Economic Report:
What makes workers most unhappy? According to the latest American Workplace Insights Survey, 66 percent of workers are dissatisfied with compensation, 76 percent are dissatisfied with career growth opportunities, and 48 percent are dissatisfied with employee and management relations. 77 percent of workers believe their company lacks vision or appropriate leadership.
By Doug Cunningham
A hundred Quad City Die Casting workers in Illinois are losing their jobs today, after Wells Fargo Bank refused to continue financing the company. UE’s Leah Fried says according to the National Labor Relations Board, the bank owes the workers about $200,000 in pay and benefits, which it’s refusing to pay.
[Fried]: “So, you know, there’s really no justification legal or moral for what they’re doing.”
UE says it won’t give up until the workers are paid.
Farm workers could have new protections under the Obama Administration’s Labor Department. Jesse Russell reports:
On Thursday, the Department of Labor said it was looking at and preparing to reverse some regulations passed under the Bush Administration. Lifting the regulations would push U.S. growers to utilize American workers to fill seasonal job positions. The Bush regulations made it easier for the hiring of workers from outside the United States on a temporary basis. The new rules would also strengthen the rights of farm workers by making it harder for growers to commit abuse. The growers argue that a change in the regulations will make hiring workers more expensive because most Americans don’t want the jobs they are offering. The growers will be required to submit documents that show they tried to fill jobs with U.S. workers before taking on foreigners. Open job positions will need to be posted in an electronic job registry. The rules could also see farm worker wages increase by $1.44 per hour.
By Doug Cunningham
More than a thousand religious congregations nationwide will participate in Labor In The Pulpits this Labor Day weekend.
It’s a joint project of the AFL-CIO and Interfaith Worker Justice.
All the major world religions teach dignity and respect for workers and for the poor. Roz Pelles is Director of the AFL-CIO’s Civil, Human and Women’s Rights Department. She says Labor In The Pulpits is about all workers.
[Pelles]: “It’s mainly not about union members, but it’s mainly about people who work every day, but cannot afford health care or don’t have it available to them or cannot get justice on the job. It gives congregations a chance to hear about this.”
By Doug Cunningham
More than a thousand religious congregations nationwide will participate in Labor In The Pulpits this Labor Day weekend.
It’s a joint project of the AFL-CIO and Interfaith Worker Justice.
All the major world religions teach dignity and respect for workers and for the poor. Roz Pelles is Director of the AFL-CIO’s
Civil, Human and Women’s Rights Department. She says Labor In The Pulpits is about all workers.
[Pelles]: “It’s mainly not about union members, but it’s mainly about people who work every day, but cannot afford health care or don’t have it available to them or cannot get justice on the job. It gives congregations a chance to hear about this.”
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Health care reform protestors, extremist radio and television talkers and some mainstream Republicans trying to kill President Obama’s health care reform initiative have frequently, but falsely, claimed the health plan would create government “death panels” to decide who gets treatment and who dies.
(Click here to find out the truth behind other big lies about health care reform.)
What these defenders of the private health insurance industry don’t say is that those panels already exist. But they are not operated by the government—they are run by the private health insurance industry itself.
New data from the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) finds that more than 20 percent of medical claims for insured patients, even when recommended by the patients’ doctors, are
rejected by California’s largest private insurers, amounting to very real death panels in practice daily in the nation’s biggest state.
The union analyzed data reported by the insurers to the California Department of Managed Care. From 2002 through June 30, 2009, the six largest insurers operating in California rejected 31.2 million claims for care—21 percent of all claims. Says Deborah Burger, RN, CNA/NNOC co-president:
With all the dishonest claims made by some politicians about alleged “death panels” in proposed national legislation, the reality for patients today is a daily, cold-hearted rejection of desperately needed medical care by the nation’s biggest and wealthiest insurance companies simply because they don’t want to pay for it.
According to the CNA/NNOC survey, in just the first six months of 2009, PacifiCare denied 40 percent of all California claims. Cigna rejected one-third of all claims and California Blues rejected 28 percent of claims for the first half of 2009. Says Burger:
Every claim that is denied represents a real patient enduring pain and suffering. Every denial has real, sometimes fatal consequences.
For example, PacifiCare, says CNN/NNOC, denied a special procedure for treatment of bone cancer for Nick Colombo, a 17-year-old teen from Placentia, Calif. After protests organized by Nick’s family and friends, CNA/NNOC and netroots activists, PacifiCare reversed its decision. But the delay resulted in critical time lost, and Nick ultimately died. Says his older bother Rickey:
This was his last effort and the procedure had worked before with people in Nick’s situation.
Burger says the United States is only is the only industrialized country where, “human lives are sacrificed for private profit.”
