A new report confirms what union members have been saying for years: Guaranteeing workers’ rights in trade agreements is good for our economy.
The report, released last week by the Center for American Progress, shows that strong workers’ rights in countries with which the United States trades clearly helps reduce the U.S. trade deficit, which, in turn, helps our economy grow.
Here’s how that works, according to the report, Labor Rights Can Be Good Trade Policy: An Analysis of U.S. Trade with Less Industrialized Economies with Weak or Strong Labor Rights. 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.
Economic Report:
The median home price for homes fell 9.5 percent to a median of $203,100 in August. That is the largest single drop in nearly a decade. As a result, more buyers are snatching up homes with the inventory of unsold homes on the market dropping by seven percent. Still, there is a 10 month supply of unsold homes, that’s a high number considering in a typical healthy economy there is usually only a five month supply of unsold homes.
By Doug Cunningham
Eleven hundred student workers employed by the county of Los Angeles are fighting to improve their working conditions. Keesha Reed is one of the student workers being helped by SEIU Local 721 to get full recognition of their rights.
[Reed]: “We're gonna keep on until we actually get what we're asking for - recognition, path to permanency and medical benefits."
Truckers at one of the largest trucking companies in Washington state have idled their engines and are now walking the picket lines. Roughly 600 workers represented by the Teamsters went on strike Monday at the one hundred years old Oak Harbor Freight Lines. The workers are calling for a better health care plan. The company said it will use replacement workers if necessary to keep the fleet moving. It runs 32 terminals across the Northwest.
By Doug Cunningham
Professor Michael Zweig , director of the Center for Study of Working Class Life at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, says one in five workers are economically distressed. That reality, he says, calls for a new economic stimulus package and structural reforms of the economy, not just a bailout for Wall Street.
[Zweig]: “What we have found is that if you look at broader understanding of economic distress, it's around 21 percent of the households in the United States, almost double. In talking with working people they are having just a terrible time making ends meet.
A strike by 27,000 Boeing workers has entered its fourth week: Jesse Russell reports:
The workers have been on strike since September 6 and while company officials are speaking to a federal mediator, no new talks have been scheduled between the International Association of Machinists and Boeing. The workers are seeking job security and a wage increase of 13 percent. The company has refused to meet the union’s demands for a fair contract resulting in the workers walking off the job. As a result of Boeing’s unwillingness to come back to the table with a fair offer, many subcontractors that build parts for Boeing have been feeling ripple affects from the strike and have begun laying off workers.
When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5–4 in 2007 that Lilly Ledbetter waited too long to file a lawsuit after experiencing 20 years of pay discrimination by Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Ledbetter says it sent a "loud and clear" message to Big Business.
With regard to pay discrimination, there are lots of other companies out there that got the Supreme Court's message loud and clear: They will not be punished for discriminating, if they do it long enough and cover it up well enough.
She testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday at a hearing examining pay discrimination and barriers to equal pay for equal work. Last year, after the court's decision, the House passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act that, in effect, would reverse the ruling. But Senate Republicans, with the support of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), have blocked Senate action.
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Interns at CWA headquarters tabulate Million-Member Mobilization postcards. |
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The union movement's Million-Member Mobilization to get 1 million signatures supporting the Employee Free Choice Act is fast approaching its goal. With fewer than 50 days to go before the November elections, some 740,000 people have signed cards and petitions calling on the new Congress to immediately pass and the new president to sign the legislation when they take office in 2009.
The legislation would allow workers to freely choose how they want to form a union. (You can show your support for the Employee Free Choice Act by clicking here to sign our online card.)
Zimbabwe’s Supreme Court will decide if charges against that country’s two top union leaders are constitutional. Lawyers for Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) President Lovemore Matombo and Secretary-General Wellington Chibebe requested that the high court rule on the constitutionality of the law under which they are charged. They say the law, the Criminal Law Codification Act, infringes on their right to freedom of expression.
At a hearing last week, a local magistrate in the capital of Harare held the case over to Dec. 5 to give the Supreme Court time to rule.
Zimbabwe’s discredited President Robert Mugabe has launched a national campaign of intimidation, with union members as major targets. Mugabe has a long record of violating workers’ and human rights. In addition, the nation has an 80 percent official unemployment rate, which Chibebe says is closer to 95 percent when underemployed workers are counted.
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