Labor Union Blog

Economic Report:

Recent studies of jobless data by the New York City comptroller’s office revealed the unemployment rate for African-Americans in the city rising four times as fast as the rate for Caucasians. According to the report, by the end of March of this year New York City had 80,000 more unemployed black workers than it did white workers. That number is especially concerning because the population of the city has 1.5 million more whites than blacks.

By Doug Cunningham

In New York City, workers at Stella D’Oro are filing an NLRB charge alleging that a private equity company is illegally closing the plant to avoid the union. Stella D’Oro makes cookies, breakfast treats and breadsticks. Workers in Local 50 of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers went on strike last August when the new private equity owner – Brynwood Partners – demanded a $5 an hour wage cut as well as cuts in pensions and benefits. The workers charged the company violated labor law and the company was ordered to allow the workers to return to work and to pay back wages with interest. Shortly after they returned to work the company notified them it was closing the plant. Local 50 President Joyce Alston.

New reports conducted by Small Business Majority looked at what the hurdles are for small business owners throughout the country to secure health insurance for employees. Jesse Russell report.

One of the studies looked at the state of Wisconsin which found that the number one issue for small business owners when it comes to healthcare reform is “controlling costs.”

John Arensmeyer, is founder and chief executive officer of Small Business Majority and he explained some of the studies findings:

[Arensmeyer]: Of those that do offer 70 percent says there is a real challenge and they are struggling to do so.

By Doug Cunningham

The American Federation of Teachers kicked off their education conference in Washington D.C. Monday. AFT President Randi Weingarten urged school officials and politicians to do education reform “with us, not to us”. Weingarten says the election of President Obama and a congressional majority with whom teachers can work have created conditions that can fundamentally change education. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan participated in the conference Monday and said this is a rare moment in time with a real opportunity to reform education while being fair to teachers.

With President Obama visiting Ghana this weekend, unions in that nation asked him to support workers’ freedom to form unions around the world.

The Ghana Federation of Labor (GFL) joined with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) for a July 7-8 conference on union rights around the world, with a focus on the Employee Free Choice Act, the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the role of U.S. labor law in setting standards for the world.

These international unions are concerned about the rise of U.S. union-busting firms and the spread of union-busting tactics around the world, as well as U.S. firms creating downward wage pressures and corporate-dominated global institutions forcing development models on nations around the world that put profits ahead of workers.

Here’s the statement from the conference of the GFL and ITUC: 

Violations of trade union rights occurring in Africa are influenced by the anti-union practices, especially in the U.S.A., where workers are deprived their fundamental rights to organize and bargaining collectively.

Strangely, the U.S.A. has not yet ratified ILO Conventions 87 and 98 concerning freedom of association and the right of workers to bargaining collectively. This is an indictment on the image of the U.S.A. as a founding member of the ILO. 

Global unions have been calling for stronger labor laws, because anti-worker sentiment affects workers everywhere, as discussed at the 2007 global organizing summit and many meetings since.

Check out the many members of the global union community who have come out in support of the Employee Free Choice Act.

The leaders of the world’s top economies failed to adequately address the three major economic crises facing the world—unemployment, climate change and development, according to leaders of unions around the globe who had called on the G-8 summit last week in Italy to take strong action to stimulate the global economy.

Said John Evans, general secretary of the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD) :

There are no explicit commitments to making the necessary resources available for achieving employment and social protection goals, although the focus on the need to protect the tax base represents a welcome step in this direction.

Evans represented TUAC, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the Global Union Federations at the summit.

On climate change, the G-8 countries for the first time committed to the objective of limiting the rise of the global temperature. But they failed to offer steps toward moving to a low-carbon economy in a manner that is fair to workers and communities dependent on producing carbon-based fuels.

With only five months to go before the United Nations climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, G-8 countries still have not been able to convince developing countries to reach an agreement. Read more about the role of global unions in climate change negotiations here, here, here and here. 

Reaching a climate change agreement is crucial, global union leaders say, to ensure a balanced and effective outcome. Some developing nations say developed nations have all the “historic responsibility” for acting on climate change and they have none. Yet many of the developing countries, especially China, are some of the world’s top contributors to global warming.

In a speech June 23 to the OECD’s annual forum in Paris, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said failure by the world’s leaders to take strong action on the global economy could prolong the recession worldwide.

The truth is that we are still in uncharted water, and no one knows when the bottom of this recession will be found nor how vigorous the recovery will be. The depth and duration of the recession will be determined by how urgently governments can act together to promote recovery and build the foundation for a more sustainable, more fair and more environmentally responsible basis for global growth.

 You can read Sweeney’s speech here.

The world’s workers are looking now to the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh in September to push their proposals for global economic recovery and to ensure that workers’ views are represented in any final decisions. Sweeney adds:

Trade unions and the workers we represent have no confidence that this time governments and bankers alone will get it right.  We are asking for a seat at the table.

