Labor Union Blog

Economic Report:

The rate of Americans confident that they will achieve financial security by time they retire is on the decline. Only 14 percent of those surveyed in the Ninth Annual Transamerica Retirement Survey said they were more confident with retirement security then they were 12 months ago and 45 percent said they were less confident. According to the survey one of the primary reasons is that 57 percent of Americans are currently “just getting by” or they are in the process of “paying off debt.” Only 12 percent listed “saving for retirement” as their financial priority.

With just 25 days before the Presidential election the United Auto Workers have sunk $3 million behind a series of campaign ads targeting Senator John McCain. Jesse Russell reports:

The United Auto Workers have launched a $3 million ad campaign taking on the policies of Republican Presidential candidate Senator John McCain. The series of ads feature UAW members talking about the state of working families and how little faith they have the Arizona Senator. One ad features Nicole Lowe who is an assembler at a Warren, Michigan Chrylser plant. In the ad Lowe says she is worried about what the taxes McCain is proposing for employer health care plans could mean for her family.

By Doug Cunningham

Hundreds of drivers for the largest taxi company in Las Vegas may soon be on strike. The Yellow Checker and Star taxis are trying to cut the pay of the drivers. The drivers voted 805-11 to reject what the company says is it’s best and final offer. The taxi driver local is the ITPEU, part of the Office and Professional Employees International Union. Union rep Kevin Kistler says the workers have tried for a year to negotiate a settlement. They don’t want to strike, but they’re united and determined to get a fair contract.

[Kistler]: “It looks to me like we’re gonna be on the street pretty soon. It’s obviously going to effect the tourism industry in Las Vegas, because it’s the largest cab company in the city and those casinos depend on those cabs to bring those folks to from the airport to the casino, and they’re not gonna be there.”

As Sen. John McCain runs for president, he’s using his own service to cast himself as a friend to war veterans. The truth is, although he served honorably in uniform 40 years ago, his much more recent Senate record on veterans’ issues is very different than his rhetoric.

In contrast, Sen. Barack Obama has a voting record that lives up to this nation’s promise to support those who have served. Obama supported the 21st Century GI Bill, while McCain, who had announced his opposition to the bill, didn’t show up for the vote.

In a new mailer, the AFL-CIO is reaching out to some of the more than 2 million union members who are veterans. The mailer features Walter Springs, a Vietnam vet and AFT member who supports Obama.

John McCain hasn’t fought for veterans in Congress, and he won’t fight for them as president. As a veteran, I want to do what’s best for veterans. That means I’m supporting Barack Obama.

Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin can’t have it both ways. She should either denounce Sen. John McCain’s anti-worker policies or stop bragging about her husband’s union membership, says United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard.

When McCain introduced Palin as his running mate, he boasted that her husband, Todd, was a USW member. Palin later has said that her family had no health insurance until she and Todd got union jobs. Yet Palin supports the agenda of McCain, who has opposed practically every pro-worker issue to come up for more than two decades.

Barely three months before the Bush administration turns over the keys to the White House, Bush and his cronies continue their unmitigated disdain for the nation’s workers.

Yesterday, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said America’s jobless workers should forget about any extension to unemployment insurance (UI). Her advice for workers struggling with the longest long-term unemployment in decades?

Get back to work.

In a new radio ad, AFGE President John Gage urges union members to keep their focus on how eight years of Republican economics have slammed working people while the rich get richer—rather than become divided by divisive issues of race and gender. (Click on the audio clip to hear the entire ad.)

In the ad, which will air nationwide, Gage says he is “white enough to pick up on the code words of prejudice,” but we cannot let those words sway our vote.

In these economic times, every American worker should be hopping mad. Working families have been left behind like never before. Gender bias, racism, they’re not free. The real issues—Wall Street, health care, jobs, Iraq, gas prices, Social Security—have serious financial consequences for all of us.

Ed Sills, director of communications for the Texas AFL-CIO, follows up on Tuesday’s presidential debate and highlights Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign speech in Indiana, which demonstrated his statesman-like approach to our economic crisis.

Sen. Barack Obama did just fine in Tuesday night’s debate with Sen. John McCain, and he scored—or benefited from—the points that will stick in people’s minds.

Most anyone in the union movement would have just about jumped out of his or her chair when McCain called health care a “responsibility” and Obama joined the AFL-CIO in proclaiming health care a “right.” Couple this with McCain’s plans to tax health care benefits and to cut (or “reduce the cost” of) Social Security and Medicare, and the contrast was made nicely. It didn’t hurt, either, that commentators seized on McCain’s finger-pointing use of the phrase, “That One” to describe Obama.