Labor Union Blog

Andy, an IUE-CWA Local 201 member, looked at his pension check from General Electric as he sat in my office at the union hall. The local vice president and the president of the retirees association usually respond to benefit questions like this. But they were both on vacation, and I was struggling to catch up and be of some help.

“I got the $40 raise you told us about in December” he told me. “Then in January, I lost it again, plus another $6. What good was it? What happened?”

A conference call or two later, and we both knew three things had happened. In December, his pension went up $40. In January, his health care went up $46. So when the dust settled, his pension check dropped by $6. And keep in mind that he is one of the lucky ones: The share of employees offering any group health insurance at all to their retired workers dropped from 66 percent in 1988 to 33 percent in 2007.

Just three weeks after the unemployment figures showed the first overall loss of jobs in years, we learn that joblessness is the highest it’s been since the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in October 2005.

The Labor Department reported yesterday that the four-week average for initial jobless claims reached 360,500. The four-week average for the week ending Feb. 16 was 30,000 higher than this time last year. The total number of workers actually drawing an unemployment check also peaked at post-Katrina levels at 2.784 million workers, increasing by 48,000 in one week.

Union members have an opportunity to win a hunting or fishing trip in exotic locales—and appear on the national television program “Escape to the Wild.”

The winners will venture to Argentina to hunt majestic red stag, join professional angler Byron Velvick for Texas bass fishing or trek Canada’s expansive tundra to hunt caribou and upland bird—just a few of the trips that will be awarded.

Russell Delaney, a member of Electrical Workers Local 2320 in New Hampshire, traveled to Nebraska in December to hunt waterfowl in the Central Flyway courtesy of the TV program.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber, right, and Stewart Acuff.

U.S. corporations are exporting more than consumer goods these days—they’re increasingly exporting their anti-workers practices as well. In countries such as the United Kingdom, which still enjoys a high rate of union membership, more and more employers there are beginning to use American union-busters.

In one of the first concrete steps to continue the global solidarity of the historic Global Organizing Summit in December, the AFL-CIO and the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) are joining forces to try to eliminate the vicious intimidation practices employers use to prevent workers from seeking a better quality of life.