Labor Union Blog

With the U.S. economy in a downhill slide, our flawed trade policies must be reformed to put good jobs at the center of a coherent global economic strategy. Meeting in San Diego, the AFL-CIO Executive Council said in a statement today that our struggle to compete successfully in the global economy is connected with the many other challenges facing the U.S. economy and working families.

The Executive Council, which is meeting March 4-6, approved two statements on trade today, “What Is Wrong With U.S. Trade Policy?” and “Colombia Free Trade Agreement.”

As the council points out, our trade and tax policies have encouraged employers to shift jobs overseas, and the resulting trade deficit has cost even more jobs here at home, decimating our manufacturing industries and eroding real wages.

The mortgage foreclosure crisis, fueled by years of unchecked predatory lending practices, has resulted in a disaster for millions of America’s homeowners. Not since the Depression of the 1930s have so many U.S. homeowners owed more on their mortgages than their homes are worth.

The current mortgage crisis, says the AFL-CIO Executive Council,

is threatening the American Dream of homeownership for millions of families. Predatory lending practices and slumping real estate markets threaten the jobs and incomes of hundreds of thousands of workers as well as the financial stability of state and local governments.

In a statement approved today in San Diego, the Executive Council outlines several steps to address the mortgage and foreclosure crisis, help bring affordable housing within reach of middle- and lower-income Americans and re-prime the job pump in the housing construction industry.

When you hear a favorite song over the Internet or on satellite radio, not only do the folks who wrote the music and lyrics get a royalty, but so do the musicians who perform and sing. That seems fair—after all, the musicians are the ones who make the music come to life.

But if you hear that same song on your car radio, or elsewhere on what’s known as “terrestrial radio,” the song writers receive the royalty—but not the musicians. The United States is the only country that denies musicians performance royalties for radio broadcasts.

It’s time to pay the band, says the AFL-CIO Executive Council in a statement adopted at its March 4–6 meeting in San Diego.

Americans depend on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to make sure our air and water are clean and safe. But union leaders say the agency is ignoring scientific standards, suppressing information and spending precious tax dollars and time retaliating against workers who blow the whistle on bad practices.

Fed up with what they call ”abuses of our good nature and trust,” 19 union local presidents, representing more than 10,000 EPA scientists, attorneys and other specialists, signed a Feb. 29 letter to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, telling him they will “suspend” further involvement with the National Labor-Management Partnership Council. The Partnership Council is a nearly 10-year-old forum for resolving disagreements.

U.S. House candidate Andre Carson, left, and AFSCME Council 62 Executive Director David Warrick.

While much attention is on the presidential primaries today in other states, working families in Indiana are mobilizing in search of a big win in the 7th Congressional District.

A special election is set next Tuesday, March 11, to fill the seat of the late Rep. Julia Carson, a Democrat who represented the Indianapolis-based district since 1997. The Indiana State AFL-CIO has endorsed her grandson, City-County Council member André Carson.

Now, as we’ve learned from AFL-CIO Midwest Political Coordinator Mary Theurer, the state AFL-CIO is leading a major drive on his behalf, with phone banking, workplace visits, mail, door-to-door walks and public events.

Memorial to the 12 workers killed in the Imperial Sugar Co. blast.

The Feb. 7 sugar dust explosion in Port Wentworth, Ga., that killed 12 Imperial Sugar Co., workers and seriously injured another 11 who are still in the hospital, has resulted in renewed calls for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to create combustible dust level standards to prevent such explosions.

Yesterday, Reps. George Miller (D-Calif.), House Education and Labor Committee chairman, and John Barrow (D-Ga.) introduced legislation requiring OSHA to move quickly on a dust standard.

Without a congressional mandate, however, it doesn’t appear as though OSHA will move any more quickly than it has in the past when safety experts determined a standard was needed. OSHA Administrator Edwin Foulke told reporters Monday that before OSHA would act:

We need to have the documentation, we have to have the research, we need to have the evidence.

New Jersey is a step closer to becoming the third state to guarantee workers paid time off to take care of an ill family member or newborn child. New Jersey State AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech tells us the New Jersey state Senate passed the paid family leave bill yesterday.

It provides up to six weeks of paid family leave at two-thirds salary (to a maximum of $524 a week). The measure would be financed by employee payroll deductions that would cost each worker in New Jersey a maximum of 64 cents a week, or $33 a year. The bill now is on the way to the House where approval is expected and Gov. Jon Corzine (D) says he will sign it if it gets to his desk.