Labor Union Blog

Economic Report:

March was the worst month in 16 years for new home sales. New home sales dropped by 8.5 percent last month, the slowest pace since October of 1991. Prices also continued to drop with the biggest year-over-year decline since July of 1970. Prices dropped by 13.3 percent. Sales for existing home also fell in March, dropping two percent.

By Doug Cunningham

Thousands of workers are still dying on the job each year in the U.S. and in some cases employers are paying as little as $750 in each death. The AFL-CIO’s annual report on death and injuries on the job says in 2006, the latest year for which numbers are available, more than 5800 workers were killed on the job. There’s an increase in the number of Latino workers being killed at work. The AFL-CIO says inspections and enforcement of workplace safety rules has seriously diminished under the Bush administration.

Is North Carolina’s ban on collective bargaining for public sector employees a violation of NAFTA? Jesse Russell reports:

Forty labor organizations spanning from Canada to the United States to Mexico filed charges on Wednesday that the United States and the state of North Carolina are violating the North American Free Trade Agreement by not allowing 650,000 public employees in that state the right to collectively bargain. The organizations have brought their case under a supplement to NAFTA called the North Agreement for Labor Cooperation which lists the freedom of association and the right to collectively bargain as principles. A North Carolina statute prohibits union from negotiating on behalf of public sector employees. The workers are represented by the North Carolina Public Service Workers Union. The complaint is being filed through Canada’s National Administrative Office asking for an investigation to violations of labor rights. In 2006 a similar charge was filed through Mexico’s NAO and an investigation is underway.

By Doug Cunningham

There will be $10 billion more going into U.S. nutrition programs, including food stamps. Congress agreed on Thursday to pump in the additional money. As Congress beefs up nutrition programs for the poor in the U.S., the world faces a growing food crisis. In Britain a food summit convened by warned that skyrocketing food prices could plunge more than 100 million people into hunger around the world. A shocking estimate from the food summit put the number of people in the world dying daily from hunger at 25,000. Prime Minister Brown says worldwide food shortages threaten to destabilize nations and is on a par with global turmoil in the financial markets.

A Chinese cargo ship packed with rocket grenades, mortar rounds and 3 million rounds of AK-47 ammunition destined for strife-torn Zimbabwe is now reported to be returning its cargo to China. South African trade unionists refused to unload the ship Friday and other African unions have made similar vows in other ports.

Zimbabwe and its president Robert Mugabe have a long record of worker and human rights violations. On March 29, Zimbabwe held a presidential election where the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, is reported to have received more votes.

More than three weeks after the balloting, the results have yet to be released and independent observers and human and worker rights leaders say that’s because Mugabe’s ruling party—in power for 28 years—lost. There has been a new wave of violence and arrests against unions and other regime opponents in the past several weeks following the elections. The arms on the Chinese ship would have arrived just as a crackdown against those demanding democracy in Zimbabwe is occurring.

After four years of stalling, delays and appeals, Resurrection Health Care system may finally have to pay back wages to 64 employees. This week, the Illinois Department of Labor forwarded the employees’ wage complaint to the state’s attorney general for prosecution. The Labor Department previously ruled that Resurrection owes $381,000 in back wages to the employees, who work in the Home Health Services division.

The workers filed complaints with the state Labor Department in 2003 charging the chain’s “fee-for-visit” system consistently failed to pay them for hours worked beyond their normal schedule. Resurrection Health Care is the second-largest health care system in the Chicago metropolitan area and the largest Catholic health care system in Illinois.

The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) union has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for president.

The IFPTE Executive Council voted unanimously yesterday to endorse Obama. The union represents more than 75,000 engineers, technicians and scientists across the public and private sector.

IFPTE President Gregory Junemann says the IFPTE Executive Council believes in Obama’s ability to be a leader on health care, retirement security, protecting workers from privatization and outsourcing, ensuring worker-friendly trade and passing the Employee Free Choice Act.

While IFPTE applauds both Democratic candidates, our union’s internal polling results, coupled with Senator Obama’s unblemished record of support for the critical issues facing IFPTE, prompted our action to endorse Senator Obama. IFPTE’s Executive Council agreed that Senator Obama is the candidate best suited to address the major concerns of America’s working men and women.

So it seems Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) thinks it’s just fine if women workers can almost never get redress for pay inequities they suffer on the job.

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate failed to get the 60 votes needed to vote on a bill that would have enabled women who are paid less than their co-workers doing the same job to challenge the inequity. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama took time from their campaigns to vote for the Fair Pay Restoration Act.

McCain didn’t show up. But he did make it a point to say that had he bothered to vote (McCain has cast the fewest votes in the Senate of any senator not seriously ill), he would have opposed it.

Here are a few news items worth noting.

• New home sales in March plunged to the lowest level in 17 years, according to U.S. Commerce Department figures out this morning, far more than forecast. The median sales price slumped 13.3 percent from the same time last year, the most in almost four decades. This bad news follows a report showing home values dropped 2.4 percent in February from a year earlier, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. Meanwhile, sales of previously owned homes, which account for about 85 percent of the market, fell 2 percent in March, according to the National Association of Realtors—the seventh decline in eight months. The AFL-CIO has been calling for an immediate moratorium on home foreclosures as a first step to address this rolling crisis.
• Yet as recently as this week, George W. Bush repeated that the nation is not in a recession: “We’re in a slowdown.” Just don’t tell that to working families. Or to an economist. As the BBC reports:

…it’s still hard to find an economist who doesn’t believe the U.S. is either in recession or so close it’s not worth arguing about….