Labor Union Blog

It isn’t all firings and layoffs in the working world. One hundred maintenance have returned to work at a U.S. Steel plant in Granite City, Illinois. The workers are prepping the idled plant for a return to production at the company’s blast furnaces. One thousand six hundred workers at the plant were furloughed at the plant in December. The maintenance firing up the furnaces is a sign that within a few weeks more workers will likely be recalled at the plant. United Steelworkers Local 68 President Jeff Evans told the Belleville News-Democrat that as many as steelworkers could be back on the job in three to four weeks.

It isn’t all firings and layoffs in the working world. One hundred maintenance have returned to work at a U.S. Steel plant in Granite City, Illinois. The workers are prepping the idled plant for a return to production at the company’s blast furnaces. One thousand six hundred workers at the plant were furloughed at the plant in December. The maintenance firing up the furnaces is a sign that within a few weeks more workers will likely be recalled at the plant. United Steelworkers Local 68 President Jeff Evans told the Belleville News-Democrat that as many as steelworkers could be back on the job in three to four weeks.

Grocery workers in the Denver-area have shot down a new five-year contract proposal from King Soopers in an overwhelming vote. Voting continued Tuesday for workers in Colorado Springs and today for workers in Pueblo. A final tally of all of the regions along the states “Front Range” will be released later today. The workers are represented by United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 and if the contract is rejected the union will need to return to the bargaining table with the supermarket to find a contract that suits the workers. The union has expressed unhappiness with a two-tier wage system proposed in the contract that would provide fewer benefits to new employees.

Ad revenue is plummeting at social networking site MySpace leading the portals owner News Crop to announce on Tuesday that it would be slashing 30 percent of its staff. Ad revenue at MySpace has dropped by 15 percent since this same time in 2008.

If you thought the company you worked for could fail leaving you jobless, would you be willing to work for free? That’s a question being asked of the staff at British Airways where the company saw a record loss in 2008 of the equivalent of more than $650 million. The company has asked its 40,000 employees to consider one to four weeks of unpaid work. British Airlines Chief Executive Willie Walsh has agreed to practice what he preaches by work for free during the month of July. The company is currently in negotiations with ground staff and pilots in an attempt to cut pay and an estimated 4,000 jobs. In a statement to workers, Walsh said British Airlines is in a “fight for survival.”

If you thought the company you worked for could fail leaving you jobless, would you be willing to work for free? That’s a question being asked of the staff at British Airways where the company saw a record loss in 2008 of the equivalent of more than $650 million. The company has asked its 40,000 employees to consider one to four weeks of unpaid work. British Airlines Chief Executive Willie Walsh has agreed to practice what he preaches by work for free during the month of July. The company is currently in negotiations with ground staff and pilots in an attempt to cut pay and an estimated 4,000 jobs. In a statement to workers Walsh said British Airlines is in a “fight for survival.”

The big-money corporate interests against the Employee Free Choice Act are continuing their disinformation campaign, throwing around misleading rhetoric and bad-faith arguments, seeking to confuse policymakers, the press and the public. 

The latest Big Business tactic is to attack the provision of the Employee Free Choice Act that guarantees workers who form a union a fair first contract—a vital provision, because more than 50 percent of workers who form a union don’t have a contract after one year and more than a third still don’t have a  contract after two years.

Corporations are crying about the possibility they might have to take part in arbitration with employees if they don’t reach a first contract after three months of talks—even though they’re enthusiastic about arbitration in a wide variety of circumstances where they have the advantage. 

In a new ad running in key newspapers, American Rights at Work again challenges corporate hypocrisy on arbitration. When it’s a big corporate entity against an individual, as in credit card disputes or personal injury claims, corporate spokesgroups like the Chamber of Commerce say arbitration is a way to settle any sort of dispute “fairly, quickly and inexpensively.” But when it’s time to bargain over better wages and benefits for their workers, these same groups are viciously opposed to even the possibility of requesting arbitration. 

As we’ve said before, the Employee Free Choice Act provides a process to help first-time bargainers reach an agreement, through mediation and, for issues the parties are unable to resolve on their own, arbitration. The reason we need first-contract arbitration is to create an incentive for companies to bargain voluntarily with their workers. Arbitration would only occur under the Employee Free Choice Act if either side requests it, after months of negotiations. 

Again we ask: If it’s good enough for banks, credit card companies and insurance companies to use in disputes with their customers, why is arbitration so terrifying to corporations when it comes to their own employees? The answer is easy: Because right now, corporations have all the power, and they’re not eager to give workers a share of it.

There they go again. Those running the show at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are attacking again the Buy American provision in the economic stimulus package.

