Labor Union Blog

Economic Report:

A weak job market continues with the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits last week at 6.1 million. The number of people filing for claims sets a new record for the 12th week in a row and the number of people jobless people in proportion to working people is at the highest level since the first month of 1983. Initial claims for unemployment benefits rose to 640,000 up 27,000 from the previous week.

May 9 is the 16th annual Letter Carriers food drive. Last year food left on the front steps on homes provided more than 70,000 pounds of food for local communities. The postal service asks participants to leave a bag on the front step with non-perishable and dry goods.

Portions of Colorado could see grocery workers walking the picket lines if contract negotiations continue to sour. Jesse Russell reports:

On Friday United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 in Colorado filed a charges with the National labor Relations Board that grocery chains Safeway and King Soopers have failed to provide information necessary for collective bargaining. Additional charges were filed by the union against King Soopers who has begun seeking temporary workers to replace the union members in the event of a strike. The chain is offering to pay those workers $10.25 per hour, that's more than the starting wage for many of the company's employees. Many workers will see their contracts with King Soopers, Safeway and Albertsons expire on May 9. More than 17,000 workers are represented by the UFCW.

By Doug Cunningham

University of Illinois Professor Robert Bruno has released a report that shows there wasn’t a single proven case of union intimidation of workers in majority sign-up union organization drives over six years in Illinois. It puts the lie to a big-business campaign that claims national majority sign up union organizing under the Employee Free Choice Act would lead to union intimidation of workers. The report concludes that Illinois has demonstrated when majority sign up is used to allow workers to choose unions, it can genuinely determine what the workers really want free of intimidation and ensure a fair process.

By Doug Cunningham

The Boston Globe Monday reached a tentative agreement with unions representing 500 mailers, drivers and press room operators. Negotiations are still underway with the Newspaper Guild-CWA, representing newsroom staff. The New York Times, owner of the Globe, had threatened to issue a shutdown warning unless agreement could be reached squeezing $20 million in cuts from the unions. The New York Times Company said it’s prepared to begin the process of shutting down the Boston Globe unless concessions agreements are reached. It’s another sign of the financial crisis newspapers nationwide are facing as more people get their news from free internet sites.

ABC’s ”Top Line” featured a great interview today with AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka. Discussing  Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter’s switch last week from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party, Trumka said the union movement would not support him in next year’s elections if he votes against the Employee Free Choice Act. 

Specter has said the move to the Democratic Party does not change his opposition to the legislation to level the playing field for workers seeking to form unions.  Said Trumka:

If a candidate isn’t good for workers, we won’t be there. If they are good for workers, we will be there regardless of their party. I mean, we supported Arlen Specter—and he was a Republican—because he was good for what was happening.  He was good for our members at that time.

Click here to read more about today’s interview and see the video.

The decline in the share of workers with employer-provided health care, the dramatic increase in the number of workers losing their health insurance along with their jobs, plus reports that employers are planning to shift even more health costs to workers, highlights the desperate need for comprehensive health care reform for all.

(Tell us what you think should be included in comprehensive health care reform. Take the 2009 Health Care for America Survey. The survey gives you the opportunity to make your voice heard and help shape health care reform to meet the needs of working families. Take the survey here.)

According to a new report by the Center for American Progress (CAP), the percentage of workers with employer-provided health care dropped from more than 64 percent in 1999 to just over 59 percent in 2007.

Forty-six million Americans lacked health care coverage in 2007, when the national employment level peaked and before the current economic recession officially began. Today, that number is markedly higher as many workers who have lost their jobs have also lost their employer-provided health insurance.

The report estimates that with the economy shedding 5.1 million jobs in the past 15 months,

2.4 million workers have lost the health coverage their jobs provided since the start of the recession….The rapid loss of health coverage demonstrates the fundamental instability of health insurance protections in our current system and the need for comprehensive health reform.

The CAP report breaks down the number of workers who have lost jobs and health coverage by industry/occupation and by gender. Manufacturing workers bore the greatest burden of losses in coverage, followed by business/professionals services and construction. Looking at vanishing health care coverage by gender, the report finds:

Men are more likely to have employer-provided health insurance than their female counterparts in industries where both men and women are employed. This, in conjunction with the fact that male-dominated industries such as construction and manufacturing have fared worse in this recession than female-dominated industries, has exacerbated the impact of job loss on health coverage.

But the 2.4 million workers who may have lost coverage is only part of the picture, the report says.

The estimates, however, do not reflect the full extent of health coverage loss due to lost employment. They include only individuals who receive coverage directly from an employer, not those who receive coverage through a family member or spouse’s employer. Estimates for the rise in the number of uninsured are therefore a conservative estimate of the number affected, since it leaves out spouses and children who may have also lost coverage as a result of a spouse or parent losing their jobs.