CNA/NNOC will release the full study next week at its convention in San Francisco, where participants will hear from a panel of nurse leaders in Canada, Great Britain and Australia who will explode the myths about their national healthcare systems.
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Last night, more than 100 union members and allies were treated to a rooftop view of the White House from the AFL-CIO’s eighth-floor verandas for their support of the Employee Free Choice Act.
Union leaders and activists joined the AFL-CIO’s officers—President John Sweeney, Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka and Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker—for an evening of music, food and a stunning view of the White House, where working people have an ally who will fight for good jobs, health care reform and an economy that works for everyone. President Barack Obama, who will speak at the upcoming AFL-CIO Convention, has pledged to sign the Employee Free Choice Act into law.
The AFL-CIO’s Scott Reynolds, who helped organize the event, said the event raised more than $10,000 for the Turn Around America Fund, which helps pay for the campaign to get out the truth about the Employee Free Choice Act. Reynolds said:
It was a perfect summer evening. Everybody had a great time, and we got the chance to hear inspiring words about why we need Employee Free Choice, as well as remember the bill’s sponsor and champion, Sen. Ted Kennedy.
You can still contribute to the Turn Around America Fund here and join the fight against corporate disinformation.
Labor Secretary Hilda Solis told a group of Chicago area union, community, business and academic leaders the Employee Free Choice Act will level the playing field for workers who want to form unions and bargain of a better life.
I believe what you all believe. Union jobs are good jobs, paying higher salaries and wages.
In a speech yesterday before the Union League Club of Chicago—co-sponsored by the Chicago Federation of Labor (CFL)—Solis pledged to work with President Obama “to make the strongest case possible for the Employee Free Choice Act.”
I believe workers have the right to fairness and balance in the workplace and in order to rebuild the middle class, we need to level the playing field for all workers.
In his introductory remarks, CFL President Dennis Gannon said:
It’s great to know we have a president who understands working men and women and who is not afraid to say the word “union”…and a Secretary of Labor who understands the issues that are important to families who are struggling, who are losing their houses or are losing the pensions, who have problems with health care.
Turning to workplace safety, Solis said the Labor Department was hiring 130 new workplace safety inspectors to strongly enforce job safety rules. Also, next year it will hold a national summit on construction safety and the Latino workers to “forge new ways to educate workers about their rights and employers about their responsibilities.”
Workplace safety is not only our responsibility but it is our moral obligation especially since low wage, low skill and immigrant workers are particularly vulnerable to workplace injury and death .. No matter who are you, no one should have to die for a job.
Solis called the nation’s 9.4 percent unemployment rate “unacceptable” and that the 12 percent-plus rate for African Americans and Latinos and the more than 20 percent rate for young workers percent must be reduced.
To some it might just sound like numbers, but it’s about real people, about real families about real suffering that’s going on in our nation.
She said the economic recovery act passed earlier this year has helped put the brakes on a declining economy and helped save and create jobs. Economists estimate that 720,000 jobs have been created or saved. Solis also said that Labor Department has made nearly $850 million in job training and green energy job with a special emphasis on minority, young and women workers.
Click here to hear a podcast of Solis’s speech.
They fought for more than three years through a strike, a lockout and unfair treatment by management, and now mental health care workers at Heartland Human Services finally have a union contract.
The ordeal these workers went through to get their union contract is another example of why workers need the Employee Free Choice Act. If workers choose a union, they should get a fair first contract.
AFSCME reports that workers at Heartland, based in Effingham, Ill., formed a union with AFSCME Council 31 in February 2006. More than a year passed as workers tried to bargain for a fair first contract, and they finally decided to go on strike in July 2007. After a year on strike, workers tried to return to the bargaining table, but they were locked out by management, who refused to let them return to work. Finally, thanks to the hard work by Council 31 and action from the state of Illinois, which contracts with Heartland, Heartland and its workers have reached agreement on a contract that will let these hardworking mental health care workers get back to serving those in need.
As AFSCME notes, it’s a contract that protects these critical workers’ dignity on the job:
The two-year agreement grants employees unprecedented rights previously denied, including binding arbitration, authority to conduct union activities (such as meeting with stewards) during work hours, freedom from discrimination based on union membership and a prohibition against lockout.
The workers also won substantial salary increases in the first year of the contract, a 2.5 percent increase in year two and more paid time off.
No employee who chooses a union should be forced to wait years for a contract—but this experience is all too common: Studies show that more than half of workers who form a union don’t have a contract a year later and more than one-third still don’t have a contract two years later. It’s time to protect workers like those at Heartland Human Services by passing the Employee Free Choice Act.
Learn more about Heartland workers’ struggle here at the AFSCME website.
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