Labor Union Blog

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka spoke today at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland.
Listen to MP3 here:

The AFL-CIO’s new leadership team isn’t wasting a second. Hours after the close of the AFL-CIO 26th Constitutional Convention, they’re riding the momentum of this week’s high-energy union gathering with a listening tour across the country.

And they’re starting in Ohio, the center of recent political battles and heart of the tough questions the nation faces about our economic future. The team’s tour continues Sunday and Monday in Atlanta, including a rally outside Wachovia, where Trumka will condemn its predatory financial practices, such as foreclosures. On Monday night and Tuesday, the team travels to New York City where Trumka will issue a strong warning to Wall Street at a press conference outside the New York Stock Exchange.

Today, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler and Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker held an energetic rally in Cleveland before fanning out across the state to hear from workers and fire up the union movement for the battles ahead.

At the Great Lakes Science Center, Trumka said workers can and must take the lead in reversing the economic crisis that has hit the nation and particularly Ohio. All of us need to hold corporations accountable, not go back to an economy that’s rigged against workers, Trumka said.

The labor movement will do everything in its power to help create good jobs….That’s our most important goal. But when you buy into a community, you become part of the family. You have an obligation. Too many corporations today want to walk away from their communities, even companies that were nurtured right here in these same communities.

We need an economic system in this country that rewards work as well as it rewards investment. We need an economic system that gives everybody a fair opportunity to work hard and succeed.

Trumka said the union movement stands firmly behind health care reform that includes a public option and the Employee Free Choice Act. These policies are critical to rebuilding an economy that works for all.

Shuler visited both Akron and Columbus this afternoon, while Holt Baker spoke in Cleveland and held a roundtable to listen to union members in Dayton.

In Akron, Shuler spoke to the concerns of younger workers, who are rightly concerned to be entering an economy that doesn’t seem to offer any hope of a better life. Said Shuler:

“For young people today, the question, “What are you going to do with your life?” is daunting enough, but this economy makes it even more difficult to answer.

“You worked hard to get through school, and now you can’t find a job. Or you were laid off from your job and haven’t been able to find a new one. There’s no training available. You can’t afford health care, so you don’t go to the doctor when you need to. It may be your story, or your friend’s story, or a friend of a friend’s story. But it’s time for that story to change.”

Shuler argued that not only do we need new investments in green jobs to turn this around, young people also need the freedom to join a union:

“Some young people might think of labor unions as part of your grandparent’s generation. But we are for all ages, and for all workers—full time, part-time, freelancers, professionals and skilled labor jobs alike.

“At the end of the day, we all want the same things. We want a piece of the American dream. The labor movement has been the key to the middle class for 60 years, and it still offers the hand you need to succeed.”

A report released this month by the AFL-CIO and Working America shows a stunning deterioration in the economic lives of young workers—those under age 35. According to the report, Young Workers: A Lost Decade, one-third of young workers cannot pay the bills and seven in 10 do not have enough money saved to cover two months of living expenses.

Our new leadership team is making outreach to young workers a focus of their efforts, and their actions already show they are ready to go, ready to fight for jobs, for health care reform and for a fairer, more prosperous future for everyone.

Workers Independent News headed to Pittsburgh last week for the annual AFL-CIO Convention. This year’s convention was especially historic as it saw the first major change in Federation leadership in more than a decade. John Sweeney passed the Presidential torch to former Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka. In his acceptance speech he said labor under his leadership will fight for a public option in health care:

[Trumka]:

As was to be expected the primary focus of the convention was on the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. Labor leaders representing all sectors of employment made a call to arms for the legislation. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said workers should have the choice and not the employer:

read more

As the battle for comprehensive health care reform picks up, here’s a roundup on the latest, including a survey that finds workers are paying more for job-based health care coverage; another survey showing physicians support a public option as part of a health care reform package; and well-reasoned arguments showing why the U.S. House health care reform package is the better bill.

