Labor Union Blog

Latino workers who join a union have a much larger pay scale advantage than non-union Latino workers. According to the Center for Economic Policy Research, unionized Latinos earn 17.6 percent more than non-union Latino workers. Unionized workers were also more likely to have healthcare and pension benefits. The difference in wage scale works out to be about $2.60 per hour on average. Latino workers make up roughly 14 percent of all U.S. workers and 12 percent of all union workers.

Latino workers who join a union have a much larger pay scale advantage than non-union Latino workers. According to the Center for Economic Policy Research unionized Latinos earn 17.6 percent more than non-union Latino workers. Unionized workers were also more likely to have healthcare and pension benefits. The difference in wage scale works out to be about $2.60 per hour on average. Latino workers make up roughly 14 percent of all U.S. workers and 12 percent of all union workers.

SEIU is mobilizing workers and voters in an effort to make this election about rebuilding the middle class. Doug Cunningham reports.

By Doug Cunningham

SEIU is one of them most politically active unions in America, with plans to spend $85 million to get out the union vote in November. Mary Kay Henry is a Vice-President in SEIU Health Care.

[Henry]: “We want to use this election to put our members at the center of rebuilding the American middle class by winning health care for every man, woman and child in this country and making sure that every worker has the freedom to choose a union. What McCain means is more of the same, and we are sick of wages going down and health care costs going up and families getting stuck in the middle and getting squeezed.”

SEIU is mobilizing workers and voters in an effort to make this election about rebuilding the middle class. Doug Cunningham reports.

By Doug Cunningham

SEIU is one of them most politically active unions in America, with plans to spend $85 million to get out the union vote in November. Mary Kay Henry is a Vice-President in SEIU Health Care.

[Henry]: “We want to use this election to put our members at the center of rebuilding the American middle class by winning health care for every man, woman and child in this country and making sure that every worker has the freedom to choose a union. What McCain means is more of the same, and we are sick of wages going down and health care costs going up and families getting stuck in the middle and getting squeezed.”

A meat packing plant in Nebraska has changed the time for dinner break to accommodate 500 Muslim workers who walked off the job Monday. The workers were seeking an earlier break time, 7:45 p.m. instead of 8 p.m., so they would be able to pray as the Muslim faith continues through the month of Ramadan. The workers at the Swift plant walked out after the company refused to grant enough time for them to pray during the work shift. The company worked out a deal with Muslim representatives as well as the United Food and Commercial Workers. The workers were not fired for their action on Monday, but the company says they will receive a disciplinary note on their personal files. The month of Ramadan ends on October 1 and at that time the dinner break will return to 8 p.m.

A meat packing plant in Nebraska has changed the time for dinner break to accommodate 500 Muslim workers who walked off the job Monday. The workers were seeking an earlier break time, 7:45 p.m. instead of 8 p.m., so they would be able to pray as the Muslim faith continues through the month of Ramadan. The workers at the Swift plant walked out after the company refused to grant enough time for them to pray during the work shift. The company worked out a deal with Muslim representatives as well as the United Food and Commercial Workers. The workers were not fired for their action on Monday, but the company says they will receive a disciplinary note on their personal files. The month of Ramadan ends on October 1 and at that time the dinner break will return to 8 p.m.

In a last-ditch effort to salvage the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA), 80 Colombian political leaders, including President Alvaro Uribe, traveled to Washington, D.C., where they fanned out across town to lobby lawmakers, media and business leaders. But lawmakers on Capitol Hill stood strong in insisting there will be no deal until the government of Colombia adequately addresses the violence against trade unionists, brings the perpetrators to justice and brings its labor laws into compliance with international standards.

In the past eight months, 41 Colombian trade union members have been murdered, more than in all of last year. Nearly 2,700 trade unionists have been murdered in Colombia since 1986, including some 471 during the Uribe administration. And the killers are getting away with it. The impunity rate for murdering a trade unionist in Colombia remains at more than 96 percent.

For nearly eight years, the Bush administration has buried or delayed every possible proposed rule—usually at the behest of its Big Business allies—that would protect the health and safety of workers.

Now, with time running out, Bush's Department of Labor is bull-rushing a new standard that is "unfounded, unsound and harmful to workers," AFL-CIO Safety and Health Director Peg Seminario told the House Workforce Protections Subcommittee this morning.

The controversial "secret rule" could lead to increased exposure of workers to dangerous chemicals and toxins by changing the way worker exposure is measured. The proposed rule also would make it more difficult for the next administration to enact new safety rules and, said Seminario, add as much as two years of

delay to an already glacial process and result in unnecessary death and disease for workers.

More than 50 Postal Workers (APWU), community activists and other members of the "Save the Jobs, Save the Community" coalition from Wilmington, Ohio—where DHL is threatening to shut down its air delivery hub and eliminate more than 8,000 jobs—protested at the German Embassy in Washington, D.C., yesterday.

The German-owned DHL took over the package carrier Airborne Express in 2003, in a deal made possible by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his campaign manager, Rick Davis.