Labor Union Blog

Wage theft has become a national epidemic. A recent study found that low-wage workers in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles are routinely denied proper overtime pay and often are paid less than minimum wage.

Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) is highlighting their stories at its new Wage Theft Online Resource Center, which also includes a list of resources and information about the wage theft crisis. Click here to visit the Wage Theft Online Resource Center.

The online center offers tools for workers seeking to collect wages that are legally due to them, such as contacts to worker centers, lawyers and unions and links to such sites as Can My Boss Do That? and National Employment Law Project.

While many of the victims of wage theft are immigrant workers, Kim Bobo, the author of Wage Theft in America, says the largest sums of money are missing from the paychecks of native-born, middle-income workers who are not paid what is due to them for working overtime.

On average, a low-wage worker lost more than $2,600 in annual income due to the violations, 15 percent of a worker’s yearly earnings. The illegal underpayment or non-payment of wages affects millions of workers each year, forcing many to choose between paying their rent and feeding their families.

Join IWJ and thousands of supporters on Nov. 19 for a National Day of Action to Stop Wage Theft. Across the nation, faith communities and activists will mobilize to host events to educate the public about wage theft, organize delegations of faith leaders to meet with state and federal legislators or hold rallies and prayer vigils for victims of wage theft.

For more information on the National Day of Action, contact Cara Gold (cgold@iwj.org) at 1-773-728-8400, ext. 34.

At this week’s Electrical Workers (IBEW) conference, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler said we must focus on creating jobs and building a strong, sustainable and fair economy for the future.

Shuler, who rose to leadership as an IBEW organizer, congratulated the union’s members on their efforts in mobilizing and contacting members of Congress on behalf of health care reform and other key issues.

We still have a long way to go before we can truly have economic recovery, Shuler said, noting that as she travels around the country, the word she hears most often is “jobs.” The AFL-CIO worked hard for the economic recovery package passed by Congress, but the union movement still has much to do to address the massive unemployment and underemployment around the nation, she said. The AFL-CIO is pushing for more stimulus dollars to invest in energy, transportation, communications and school construction—for investment in green jobs and for more aid to state and local governments that have been slammed by biggest budget hits in decades.  Most critically, Shuler said, if the union movement doesn’t push to make this happen, no one will.

Shuler said extending unemployment benefits was an urgent priority that will prevent further damage to our economy. With 26 million people looking for work, or discouraged entirely from the job market, and long-term unemployment at its highest level in more than 25 years, it’s critical to give some relief, she said.

Green jobs and a new energy economy have the potential to revitalize the country, Shuler said, but only if those jobs are good jobs, with fair wages and benefits. We can protect the environment and build a more prosperous future, she said, by getting a headstart on new technologies and increasing energy efficiency.

Shuler also laid out her vision for the policies we need to build a stronger economy—including health care reform, the Employee Free Choice Act and financial reform.

Alliance for Retired Americans member Priscilla King (left) joined Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (center) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (right) for the launch of the health care bill.

Priscilla King, an Alliance for Retired Americans member from New Hampshire, got the chance to join House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-N.H.) for yesterday’s unveiling of the House’s historic health care reform bill. 

King noted that one of the many ways the bill would improve our health system is by closing the “donut hole” that affects seniors who gets prescription drugs through Medicare.

The current structure of Medicare’s drug coverage leaves a $1,700 gap if your costs are more than $2,830 a year. King and her husband have been victims of that flawed policy and have gone into debt to pay for the drugs they need.

Says King: 

I think it is wrong that when you are in the donut hole you must keep paying your premiums, but get no benefits in return. I want to thank Speaker Pelosi, Representative Shea-Porter and everyone here for standing up for seniors and closing the donut hole. America’s seniors need help more than the big insurance companies do. We must pass this bill right away! 