The average family health insurance premium has jumped by 131 percent during the past decade while wages have increased by just 38 percent and inflation by 28 percent, finds the Kaiser Family Foundation’s (KKF’s) annual health benefits survey released this week.  

Today, the annual premium for employer-provided health insurance is $13,375, with the employer paying $9,860 and workers footing $3,515 of the premium costs.

As a result, many employers say they plan to cut back health care benefits even more than they already have with higher co-pays and deductibles for workers.

On top of the premium costs, the Kaiser survey finds that in 2009, 22 percent of covered workers must pay at least $1,000 out of pocket annually before their plan generally will start to pay a share of their health care bills, up from 18 percent last year and 10 percent in 2006.  

In addition, 21 percent of firms that offer health insurance say they are “very likely” to raise workers’ premium contribution next year, and 16 percent say they are ”very likely” to raise deductibles.  

Dr. Maulik S. Joshi, president of Health Research & Educational Trust, which co-sponsored the survey, says the results

demonstrate the need for comprehensive, meaningful reform. Our nation faces a unique opportunity to achieve reform and build a better health care system that improves care for patients and provides coverage for all at an affordable cost.

In other health care reform news, a recent survey of more than 2,100 physicians by the Mount Sinai School of Medicine found that three-quarters support some type of public health insurance option to allow working families to choose between private health insurance and a quality public plan. The survey was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Salomeh Keyhani, one of the survey’s authors, told NPR:  

Whether they lived in southern regions of the United States or traditionally liberal parts of the country, we found that physicians—regardless whether they were salaried or they were practice owners, regardless of whether they were specialists or primary care providers, regardless of where they lived—the support for the public option was broad and widespread.

Health care reform legislation in the House (H.R. 3200) and in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee provides for a public option. But the bill released this week, by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, does not.

In his speech accepting the AFL-CIO’s presidency this week in Pittsburgh, Richard Trumka said:

We’ve all heard those who’ve said that we ought to be satisfied with a health care reform plan that doesn’t include a public option…a plan without a public option may be a lot of things, but it sure as hell isn’t reform.

Click here to see former Labor Secretary Robert Reich explain what a public option means for working people in a new presentation by Brave New Films.

Meanwhile, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) lays out the important differences between the House health care reform bill and the Baucus bill and why, to achieve real comprehensive reform that provides affordable and quality health care, the final product must resemble as closely as possible the House bill.

In Finishing Strong, economists Josh Bevin’s and Elise Gould write that both bills do curb the worst insurance industry abuses, prevent discrimination based on pre-existing conditions and offer subsidies for lower-income families to afford coverage.  

However, on almost every issue of interest to progressive reformers, the Baucus framework is inferior to the House bill. The first goal of progressive reformers at this stage is simple: push for the adoption of a bill that looks as much like the House bill and as little like the Baucus framework as possible.

They examine the Baucus bill’s lack of a public option, its taxation of some health care, benefits, minimal employer responsibility and other differences from the House bill. Click here to read the entire column.

Also, EPI examines the recent U.S. Census Bureau report that more Americans slipped into poverty and lost their health insurance in 2008 and why that data doesn’t paint today’s complete picture because it does not reflect the worst of the recession. Click here for more.

Here are two great recent op-eds on the case for the Employee Free Choice Act.

In The Hill, United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard remembers the late Crystal Lee Sutton, the inspiration for the film “Norma Rae” who passed away last weekend. Sutton’s story—attempting to form a union and bargain for a better life but facing harassment and illegal firing—shows why we need the Employee Free Choice Act, Gerard says. In particular, he notes, we must remember how, after the great personal sacrifice and victory by Sutton and her co-workers, they were still denied the ability to bargain for a fair contract:

The Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) won the right to represent the workers. That’s what people remember from the film. A great victory. What they don’t know is that J.P. Stevens officials didn’t sign a labor contract with the union until a decade later.

