions of mine co-owner Robert Murray.

Below are excerpts from their testimony. Click on the video to watch the full testimonies and here for more coverage of the hearings. Click here to view the entire hearing at the committee’s website.

With her grandson Gage on her lap and a photo of her son Brandon—one of six coal miners killed Aug. 6 at the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah—in front of her, Shelia Phillips told the House Education and Labor Committee this morning that they were there because:

We want to make the mines safer so this doesn’t happen to anyone else. It’s hard to have hope when you have your heart broken every day watching your grandson grow up without a dad.

Phillips and several other family members—including the wife of one of the three rescue workers killed Aug. 16—spoke out against the treatment they received from mine co-owner Robert Murray following the disaster; the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s (MSHA’s) approval of a mining plan that many experts believe played a major role in the mine collapse that trapped the six. They also said they believed if Crandall Canyon had been a union mine, the disaster may not have happened.

After a broad outreach to members, AFT has endorsed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in the 2008 presidential race.

The AFT heard from its 1.4 million members through a seven-month process of individual surveys, regional caucuses and You Decide 2008, an interactive website. The union’s executive council sent questionnaires to all announced candidates and met with many of them for a question-and-answer session, where candidates answered questions submitted by AFT members. In addition to Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) and Gov. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.) accepted the invitation to answer members’ questions.