Labor Union Blog

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lia href= http://www.laborradio.org/node/10578New York City Spends $9 Billion A Year On Costly Private Contractorsa//li
lia href= http://www.laborradio.org/node/10579More States And Cities Turn To Worker Furlough Idea To Cut Budgetsa//li
lia href= http://www.laborradio.org/node/10580Senate Finally Confirms Pro-Worker Labor Secretarya//li
lia href= http://www.laborradio.org/node/10581Economic Report: U.S. Mass Layoffs Fifty Percent Higher Than A Year Agoa//li
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pEconomic Report:/p
pJanuary saw mass layoffs expand by 50 percent in comparison to the same time last year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics showed Ohio as one of the worst hit states with a jump of 180 percent in mass layoffs in comparison to January 2008. General Motors was the biggest culprit when it came to job cuts in the Buckeye state. Unemployment claims across the nation where up by 60 percent over last year./p

pBy Doug Cunningham/p
pThe U.S. Senate has finally confirmed Hilda Solis as Labor Secretary. She’s the most pro-worker Labor Secretary in many years./p

pThe concept of a worker furlough as a cost saving measure continues to spread across the country. Jesse Russell reports:/p
pAccording to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 46 states in the union are staring down budget deficits. As a result many have turned to the concept of a worker furlough to bridge some of the gap. The most publicized furlough fight is in California where Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger wants state workers to take two unpaid furloughs per month. West Virginia’s state auditor Glen Gainer told the West Virginia Gazette that he believes his state should consider the option, but that state doesn’t currently have a provision that would allow for temporary furloughs./p

pBy Doug Cunningham/p
pNew York City spends $9 billion a year in tax money paying private contractors to deliver public services. The American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees District Council 37’s Lillian Roberts says it’s more expensive for a “shadow government” parallel workforce to do public jobs and creates pressure to lay off public employees when they’re needed the most./p
p[Roberts”: “It is certainly not necessary to lay off any workers that we have. This is a time they should be increasing them so that they can service those that have been laid off from the private sector. And of course we not only do a job, we do it more efficient and certainly at less cost.”/p

As the nation increasingly focuses on the need to create green jobs, a new report reminds us that such jobs do not always measure up in terms of wages and working conditions.

High Road or Low Road? Job Quality in the New Green Economy, released earlier this month by the grassroots community organization Good Jobs First, outlines strategies to ensure that green jobs are good jobs.

The report found that many wind and solar manufacturing plants are receiving large economic-development subsidies from state and local governments.

Says Greg LeRoy, Good Jobs First executive director:

This use of taxpayer money provides an opportunity to raise wages and other working conditions. Many states and localities already apply job quality standards to companies receiving job subsidies or public contracts. In the report, we urge wider and more aggressive use of such standards by federal as well as state and local agencies.

The report looks at companies that manufacture components for wind and solar energy generation, as well as those that build green buildings and those that handle recycling. In each sector, Good Jobs First found examples of employers that pay their workers a decent wage and treat them with respect. But the study also found a company where workers were subjected to an anti-union campaign when they tried to form a union to get a safer workplace.

Some U.S. wind and solar manufacturing firms are weakening the job security of their workers, the report notes, by opening parallel plants in foreign low-wage havens such as China and Mexico. Click here to read the report.

The report reaffirms what AFL-CIO President John Sweeney told a high-level forum this week that included Obama administration cabinet members, congressional leaders, former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore.

Sweeney said:

A new U.S. energy strategy can be the foundation of rebuilding the middle class if we ensure that the jobs we create are good, innovative jobs here in our country—and that can then become the foundation of a strong new economy.

The nation also must invest in the materials and equipment needed for green technology, Sweeney said. Investments should include job standards so federally funded programs support good living standards, he said, with health care, worker safety programs, apprenticeship and training programs, and respect for workers’ rights.

Sweeney pointed out the new AFL-CIO Center for Green Jobs will expand the research, training and policy work in support of good green jobs.

And, most critically he said, Congress must pass the Employee Free Choice Act to allow workers the freedom to bargain with their employers to make their jobs good jobs—workers will organize to make their jobs better if we protect their right to do so.

For many of America’s workers, going to work can literally be deadly. The most recent edition of the AFL-CIO’s annual Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect shows that an average of 15 workers a day were killed on the job and each day, another 11,000 workers were injured or made ill in 2007. Overall in 2007 (the latest figures available), 5,488 workers died from workplace injuries and 4.0 million were hurt or made sick by their jobs.

Recent studies have shown that the workplace injury reports may miss as many as two out of three workplace injuries, meaning that the real toll of workplace injuries is much higher than reported.