Here’s more news from the battle for health care reform: 

• In a new video, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says health care reform is moving forward and asks voters nationwide to contact their senators and ask them to pass it.
• New polls in Arkansas and Indiana show that voters in those states think reform legislation should include a public health insurance option.
• Paul Krugman, writing in the New York Times, says we’re in a “defining moment” for health care reform.
• Matthew Yglesias points out the often unspoken life-and-death stakes of reform.
• The House vote on the health care bill—calculated to reduce the deficit in the long term—should take place in the next two weeks.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis announced today the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has levied the largest fine in its history—$87.4 million—against BP for failing to correct safety problems identified after a 2005 explosion that killed 15 workers at its Texas City, Texas, refinery.

In a telephone press conference this morning, Solis said the fines are the result of BP’s failure to comply in hundreds of instances with a 2005 agreement to fix safety hazards at the refinery.

Solis said the fines represent the Obama Labor Department’s commitment to maintain safe workplaces:

Let me be clear. This administration will not tolerate disregard of our laws. Employers have a legal and moral responsibility to protect their workers who ultimately are America’s most important assets. The laws are designed to level the playing field for all businesses and ensure that workers in any economic climate are kept out of harm’s way.  

OSHA has issued 271 notifications to BP for failing to correct hazards at the Texas City refinery since the explosion. The agency also identified 439 “willful and egregious” violations of safety controls at the refinery.

Wayne Ranick, a spokesman for the United Steelworkers (USW), which represents the BP workers, says the union has not yet read the citation, but “we have faith in OSHA.”

 In the past we have offered to work with the company to address safety concerns and that offer still stands.

BP management initially tried to blame the workers for the explosion, but evidence collected in investigations by OSHA and the U.S. Chemical Safety Board forced the company to acknowledge it operated dangerous, obsolete equipment with a history of problems and malfunctioning control valves. Instead of venting flammable liquids to a flair, they were vented into the atmosphere, where they overflowed and exploded—even though OSHA had warned the company years before that the equipment was dangerous and should be replaced.

In addition to killing 15 people, the explosion injured 170 workers and obliterated 13 employee trailers and damaged 13 others, some as far as 300 yards away.

Jordan Barab, acting assistant secretary for OSHA, said the safety problems at BP are systemic.

There are some serious systemic safety problems within the corporation, specifically within this refinery as well. I think that just the fact that there still are so many life-threatening problems indicates they have a systemic safety problem at this refinery.

BP already has pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the explosion and agreed to pay $50 million, the largest criminal fine ever assessed against a company for Clean Air Act violations. Six months after the explosion, BP agreed to pay a $21.3 million OSHA fine, then the largest in the agency’s history.

Since the explosion, BP has settled more than 4,000 civil claims, paid from a $2.1 billion fund it set aside to resolve claims.

Solis ended the press conference by reiterating that job safety is a top Labor Department priority:

Our number one concern is the safety and protection of the current workers. We don’t need to see another loss of one life there. Our motto is that we would like to see people go into work and be able to come home to their families.

With 26 million U.S. workers unemployed or underemployed, and the long-term jobless rate the highest since 1981—hundreds of thousands of struggling workers need relief. The U.S. Senate is expected to take action next week on an extension of unemployment insurance (UI).

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says struggling workers will receive a much-needed boost from the UI extension—and workers whose UI has already run out will see it resume:

Our proposal from the outset has been simple: Let’s support those families who have been hardest hit by the recession. In the almost three weeks since Republicans first began to delay this measure, over 150,000 Americans have lost their unemployment benefits. Those Americans, and the thousands of others who will lose their benefits if we don’t act, need us to act now. It cannot be overstated how critical this assistance is to workers.

Unfortunately, it has been held up repeatedly by a handful of senators who have used procedural efforts to block a vote that would extend UI. If an extension isn’t passed quickly, more than a million people out of work could lose UI—and that means a hit to purchasing power that will further drag down our economy.

For more information on the roadblocks to UI extension, see the Washington Independent and Alternet.

In September, the U.S. House overwhelmingly passed a UI extension that called for an additional 13 weeks of UI for jobless workers in high unemployment states (more than 8.5 percent) who have exhausted their benefits without finding new work.

Click here to tell the Senate it’s time to pass an extension of UI benefits.