Ignoring, once more, that Buy American makes fundamental economic sense by ensuring at least some of our taxpayer bailout money is invested in American-made productions, the Chamber is siding with foreign embassies battling the Buy American provisions. In a June 2 letter to lawmakers, Bruce Josten, the Chamber’s executive vice president for government affairs, asked Congress to exclude Buy American provisions from all legislation.

More recently, the Chamber held a joint press conference June 11 with the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters to decry the Buy American provisions in the stimulus. For a trade association with “U.S.” in its name, siding with foreign corporations against those in the United States is, well, you fill in the word that best describes it.

Auggie Tantillo, executive director of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition (AMTAC), framed the Chamber’s action this way, according to the Daily Labor Report (subscription required):

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is effectively suggesting that America needs to buy more Canadian to dig out of our economic hole. That position doesn’t pass the U.S. economic interest laugh test.

The Chamber’s anti-Buy American stance, which undermines the interests of America’s workers, also isn’t amusing for the millions of jobless workers in this nation.

In fact, the Chamber’s false argument that Buy America provisions will start a “trade war” is a tired one. The stimulus requires that U.S. material be used in projects funded by the bill, but also states that the clause should not override U.S. international trade commitments.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative spokeswoman Deborah Mesloh said the Obama administration is committed to ensuring that the Buy America requirements in the stimulus legislation are applied in a manner that is consistent with U.S. obligations under international agreements.

Scott Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM), said the rules are necessary to boost the sagging domestic economy and should be included in other spending bills.

It is common sense that a small portion of your tax dollars in a stimulus package dedicated to stimulating the American economy be spent in America.

At the AAM blog, Steve Capozzola knocks down the Chamber’s feeble arguments against the Buy American provisions.

1. Buy America provisions in the recent stimulus bill are both consistent with longstanding U.S. policy and adhere to America’s international trade obligations. 
2. Most other countries utilize the same domestic procurement efforts. 
3.  Furthermore, the U.S. has been a leading proponent of the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA), which opens the U.S. market to foreign bids. Some of the very countries criticizing Buy America policy have made no such reciprocal efforts to open their markets.

Tantillo, whose AMTAC is founded by U.S. manufacturers, succinctly sums up the need for Buy American provisions:

The only way for the U.S. economy to climb out of recession is for people to start buying more American-made goods and services, including the U.S. government.

Reforming the nation’s health care system to cover everyone “is essential to economic recovery,” say more than 300 leading economists and health care experts in a statement released this morning.

In addition to the statement by the economists, two new reports were released today at a news conference by the Institute for America’s Future (IAF). The reports show a health care reform plan that includes a public plan option and also requires employers to provide health coverage for their workers or pay into a fund—known as play or pay—that will likely create jobs.

The trio of health care reform documents follow President Obama’s major speech to the American Medical Association (AMA) yesterday, where he told the physicians’ group health care reform can’t wait.

Make no mistake: The cost of our health care is a threat to our economy. It is an escalating burden on our families and businesses. It is a ticking time-bomb for the federal budget. And it is unsustainable for the United States of America.

In the statement, the economists explain how health care reform will boost the nation’s economy.

We need to cover everyone now as part of comprehensive reform to rebuild our economy and restore prosperity. Affordable coverage with good benefits will give cash-strapped lower- and middle-income Americans greater financial security—and the ability to pay their mortgages, start small businesses, save for college, pursue new job opportunities and make other choices that will benefit our economy.

And it will help business owners to insure their workers. Ensuring health security for all will allow workers to move to those jobs that fit them best, not just those that provide health insurance, promoting entrepreneurship and labor market productivity.

Click here for the full statement and list of signers.

In a report prepared for the IAF and the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), Phillip Cryan finds “there would most likely be significant job gains”

if health care reform includes a requirement that employers provide health coverage for their workers or pay into a fund to help finance a public health insurance plan option.

In “Will a ‘Play or Pay’ Policy for Health Care Cause Job Losses?” Cryan, a master’s candidate at the University of California at Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, writes:

This report finds that the net effect on employment from a hybrid system of health care reform following the general outline proposed by President Obama is likely to be both positive and large. It would create many more jobs than it would eliminate.

Click here for the full report.

The second report was prepared by Jacob Hacker, co-director of the Center on Health, Economic and Family Security at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law, and Ken Jacobs, chairman of the university’s Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education. It offers recommendations for establishing a system that includes a public plan and a shared responsibility for coverage among employers, workers and the government, and also looks at the economic impact.

Play-or-pay proposals currently under consideration pose no economic threat to business and the economy. The cost to employers would be similar to a modest increase in the minimum wage. At the same time employers would benefit from access to the new pool, a reduction in the cost shift from uncompensated care into premium costs and other reforms that would bring down the cost of coverage over time.

Click here for the full report.