Labor Union Blog

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lia href= http://www.laborradio.org/node/10534Stimulus Includes At Least $9.3 Billion For Rail Transporta//li
lia href= http://www.laborradio.org/node/10535Unemployed Workers Get Benefit Of $21 Billion In Medical Insurance Helpa//li
lia href= http://www.laborradio.org/node/10536Chicago Veteran Returns From War Only To Fight For His Rights On The Joba//li
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pBy Doug Cunningham/p
pJose Hill is a military veteran and member of IBEW in Chicago who has seen first-hand why workers need the Employee Free Choice Act. He says after fighting in Iraq he never expected to have to also fight for his rights back home in the USA working for Comcast./p
p[Hill]: “In August of 2003, I returned after a year of duty fighting in Iraq – supposedly in the name of democracy – only to come home to fight for my own democracy at Comcast – the right to be in a union, to bargain collectively, without harassment, intimidation or discrimination. Even though I have a union contract, my wages are less than a Comcast employee working about 8 miles south of the Cortland Chicago facility where there is no collective bargaining agreement. Why? Because Comcast’s bargaining tactics are to delay bargaining and to punish union employees who perform the same work by making proposals that pay less in wages and benefits – a scheme to discourage the non-union shops to organize./p

pAnother aspect of the stimulus package is to help workers who lose jobs continue receiving health insurance coverage through COBRA. $21 billion of the package is earmarked to provide those workers with a subsidy that will cover 65 percent of COBRA for up to nine months. Federal law allows workers to maintain employer-provided health insurance at 102 percent of the cost./p

pNow that the stimulus package is approved Americans are finally getting a first look at what exactly cold be funded. Jesse Russell takes a look at spending for Amtrak and high speed rail:/p
pEvery year for the past eight years, the question of the future of Amtrak was always put into question. Multiple times funding for the rail line would be zeroed out by the former administration, but reestablished right before the budget was passed. President Barack Obama’s administration appears to be sending the opposite message with the passage of the stimulus bill which includes $1.3 billion for Amtrak and an additional $8 billion targeted for “high speed rail” projects. During a recent conference call Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood expressed that the administration is committed to doing rail right in the United States:/p

In December and January, as the nation’s unemployment rate shot upward—hitting 7.6 percent in January—the number of Americans without health insurance neared the 50-million mark.

Some 14,000 people a day, nearly 100,000 a week, lost their health insurance during that two-month span, according to a forthcoming analysis by James Kvaal and Ben Furnas, reports the Center for American Progress’ Wonk Room.

The growing number of working families that are losing their health care coverage highlights the need for swift action on comprehensive health care reform.

The economic recovery package signed yesterday by President Obama offers a health care lifeline for jobless workers. Under the bill, workers who lose their jobs are eligible for a 65 percent subsidy to cover their health care premiums under COBRA for nine months.

COBRA is the program that allows workers to maintain for 18 months the same coverage they had through their employer if they can pay the premiums. But those premiums often exceed $1,000 a month, a huge cost for an unemployed worker.

The economic recovery bill originally provided broader help for jobless workers, including allowing workers to enroll in Medicaid if they couldn’t afford COBRA even with the new subsides and enabling older workers to remain in COBRA until they qualified for Medicare. But as the Wonk Room points out, negotiators seeking bipartisan support considered Republican objections and stripped those provisions. Still, only three Republicans voted for the stimulus bill.

With the economy far from a quick turnaround and job losses continuing to mount, health care experts say the number of people without health insurance could grow to staggering levels—making health care reform even more critical.

Says Ron Pollack, president of Families USA:

The regrettable absence of the Medicaid coverage provision helps to underscore the importance of enacting meaningful health care reform in the very near future. With the adoption of the economic recovery legislation, it is time to start the health reform process so that legislative action can be completed this year.

In a move to create a powerful national voice for registered nurses, three of the largest nurse unions in the country announced today they are coming together in a new 150,000-member association.

The three groups are the United American Nurses (UAN), California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) and the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA).

The new organization will be called the United American Nurses-National Nurses Organizing Committee, UAN-NNOC (AFL-CIO), and will bring the MNA’s 23,000 members into the AFL-CIO.

A statement from the unions this morning said:

Under the principle that RNs should be represented by an RN union, we resolve to create a new union of staff nurse-led organizations named UAN-NNOC.

UAN President Ann Converso, RN, says the new association is “the first step” in creating a national nurses union.

There’s still a lot of work to be done but all three organizations have a singular focus on RNs and patient care.

Says MNA President Beth Piknick, RN:

We have to have RNs speaking for RNs because we are a unique profession. We feel our profession is under attack and because of that, patients are suffering, and for us it’s all about the patients. This is a group of like-minded organization that will advocate for our patients.

Among its many priorities, the UAN-NNOC will establish a unified legislative and regulatory program to win critical improvements in patient care and working conditions for RNs, says Rose Ann DeMoro, CNA-NNOC executive director.

DeMoro says one of the new union’s top legislative priorities is setting safe nurse-patient staffing ratios. CNA-NNOC led the fight for ratios in California, the only state in the nation with safe staffing laws on the books. Those levels, she says, not only protect patients by ensuring adequate nursing care, but protect nurses, too.

There’s been a critical downturn of the economy and ratios keep a safe level of care. When you cut registered nurses, it’s a crime for patients. It’s also a good safeguard for nurses’ jobs.

