Labor Union Blog

More Pennsylvania state workers only received partial paychecks on Friday as the Governor and the state legislature continue to debate how to close a budget gap. The budget is now more than three weeks late and as a result the state has limited funds with which to pay workers. As a result many state workers not knowing when the two sides will be able to agree on a budget have been forced to stand in line at food banks. According to the office of Governor Ed Rendell roughly 60 percent of state workers have taken advantage of a no-interest short term loan program, but that only helps state workers with qualifying credit ratings. All workers will receive owed back pay once a budget is passed and it could take up to a week after the budget is passed for paychecks to go out to some workers.

The number of newly laid-off workers seeking jobless benefits saw an increase nationally with overall claims rising by 30,000. More people are tapping into emergency unemployment insurance provided states and the federal government. According to the Department of Labor, 9.1 million people received jobless benefits the first week of the month. New York reported the highest increase in jobless claims which the state says is due to layoffs in the construction and transportation trades.

Lede: The Sheet Metal Workers International Association is cutting all contributions to political candidates and using the money instead to get a good health care reform bill passed. Doug Cunningham reports.

By Doug Cunningham

Vincent Panvini is Director of Government Affairs for the Sheet Metal Workers. He says they’re tired of getting taken advantage of on critical issues like health care and the Employee Free Choice Act by so-called Blue Dog conservative Democrats.

[Panvini]: “They’re gutless and spineless, I call them. Not all of them, but some of them. Some of these Blue Dog Democrats – they forget where they came from and, you know, they drink the Kool-Aid.”

Bobby Click, right, a member of CWA Local 6139, is honored for saving the life of a three-year-old girl.

An ordinary workday turned into a day of extraordinary heroics for Bobby Click, a technician for AT&T and member of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 6139.

As he fixed a phone line in a Vidor, Texas, back yard on a sweltering day last month, Click saw a family pull the lifeless body of a three-year-old girl from the family’s above-ground pool. The girl was black and blue in the face and not breathing.

Click ran toward the girl and put the CPR training he receives every three years at AT&T into practice. In a story on the CWA website, Click says:

I can’t remember everything that happened. It was so emotional. I know I grabbed her and I laid her on the ground and I started CPR.

Two other technicians and Local 6139 members, Mark Ferguson and David Clifton, called 911 and helped keep the adults calm, Click said:

Just as the ambulance arrived, she began to cry, and that’s what I was hoping for.

The medics told Click and the child’s mother that the little girl wouldn’t have lived if someone hadn’t immediately given her CPR.

Click says:

If you had asked me, how do you do CPR on a child, I probably couldn’t have told you. But it all came back to me. Training gives you the courage to act.

He was calm until the ordeal was over. Then, he says he was “shaking all over.”

I drove to my daughter’s home right down the street because I just had to hug my two little granddaughters.

His granddaughters are one and two years old.

Click, 52, received an award from the local ambulance service at a ceremony that included the girl and her family.

He  told a local TV station he doesn’t consider himself a hero.

I was just a person who God put in the right place at the right time. She was a little girl that needed some help. But to somebody, she was their world.