Members of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund have commemorated the 50th anniversary of the first U.S. casualities of the Vietnam War at the Vietnam Wall in Washington, D.C.

In 1959, two U.S. military advisers, Army Major Dale Buis and Master Sgt. Chester Ovnand, were killed by the Viet Cong. The attackers entered the Army’s residential compound in Bien Hoa and machine-gunned Ovnand and Buis while they and other Americans watched a movie on a home projector.

Jan Scruggs, president and founder of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, a nonprofit authorized by Congress in 1980 to build the memorial, led the July 8 ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary.

Said Scruggs:

Today we are here to reflect and honor the individuals who paid the supreme sacrifice for our country.

Scruggs acknowledged the support the Memorial Fund has received from unions over the years and labor’s financial support of the fund’s efforts to finance a Vietnam Veterans Memorial visitor’s center, which will be built with union labor.

It was my privilege to represent the AFL-CIO Union Veterans Council at the July 8 ceremony. Together with retired AFL-CIO staffer Greg Woodhead, we placed the wreath honoring Ovnand and Buis at the apex of the Vietnam Wall, where their names are etched first among the more than 58,000 names of those who gave their lives during the Vietnam War.

The nation’s 43.000 airport screeners are a big step closer to having the basic freedom to choose a union and bargain collectively. Last week, the House Homeland Security Committee approved legislation that would give transportation security officers (TSOs) the same workplace protections covering other federal employees.

Security screeners in airports around the country are the first line of defense against terrorism in our skies. But they suffer from high injury rates, attrition and low morale, according to the committee.

Although TSOs have been denied the freedom to bargain collectively, AFGE represents 10,000 Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers nationwide and regularly represents these employees before the TSA Disciplinary Review Board, the Equal Opportunity Commission, Congress and in the courts.

Says Rep. Nita Lowery (D-N.Y.), sponsor of the Transportation Security Workforce Enhancement Act (H.R. 1881):

Treating our security workforce like spare parts only hinders the development of an experienced and dedicated workforce focused on protecting the public. Extending basic workplace protections to TSOs is not only the right thing to do…it will decrease costs and improve results of our air security.

In 2003, President George Bush took bargaining rights away from TSOs and other workers at the TSA in one of the first shots in his war on America’s workers. Both the House and the Senate approved bargaining rights for TSOs in 2007, but that provision was dropped in conference after Bush threatened to veto the bill.

This time, the bill appears to have strong White House support. As a member of the Senate in 2007, President Obama voted for bargaining rights for the screeners. The Washington Post quoted an October letter from Obama to AFGE President John Gage, which said:

…advocating for TSOs to receive collective bargaining rights and workplace protections will be a priority for my administration. It is unacceptable for TSOs to work under unfair rules and without workplace protections—this makes it more difficult for them to perform their jobs.

The bill now goes to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, says the panel’s vote

brings us one step closer to affording the workforce with the protections, rights, pay and benefits that their colleagues across DHS [Department of Homeland Security] and the federal government enjoy.

Aubrey Williams, a member of AFGE Local 555 at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, told the Post the legislation will transform the TSA.

That is extremely exciting news for us. The ramifications of that will be an entirely different TSA. [Collective bargaining] will level the playing field in promotions, seniority and evaluations, while ending the current pay-for-performance system and providing union members the ability to grieve injustices. Those are things we are looking for to make TSA a better place to work.

More than 1,500 Arkansas workers and allies rallied for the Employee Free Choice Act on Saturday.

More than 1,500 union members across Arkansas rallied in 100-degree heat this Saturday, asking their senators to support the Employee Free Choice Act and give workers the freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life. Here are some highlights from press coverage of the event.

Arkansas state Rep. Jim Nickles was among the hundreds who joined the rally at the State Capitol and told Little Rock’s KATV he strongly supported the Employee Free Choice Act:

This is an attempt to make it to where [workers] can form unions and they can bargain…with employers.

Labor laws brought us minimum wage, brought us pension plans, brought us health insurance…all have been eroded in the past 20 years.

The Texarkana Gazette reports that Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard, who spoke at the Texarkana rally, called the freedom to form a union and bargain “a fundamental human right” that gives workers the ability to “climb the economic ladder.”

The Pine Bluff Commercial highlights the AFL-CIO’s Stewart Acuff, who told the crowd in Pine Bluff that “everyone is watching Arkansas” to see how its U.S. senators will vote on Employee Free Choice. Acuff made an economic argument for the bill: 

American families are being continually squeezed by the economic crisis, Acuff noted, adding weight to the union argument that [the Employee Free Choice Act] is vital to recovery.

While American productivity is up 75 percent since 1973, wages have remained flat, leaving 50 million without health care and poverty rolls that have increased by 20 percent, Acuff told the Pine Bluff rally.

Consumer demand, which drives the U.S. economy, is down because of lower income, Acuff added.

You can see more photos from the weekend’s rallies here.