In this cross-post from the Huffington Post, Edward Wytkind, president of the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department, describes why the deck is stacked against airline and railroad workers when it comes to union elections.

The deck is stacked against airline and railroad workers when it comes to union elections. That’s why airline CEOs are working so hard to defend current election procedures that count all workers who sit out elections as “no” votes.

Americans are accustomed to elections where a simple majority of those voting decides the outcome—whether they’re voting for PTA president or U.S. senator. Not so for airline and railroad workers—who must first ensure that turnout exceeds 50 percent. How can we justify imposing higher turnout standards on airline and railroad union elections than we do in elections for the highest office of our land? We can’t.

Let’s take a moment to consider typical voter turnout data. The 2008 presidential election had the highest turnout in decades; nearly 57 percent of this country’s eligible voters participated. While our presidential elections manage to draw just over half the country’s eligible voters, mid-term elections bring out less than 40 percent. In fact, in every mid-term election since 1930 the national turnout was below 50 percent. What happens to eligible voters who choose not to vote in our local and national elections? The answer, of course, is that they do not factor into the election outcome.

The “majority rules” concept for elections is grounded in American democratic principles. But what if we arbitrarily assigned meaning to a voter who doesn’t participate? Imagine if not voting was tabulated as a vote for or against something, such as “every non-vote counts as a vote for Obama,” or conversely, “every non-voter must have intended to vote for McCain.” Not only would this policy significantly skew election results, but it would nullify the expressed intent and incite outrage among those who actually voted.

Although it defies logic, this is the system aviation and rail workers must abide by for union elections. It makes no sense, and it is well beyond time for a change. That’s why the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO has asked the National Mediation Board (NMB), the federal agency that oversees these matters, to reform its election procedures to conform to the norms of American democracy: the majority of those casting a vote will decide the outcome and those who do not vote are not counted.

Think about this. Even when more than 90 percent of those who vote choose a union, they are routinely denied representation by those who didn’t vote. It’s a “veto by silence” principle at work. Other than airline CEOs and their lobbyists, no one else can defend this system. I wonder if some of the U.S. senators who are carrying the airline industry’s water would support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution or to the election law in their state that forces them to face the voters under such onerous rules? I doubt it because in most of their elections, they would have lost.

Unionization in the airline industry has slowed in recent years. Why? Union-busting campaigns are alive and well—because the current election policy encourages and rewards employer-run voter suppression campaigns. For example, almost 100 percent of Delta flight attendants voted in favor of unionization in 2008. But thanks to Delta’s campaign to discourage its employees from voting (the company called it “Give a Rip” and was essentially instructing employees to destroy government-issued ballots), turnout was below 50 percent and the overwhelming support for a union was nullified. Shockingly, the Bush NMB saw no evil in Delta’s unlawful conduct and voted 2-1 to refuse to even investigate more than 100 charges of illegal interference and coercion.

Some call our request for fairness an effort to circumvent the law. Nice try. The law does not require that elections be run this way at all. Voting procedures are set by the NMB, which has the authority to change its policies. In fact, the Supreme Court has said that the law does not require a majority of the entire workforce to vote in union elections for results to be valid.

Airline management is arguing against our request, insisting that “the rules are being changed in the middle of the game” because some union elections may get scheduled on some future date. But there are always going to be potential or expected union elections. For the airlines, it will never be a convenient time to change a status quo that favors them so heavily. But for the workers, who have been facing an unfair standard for decades, change cannot come soon enough.

It’s time to let those who actually come out and vote decide the outcome of union elections in the airline and railroad industries. The airlines are essentially arguing against a voting system that has been the law of the land for more than 200 years in American democracy.

Transit riders in Philadelphia are being advised to prepare for a strike. The union has said that if an agreement with the transit authority is not reached by the end of the week workers will walk off the job at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday. A strike by the workers could bring to a halt trains, buses, and trolleys. At issue are plans by the agency to increase workers contribution to health care coverage and a lack of wage increases for the first two years of the contract.

By Doug Cunningham

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By Doug Cunningham

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