Meanwhile, workers who continue to receive their health care coverage through their employer are likely to face even higher costs in the coming years. While higher co-payments, premiums and other expenses continue to take bigger chunks of workers’ pay, the Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog reports that a new survey finds that

nearly half of the companies polled plan to shift more health costs to employees in 2010….One-fifth of the companies said they planned to add or switch to a high-deductible or “consumer-directed” health plan with a health savings account, perhaps doubling the percentage of employers who offer such plans.

The CAP report notes that President Obama says that health care reform is not just a moral imperative but it is

a fiscal imperative….If we want to create jobs and rebuild our economy, then we must address the crushing cost of healthcare this year.

A new study shines an important light on what the process for forming a union could look like under the Employee Free Choice Act—and cuts through misleading, baseless corporate spin claiming the majority sign-up process exposes workers to coercion or intimidation.

“A Study of Illinois’ Majority Interest Petition Provision,” authored by Robert Bruno, a professor of labor policy at the University of Illinois, is based on Bruno’s in-depth analysis of every majority sign-up petition filed in Illinois since the passage of a 2003 law allowing workers in state, local and educational institutions the right to choose to form unions through majority sign-up. Under the Employee Free Choice Act, workers around the country would be able to choose majority sign-up as a process to bargain for a better life, so the experience of Illinois workers is a real-world test that offers critical data to the debate over Employee Free Choice.

Bruno concludes: 

The results of the study unambiguously revealed that the majority sign-up provision was used extensively without hint of union or employer abuse. 

In brief, from 2003-2009, 21,197 public-sector workers employed in state, county, municipal and educational institutions voluntarily joined a union. Most importantly, contrary to business claims, in nearly eight hundred petition cases, there was not a single confirmed incidence of union coercion.

Bruno studied the results of Illinois’ majority sign-up law over more than five years, looking at accountants, cooks, carpenters, nurses and many other workers at the state, county and municipal level. More than 799 approved majority sign-up petitions, with a grand total of one complaint filed alleging union coercion—a complaint found to be groundless. Not a single petition, successful or unsuccessful, was withdrawn or dismissed due to union misconduct. Compare that with the nearly 30,000 instances of employer violations of workers’ rights in 2007 alone, and it’s obvious how false corporate complaints about majority sign-up are.

The study, Bruno says, shows majority sign-up to be

a reliable mechanism to bring workplace democracy to workers in all corners of the state’s economy. 

Hundreds of thousands of workers have successfully used majority sign-up to form a union and bargain—it’s a decades-old, functioning process that gave workers like Peter Braunston and Asela Espiritu the chance to bargain for a better life. The myth of union coercion is a powerful weapon in the hands of the corporate interests who want to keep their control over the process, but Bruno’s study shows that this tired argument just isn’t valid. 

Bruno’s study is the first in a series that will examine majority sign-up provisions in states around the country. You can read the full report here.

While the election of President Obama shows that overt racism is less acceptable in America, a new project launched last month by the Institute for America’s Future explores the large role unconscious racial bias still plays in our politics and society.

The Americans for American Values (AAV) project will research the effects of unconscious racial bias on decision-making and develop strategies to support decision-making based on consciously held American values rather than on racial anxiety and stereotypes. The project began with the release of a series of educational videos and a set of research studies. View the new videos and learn more about AAV here.

john powell, the project’s founder and executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, said racial equality and fairness are values widely supported by Americans, but hidden biases often undermine these values.

 As society tries to move beyond racial discrimination, a better understanding of implicit bias is needed. Our two-fold goal with this study is to help the American public better understand implicit bias and to give them ways to avoid triggering these biases.

Obama’s election is a testament to the “long march” toward justice led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights, human rights and union activists, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka said during the AFL-CIO’s annual King Day observance in January. But, Trumka warned:

Obama’s election is a milestone; but it’s not the finish line. Yes, his election is a triumph over racism, but it wasn’t the end of racism. And, God yes, his election says a lot about how far America has come; but it doesn’t mean that we still don’t have a long, long way to go.

For example, Trumka says, the home foreclosure crisis is hitting African Americans harder than other groups.

The fact that Barack Obama is moving into the White House doesn’t mean that a black family isn’t more likely to be forced out of their house.

African American household income averages $16,000 a year less than for whites and poverty in the African American community is almost twice the national average, he said. Click here to read Trumka’s speech.

Over the next two years, the Americans for American Values project will conduct studies to identify all the forms of implicit bias and what triggers them. The studies findings will help make recommendations on how to avoid these biases.

Institute for America’s Future Co-Director Robert Borosage says the first series of studies will examine the impact of undetected racially oriented biases on our democratic process.

The election of the first African American president has helped us see one another with new eyes. Yet, we still struggle both as a society stratified in large part by race, and marked by attitudes that congeal in a society still marked by racial divisions.

The project is made possible by a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.