Labor Union Blog

More than 300 union activists surrounded the office of the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans (MAHP), in downtown Boston yesterday, to protest the insurance industry’s tactics in opposing national health care reform.

MAHP and other industry groups, such as America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), have mounted a multimillion-dollar campaign of TV and radio ads, phony town hall meetings and lobbying to scuttle comprehensive health care reform. Says Rich Rogers, executive secretary of the Greater Boston Labor Council:

We sent a strong message today in Boston that we can’t allow the insurance industry to derail reform. It is time to stand up to the insurance companies and show them that we mean business.

The insurance industry’s main targets are heath care reform that includes a public health insurance option and curbs on the industry’s abusive practices that deny people needed care. A public plan option would allow workers and their families who either have private insurance coverage or no coverage at all to choose between private insurance or a public plan with a package of comprehensive benefits.

Just last week, a former insurance executive outlined how insurance companies look for any reason to deny a claim or cancel a person’s policy when they make major claims. 

Jeff Crosby, president of the North Shore Labor Council, told rally participants that the pharmaceutical giants “bleed the system at a rate of profit twice that of most other industries,” and the insurance companies must be stopped from killing real reform.

We can’t leave health care to people to whom it is just another business to make money. These health insurance companies are not health care providers, they are in the business of health care. It would be easier if there was a short cut, if we didn’t have to take on several of the most powerful industries in the country at once.

The rally was co-sponsored by the Greater Boston Labor Council, the North Shore Labor Council, AFT Massachusetts, the SEIU Massachusetts State Council, the Boston Building Trades Council and others.

One of the critical provisions of the Employee Free Choice Act would guarantee that workers who form a union get a fair first contract. Because right now, writes Catherine Fisk of the University of California-Irvine:

“During the past decade, nearly half of all newly certified unions failed to reach a first contract within a year, and one-quarter of new unions did not have a contract after three years of bargaining.”

Writing in the National Law Journal, Fisk says that by not getting a fair first contract, workers who exercised their right to select union representation

never got what the law guarantees them: collective representation in establishing wages and working conditions.

Getting a first contract is a critical part of the union formation process—and ensuring that workers have access to a fair negotiating process is central to reforming the nation’s labor law. We need to make sure there’s a process to help employees and management reach an agreement through mediation and, for issues the parties are unable to resolve on their own, arbitration.

Writes Fisk:

First-contract arbitration will end the widespread employer practice of flouting the duty to bargain, talking a union to death and acting with impunity in defeating the employees’ choice of unionization.

Fisk notes that either side in a contract negotiation can request arbitration, and only after months of bargaining.

You can read Fisk’s article here.

A local Chamber of Commerce killed a Harley-Davidson-led parade to highlight American-made products.

The Chamber of Commerce—that’s the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—proved once again how anti-American it is when it comes to supporting U.S. industry.

In Findlay, Ohio, unions had been organizing a parade and all-day event for this Saturday to highlight American-made products and the need for U.S. trade and economic policies that reward job growth in this country. The unions worked hard to get the business community involved and spent months meeting with the city’s Republican mayor, who supported the plans.

But in the end, GreaterFindayInc., the local Chamber arm, killed the Heart of Commerce and Community Celebration.

Says Donnie Blatt, United Steelworkers (USW) Rapid Response coordinator for District 1: “GreaterFindlayInc. did everything they could to sabotage us. They told business not to cooperate with us.”

Looks like GreaterFindlay also put a lot of pressure on Mayor Pete Sehnert, who now says the city will hold a similar event next year-but without the participation of unions in organizing it.

Seems GreaterFindlay now has the mayor just where they want him. (To e-mail GreaterFindlay, you need to fill out a form—here—and submit it.) According to the local newspaper:

“Basically, Findlay’s a non-union, Republican area and mostly what we had were Democratic speakers and union people,” Sehnert said. “It’s not what I had in mind.”

Someone could infer from Sehnert’s statement that a pro-America, buy-America celebration isn’t supported by Republicans. Because the Greater Findlay Chamber of Commerce rejected an event that would have opened with a parade of U.S.-made, union-made Harley-Davidsons and classic American autos driving down Main Street, alongside floats showcasing American-made products. Speakers would have included U.S. Reps. Marcy Kaptur and Betty Sutton, the state attorney general and state treasurer. Blatt says Gov. Ted Strickland was thinking of speaking as well.

The state’s oldest manufacturing firm planned to join the festivities, with its owner speaking about the importance of keeping manufacturing in Ohio. USW District 1 planned to give out free hotdogs and hamburgers. 

Blatt and Rod Nelson, president of USW Local 207L, and Rob Greer, USW Rapid Response coordinator, met weekly with the mayor over two months, constantly reiterating that they did not want the Heart of Commerce and Community Celebration to be solely a “union event” but sought participation by the local business community.