The UAN-NNOC has set five major goals:

• Build an nurse movement in order to defend and advance the interests of direct care nurses across the country.
• Organize all nonunion direct care RNs (a substantial majority of the budget shall be dedicated to new organizing).
• Provide a powerful national voice for RN rights, safe RN practice, including RN-to-patient staffing ratios under the principle that safe staffing saves lives, and health care justice.
• Provide a vehicle for solidarity with sister nurse and allied organizations around the world.
• Create a national Taft-Hartley pension for union RNs.

DeMoro says that while today’s announcement grows the union movement by 23,000, she hopes that

other state associations will join with us, too.

Converso, who worked for 35 years in organized facilities with the protection of a union contract, says:

Thank God for my union. Nurses today are being laid off, deskilled, disciplined. I lived through that once I didn’t think I’d see it again. Now, I think, “how do non-union nurses do it?” There are so many unorganized nurses out there and we want to go organize them together.

3,000 workers rallied for the Employee Free Choice Act in Chicago.

Last night, some 3,000 gathered in Chicago to demand that Congress pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which would protect workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain and prevent corporations from dominating employees’ decisions about forming a union.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that participants heard from workers who were coerced and harassed by their bosses for attempting to form a union, as well as from union leaders and elected officials like Rep. Danny Davis, who was one of the 10 Illinois House members who co-sponsored the bill in 2007.

Working people across the country are countering a multimillion-dollar corporate disinformation campaign with people power in support of the Employee Free Choice Act and pressing for every vote in Congress. More than 1.5 million have signed postcards and petitions urging their members of Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, and the AFL-CIO is raising funds for ads to correct the lies and smears against unions and the legislation. (Click here to donate to this effort.)

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney spoke at the rally, saying that giving workers the freedom to bargain was essential to level the playing field and make the economy work for everyone. 

We’re all in this fight together because today in America corporations hold all the cards—and the deck is stacked against workers.

Companies feed their CEOs fatter and fatter salaries, working families get the leftovers. They slash wages and eliminate jobs, workers bail out Wall Street. They give their executives legal contracts but one in five union activists gets fired if they try to get the same thing. That has to stop. If every CEO gets a contract, every worker in America should have the right to get a contract.

Sweeney urged attendees to call and write members of Congress to urge a quick vote for the Employee Free Choice Act. Passage of the bill, he said, will require a concerted national effort by union members and allies of working families.

Workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain will be critical to rebuilding a strong economy, says a new report released today that examines the effect of unions on wages and state economies.

Unions Are Good for the American Economy, written by researchers Karla Walter and David Madland for the Center for American Progress Action Fund, says that increasing union rates would put more money in workers’ pockets, reversing the sharp growth in income inequality that has undermined our economy. In fact, if union membership was as high as it was in 1983, Walter and Madland suggest, employees would earn an estimated $49 billion more in wages and salaries.

The report also provides a state-by-state analysis of increased union membership on wages. An increase in the rate of union membership of just 5 percent would increase total wages by $176 million in Nebraska, $503 million in Wisconsin and $852 million in Pennsylvania.

These wages would be spread across the entire labor market.

The essence of what labor unions do—give workers a stronger voice so that they can get a fair share of the economic growth they help create—is and has always been important to making the economy work for all Americans. And unions only become more important as the economy worsens.

One of the primary reasons why our current recession endures is that workers do not have the purchasing power they need to drive our economy…what is sustainable is an economy where workers are adequately rewarded and have the income they need to purchase goods. This is where unions come in.

Walter and Madland point to the disconnect between productivity and wages as a major factor in our economic crisis. Indeed, if wages had kept pace with productivity increases, rather than falling behind as they have in recent decades, average wages would be 42.7 percent higher. That’s a sizable share of the economy that workers have lost, undermining consumer purchasing power and economic security—which, in turn, hurt the nation’s entire economy in a vicious downward spiral. The massive loss to workers of the economic growth they created can be traced to a decline in workers’ bargaining power in the labor market.

The solution, Walter and Madland contend, is to make it easier for workers to form unions and bargain for a fair share of the value they create. 

Passing the Employee Free Choice Act and making it harder for management to threaten workers seeking to unionize would be good for American workers. It would help boost workers’ wages and benefits. And putting more money in workers’ pockets would provide a needed boost for the U.S. economy. Increasing unionization is a good way to get out of our current economic troubles.

In a time of economic crisis when political leaders are looking for ways to restore balance, rebuild a middle class and improve the lives of working families, this report shows that giving workers the power to form unions and bargain is essential. You can read the whole report here.

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lia href= http://www.laborradio.org/node/10524GM To Cut 47,000 Jobs As UAW Reaches Tentative Understanding With Detroit Threea//li
lia href= http://www.laborradio.org/node/10525AFL-CIO, Change To Win Leaders Join Workers’ Rally In Chicago To Support Employee Free Choicea//li
lia href= http://www.laborradio.org/node/10526Smithfield Foods Closes Six Plants, Lays Off 1,000 Workersa//li
lia href= http://www.laborradio.org/node/10527Jet Blue Offers Recession-Proof Vacation Ticketsa//li
lia href= http://www.laborradio.org/node/10528Economic Report: New York Manufacturing Plunges For 10th Straight Montha//li
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pEconomic Report:/p
pThe state of New York saw manufacturing decline in the February at the fastest pace since tracking began in 2001. Manufacturing in the state is tracked by the Empire State Manufacturing Index and follows shipments, new orders, employment and other trends. This is the tenth straight month of declines for the index. The new orders index also saw a drop of 8 points with the employment index dropping substantially by 13 points and the average workweek index saw a 7 point drop to a record low./p