On April 28, to honor those killed and injured on the job and to call for improved workplace safety, workers in the United States and around the world will mark Workers Memorial Day.  The theme of this is “Good Jobs. Safe Jobs. Give Workers a Voice for a Change.”

You can start planning and organizing a Workers Memorial Day event in your workplace or community with materials now available online from the AFL-CIO. The materials include:

• Workers Memorial Day flier.
• Workers Memorial Day poster.
• Workers Memorial Day clip art in English and Spanish:
  • Mourn for the Dead, Fight for the Living and
  • Good Jobs, Safe Jobs. Give Workers a Voice for a Change;
• Workers Memorial Day stickers.
• Workers Memorial Day events form.
• Workers Memorial Day proclamation.
• Safety and health update (February 2009).

The 2009 edition of Death on the Job, set for release in April, will examine workplace death, injuries and illness by occupation, state and cause. It will analyze trends and examine the federal government’s track record on developing workplace safety standards. It also will look at the enforcement—or lack of it—of current safety laws by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA).

The AFL-CIO Workers Memorial Day online tools include links to a collection of workers’ memorials in the United States and around the world and poems and other tributes to workers killed on the job.

The first Workers Memorial Day was observed in 1989. April 28 was chosen because it is the anniversary of the creation of OSHA in 1971 and the day of a similar remembrance in Canada. Trade unionists around the world mark April 28 as an International Day of Mourning for workers killed.

Click here to read how health and safety experts from the labor, scientific and academic fields say OSHA can be rebuilt after the Bush administration spent eight years tearing down the safety agency.

The Bush administration left a lot of wreckage in its wake. The crumbling economy, the home foreclosure crisis and a broken health care system are getting most of the recent headlines and calls for immediate repair.

But for the men and women who get up and go to work every day—and want to come home alive and without injury—there is something else the Bush administration trashed that needs fixing and fixing fast—the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

A special edition of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health’s (NYCOSH’s) newsletter “Safety Rep” asked nearly three dozen safety and health experts from the union, scientific and academic worlds this question:

After eight years of Bush can OSHA be fixed?…During the last eight years, tens of thousands of workers died or were injured on the job—a direct result of the failure of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to promulgate new standards and stringently enforce the law.

Writing in the special edition’s introduction, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka says the first major step must be bringing in new leaders, including

the administrators of OSHA and MSHA [Mine Safety and Health Administration] who are actually committed to a strong federal role in worker safety and health and who see their roles as advocates for worker protection.

And in stark contrast to the Bush administration, the new leaders should bring workers and their unions and safety and health professionals, as well as employers, into the process of developing agendas and setting standards.

The U.S. Senate took a first step toward that goal yesterday when it finally confirmed Obama’s nominee for labor secretary, Hilda Solis.

Denis Hughes, president of the New York State AFL-CIO, says growing worker power through unions is a key factor in the health and safety fight.

The first and foremost thing workers can do to protect their safety and health is to join a union. Without a union to protect them, rights to safe and healthful working conditions are a legal abstraction.

Hughes says workers now have the best opportunity in years to fight for stronger enforcement of workplace safety laws and tougher penalties for safety and health violations. But he adds:

Our demands for safer workplaces will be met with stiff resistance from the business community. Passage of the Employee Choice Employee Act and increasing our numbers is a necessary first step in the fight for safe and healthful workplaces.

Several of the special edition’s contributors—including those outside the union movement—wrote that the Employee Free Choice Act and its resultant growth of workers’ unions will be a major factor in improving worker safety.

AFT President Randi Weingarten says the new Obama-led OSHA should restore the ergonomics standard the Bush administration wiped off the books in the first few months after Bush took office.

That standard, which was the product of painstaking work, was an important step in combating work-related musculoskeletal disorders that now affect 1.8 million U.S. workers each years.

Public employees are not covered by federal OSHA’s standards, although some states have extended coverage to public employees. A number of the writers call for bringing public-sector works under OSHA’s umbrella.

Among other issues the health and safety experts discuss are:

• The immediate need for a mandate from the Obama administration to issue standards already in the pipeline;
• Increased funding for worker training programs;
• Programs to aggressively reach out to immigrant workers and the organizations that work with them;
• Strategies to protect worker safety and health during disaster response;
• New requirements to prevent underreporting of injuries and illnesses; and
• The need to establish mandatory labor-management safety and health committees.

NYCOSH, is a non-profit coalition of 200 local unions and more than 400 individual workers, physicians, lawyers, and other health and safety activists dedicated to the right of every worker to a safe and healthful job.

Click here for the full report.

Last night, as the doors opened into the halls of Congress, America’s working families breathed a sigh of relief as we heard these words:

“Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States!” 

