Labor Union Blog

Economic Report:

California home foreclosures hit a 10-year-high in the second quarter. More than 63,000 homes were foreclosed on in the state – an increase of 33.5 percent since the first quarter. Year over year the increase is 261 percent. Default notices for mortgages were also up substantially hitting a record increase of 125 percent over the previous year.

Labor leaders and environmentalists stood in solidarity on Tuesday to demand clean air and quality jobs at the Port of Oakland. Jesse Russell reports:

More than 3000 members of organized labor, environmental groups, and the community joined together on Tuesday at a rally intended to bring attention to the desire for Clean Air and Good jobs at Oakland California’s port. One of the primary targets is the ports truck fleet. The rally participants, including Teamster’s President Jim Hoffa, called on the port to implement a sustainable truck program that will cut back on the toxins that trucks emit. Hoffa said the goal of the rally was to “curb pollution in our ports and create good-paying jobs for port drivers.” A similar sustainable trucks program was adopted by the port of Los Angeles earlier this year. If Oakland adopts such a plan they will be the second port in the country to do so.

More layoffs are on the horizon at United Airlines as the company tries to cope with an economic downturn. The company announced Tuesday that 7,000 workers would be laid off by the end of 2008. The airline reports that it lost $2.7 billion in the second quarter of the year.

By Doug Cunningham

In case you were wondering why you’re hurting financially while the very rich are getting even richer, leave to George W. Bush to clear it up. Speaking at a private fundraiser when he thought he wasn’t being recorded this is what he told the fat cats.

[Bush]: “Wall Street got drunk. That’s one reason I asked you to turn off the TV cameras. It got drunk and now it’s got a hangover.”

By Doug Cunningham

In case you were wondering why you’re hurting financially while the very rich are getting even richer, leave to George W. Bush to clear it up. Speaking at a private fundraiser when he thought he wasn’t being recorded this is what he told the fat cats.

{Bush]: “Wall Street got drunk. That’s one reason I asked you to turn off the TV cameras. It got drunk and now it’s got a hangover.”

By Doug Cunningham

The United Mine Workers of America has endorsed a single-payer universal national health care system for the U.S. The mine worker’s union has joined more than 440 other labor organizations in backing the bill sponsored by Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat from Michigan. UMWA President Cecil Roberts.

[Roberts]: “When George Bush gets sick who pays for that? Aw come on, who pays for that?
[Crowd]: “We do!”)
“When ol’ Dick Cheney gets sick who pays for that?”
[Crowd]: “We Do!”)
“When Condaleeza Rice gets sick, who pays for that?”
[Crowd]:”We Do!”

With the U.S. economy sputtering toward recession, working women and their families will feel more pain than in past downturns.

According to a report by the congressional Joint Economic Committee, women are now working in jobs and industries that are more likely to lay off workers than they were in most previous recessions:

In recessions prior to 2001, women could buffer family incomes against male unemployment because they did not experience sharp job losses. However, this changed in the 2001 recession as women lost jobs on par with men in the industries that lost the most jobs.

For seven and a half years, the Bush administration has delayed and sometimes just refused to act on workplace safety and health rules that could save lives and prevent serious injuries. Had the administration acted on those stalled rules, it may have prevented the deaths of 13 workers in a Georgia sugar plant explosion in February and the more than a dozen crane accident deaths this year in New York City, Las Vegas, Miami and Houston.

Now, with time running out on the Bush White House, it is fast-tracking a secretly written rule—long sought by the business community—that could increase workers’ exposure to dangerous chemicals and toxic substances on the job and tie the hands of future administrations trying to improve workplace safety.

Bandages may work OK for scraped knees, but as Working America members and union activists in Minnesota told Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) today, the nation’s broken health care system needs serious and comprehensive reform—not a “Bandage Solution.”

The activists marched to Coleman’s St. Paul office and at a press conference outside the office delivered a long roll of “No Bandage Solution” petitions strung together by colorful bandages and signed by more than 23,000 Working America members in Minnesota.