Their goal from the start was to ensure that local business played a key role in the event, where they could display “made in Ohio” products to offer consumers locally made options. Says Blatt:

We told the mayor: “We don’t want this to be a union event. We want this to be a celebration of American manufacturing, a celebration of American workers. We want this to be a community celebration highlighting the need to keep good jobs in the U.S. and in Ohio.

But Blatt says the Chamber of Commerce didn’t see it that way.

The mayor came back repeatedly and said the GreaterFindleyInc. were raising hell with him because they said this is a union event.

I said the only reason this is a union event is that they’re making it a union event. 

Blatt and the union members who worked so hard to pull together this event did so because we need jobs in this country. Just ask the 26 million U.S. jobless workers who need jobs or full-time work but cannot find it. Blatt summarizes the event this way: 

We wanted us all to come together to show the importance of keeping jobs in America.

Clearly, once again, keeping jobs in America is not an economic strategy that interests the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. (Let’s just delete the “U.S.” portion of that name, shall we?)

This is a crosspost from Firedoglake.com.

After long battle, minimum wage reaches $7.25 an hour today.

Today, nearly 10 million workers in 31 states get a raise when the federal minimum wage increases by 70 cents to $7.25 an hour.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says the raise will act as a significant economic stimulus “at a moment when it is critically needed—one that will lift all boats so Americans and businesses can stay afloat and ride out this economic storm.”

The raise will put an extra $2,000 a year into the paychecks of a full-time minimum wage worker. According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), that increase will generate $5.5 billion in consumer spending over the next year—providing a boost to the economy without any increase in government spending. This is money that will be spent, Sweeney says, on basic necessities such as groceries, electricity, rent and transportation.

This is not money that will be saved for a rainy day or spent on lavish vacations overseas. Now, that’s not a bad return on a 70-cent-an hour investment.  Indeed, a 2008 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago confirmed that minimum wage increases boost consumer spending substantially more than tax cuts do.

The pay hike is the last of the three-step minimum wage increase Congress passed in 2007, which was the first such increase since 1997. Congressional Republicans and the Bush administration had blocked a raise for the nation’s lowest-paid workers for a decade.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis says the increase is an “important step in the right direction” to improve the lives of working families.

This well-deserved increase will help workers better provide for their families in the  face of today’s economic challenges. I am especially pleased that the change will benefit working women, who make up two-thirds of minimum wage earners.

Corporate lobbyists long have argued that raising the minimum wage will result in job losses.  But repeated studies show that’s not true. In 2006, more than 650 economists, including five Nobel laureates and six past presidents of the American Economic Association, found that raising the minimum wage:

significantly improves the lives of low-income workers and their families, without the adverse effects that critics have claimed.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) estimates that some 10 million workers—those at the minimum wage or slightly above it—will benefit from the increase. Workers in 19 states and the District of Columbia, where minimum wage rates are already at $7.25 an hour or higher, will not be affected.

According to EPI’s Minimum Wage Issue Guide:

• The average minimum wage worker brings home more than half (54 percent) of his or her family’s weekly earnings.
• 76 percent of workers whose wages will be raised by the minimum wage increase are adults.
• 63 percent of workers who will benefit from an increase to $7.25 are women.
• A disproportionate share of minorities will benefit from a minimum wage increase. African Americans represent 11 percent of the total workforce, but are 18 percent of workers affected by an increase. Similarly, 14 percent of the total workforce is Hispanic, but Hispanics are 19 percent of workers affected by an increase

But even with the raise, the purchasing power of the minimum wage remains below its value during the 1960s and 1970s, according to EPI.  After adjusting for inflation, the value of the new minimum wage is 17 percent lower than in the peak value year of 1968.

Because of the declining value of the minimum wage compared to other workers’ wages, today the minimum wage is 39 percent of the average hourly wage of production and non-supervisory workers, well below the ratio of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

EPI also notes that minimum wage earners today are more educated, which is a good measure of productivity and “higher productivity—the capacity to produce more per hour worked—should allow these workers to earn higher wages.”

But the same corporate lobbyists that swarm Capitol Hill whenever minimum wage legislation is on the radar don’t speak for all business owners.

Margot Dorfman CEO of the U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce (USWCC) CEO says:

Now, more than ever, it’s imperative that employees are paid a fair minimum wage. It is an unsustainable and dangerous downward spiral to push American workers into poverty and expect taxpayers to pick up the bill for the consequences.

The coalition Business for a Fair Minimum Wage says a higher minimum wage is a “sound investment in the future of our communities.”

Higher wages benefit business by increasing consumer purchasing power, reducing costly employee turnover, raising productivity, and improving product quality, customer satisfaction and company reputation.

Says Sweeney:

In today’s economy, nearly everyone deserves a break.  As we bail out banks and corporate CEOs to the tune of billions of dollars, it’s time for those at the bottom of the pay scale to get a fair shake.  The minimum wage is still far below what it takes for families to survive, but today’s increase moves us closer to a healthier economy that works for everyone.