What a difference a year makes. Although our economic condition is dire, hearing those words about our new president instills confidence that our leaders are listening to our deep concerns and are up to the task of putting us back on track. Ninety-two percent of those polled who watched President Barack Obama’s first address to Congress last night approved of the speech, in which he was both realistic in the assessment of the challenges we face and optimistic about the solutions to those problems.

As he acknowledged often during the campaign, Obama noted that the problems in our economy didn’t start with the housing crisis or the stock market collapse last year; for too many of America’s working families, the economy hasn’t been working for much longer than that.

Obama noted that, in his first month, he worked with Congress to create an economic recovery bill that aided the families most in need, created jobs, prevented layoffs of teachers and police at the state and local level, and made down payments on his top priorities: a new energy economy, a reformed health care system and aid to America’s public schools.

But, as Obama said, the recovery plan is just a start. To build an economy with broadly shared sustainable prosperity, we absolutely must make long-term investments in energy, health care and education, and in the infrastructure that creates jobs and keeps our economy moving in the long term. With these priorities clear, Obama said:

But while our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken; though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this:

We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.

On health care, in particular, Obama gave a strong message that he’d make it a priority. Noting that the health care crisis is deeply related to other economic issues—premiums have risen four times faster than wages and millions of bankruptcies and foreclosures arise from the failure of the health care system. Starting with the new budget he’ll be sending to Congress this week, Obama says he’ll commit to health care reform.

We must have quality, affordable health care for every American…so let there be no doubt: Health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait and it will not wait another year.

Another note: the guests who sat with First lady Michelle Obama included Lilly Ledbetter, the woman whose fight against pay discrimination led to one of Obama’s first legislative successes, and heroic US Airways pilot Chesley Sullenberger, whose professional skill and attention to safety aboard Flight 1549 saved 155 lives, and who drew attention this week to the dangerous workplace conditions facing pilots.

Obama’s speech was aimed directly at the issues that matter most to workers and our economy. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who also was an invited guest for last night’s speech, said Obama “has shown tremendous leadership towards improving the lives of America’s workers.” Obama’s focus on workers, jobs and rebuilding broadly shared prosperity sends a strong signal about his support for the Employee Free Choice Act.

It will be a tough challenge to rebuild and recover, but Obama’s speech gives us confidence we’ll be moving in the right direction.

In a statement delivered today to Capitol Hill and published as a full-page advertisement in The Washington Post, more than three dozen of the nation’s top economists call on Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act to help restore an economy that works for everyone, built on a sustainable, wage-based growth.

The statement, signed by 39 of America’s top economists, including two Nobel Prize winners, points to the failure of U.S. labor laws to protect employees’ freedom to form a union and bargain as a major factor in our economic crisis. The statement says in part:

Indeed, from 2000 to 2007, the income of the median working-age household fell by $2,000—an unprecedented decline. In that time, virtually all of the nation’s economic growth went to a small number of wealthy Americans. An important reason for the shift from broadly shared prosperity to growing inequality is the erosion of workers’ ability to form unions and bargain collectively.

These economists, representing respected universities and policy institutions from across the nation, point to the corporate-dominated system for forming unions—and the coercion and anti-union campaigning by management—as the causes for declining wages and a gravely weakened economy.

A rising tide lifts all boats only when labor and management bargain on relatively equal terms. In recent decades, most bargaining power has resided with management. The current recession will further weaken the ability of workers to bargain individually. More than ever, workers will need to act together.

Although current headlines are dominated by the crises in the stock market and the financial sector, working families have been struggling for years under the weight of an unbalanced economy. These economists say that restoring bargaining power and ensuring working people have a voice in their workplace, and in their health care, pensions and wages, is critical to rebuilding our economy.

James K. Galbraith of the University of Texas, one of the economists who has signed on, says the freedom to form unions and bargain has many benefits for the economy and the country.

I support the Employee Free Choice Act for two reasons. First, it levels the playing field after a generation of anti-union policies, and in a world where far more workers are in decentralized, hard-to-organize workplaces than was true a generation back. Second, unions are a proven ally of progress, not only in politics but also in economics: unionized workforces promote technical change and productivity growth, because they make it possible to distribute more fairly and less brutally the costs of change.

Eileen Appelbaum, of Rutgers University, says:

To get our economy back on track and growing again we need to strengthen wages, make sure that workers have health and retirement benefits, and reduce inequality. Unions play a unique and significant role in achieving equity and efficiency in the workplace and, more broadly, in society.

You can view the ad as it ran in today’s Washington Post here. It includes a full list of the prominent economists who have signed on.