That’s why the Employee Free Choice Act must pass. Not only do companies threaten, harass and illegally fire workers like Sutton who try to form unions, but even when workers finally do win union representation, corporations wrongly hold up negotiations to deny workers their first labor contract—as J. P. Stevens did.

In the Indianapolis Star, Indiana State AFL-CIO President Ken Zeller sorts out the myths and facts of the Employee Free Choice Act, cutting through disinformation and explaining why we need labor law reform:

As long as workers are denied a seat at the bargaining table, corporate greed will continue to run roughshod over our economy. The Employee Free Choice Act will give workers the power to bring a measure of democracy back to the workplace.

Say “green jobs” and the phrase conjures up visions of Earth friendly, energy saving, pollution-free,  high-skilled, well-paid jobs. In short, the type of green jobs for which we in the labor movement and the Obama administration are striving to create.

But as the new blog “Green Jobs, Safe Jobs” points out, if the corporate world is allowed to control and manipulate this growing sector of the global economy, workers and the environment are at risk.

Left to its own devices, the green economy could deliver the same unhealthy mix of hire-and-fire, poison-and-pain jobs that remain a blight on the reputational landscape of the not-so-green economy.

The blog is a joint venture of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the independent, but pro-union, British health and safety magazine Hazards. Says Hazards editor Rory O’Neill:

Real life health and safety issues must be an integral part of discussions on the development of a green economy. The blog aims to challenge the assumption that green jobs are automatically a good thing. If they kill workers they are not good; if they exploit workers they are not good. And there is no iron law guaranteeing that employers who are kind to the environment are kind to their workers.

One recent entry, Green Collared: Red Alert on the Perils of Green Jobs explores several worker deaths and exposures to toxic materials at several British recycling firms

The recycling industry is the waste industry in green clothing….If the safety breaches don’t get you, then the health hazards of your green job just might.

O’Neill says the blog will present evidence on potential safety and environmental pitfalls and ways to avoid them to ensure

we get jobs that are decent, safe and green…and incorporate issues like worker participation and unionization as essential components of a healthy green economy.

Click here to visit Green Jobs, Safe Jobs.

Last week, the UAW published a list of 2010 union-made cars, trucks, vans and other vehicles. It’s also Union Label Week, which we hold annually to highlight how union-made goods are high in quality and help support middle-class communities. These two events reminded me: Making a case for Buy American means we in the union movement need to do our job and show U.S. consumers how and where to buy American, and buy union.

Or at least we can try. I’ve seen an awful lot of brand-new BMWs, Mercedes and Lexus brands of all types driving around here in Washington, D.C., recently. Something tells me my money helped purchase those vehicles—no doubt some of the drivers are beneficiaries of taxpayer-bailed out financial institutions.

Still, not everyone is laughing all the way to making high-end purchases of foreign-made goods with U.S. taxpayer dollars. And for those who still have a conscious that can be appealed to, this list is for you.

• Next time you stay in a hotel, think about making it a union experience. UNITE HERE offers an online guide for finding a union hotel in the United States and Canada.
• Staying with the travel theme, the AFL-CIO Union Label & Service Trades (UL&STD) Department has a list of union airlines, casinos and more here.
• In fact, UL&STD offers a pull-down menu for searches on union-made clothes, financial services, food and beverages (note: Russell Stover, See’s and Seagram’s), house/home and lots more. Some of the categories are in better shape than others, but it’s a good start in pointing out union-made options.
• Buy union products direct at the AFL-CIO Union Shop Online.^TM Books, posters, music, stuff for kids and as many “Health Care Can’t Wait” placards you can carry and buttons you can wear.
• Many unions offer products at their websites, and there’s a list of union stores here. Of special interest: the Labor Heritage Foundation, which offers music, DVDs and more—proving again that it’s not just about bread, but roses, too.

There are union-made, American-made options out there. We just need to know where to find them.