Labor Union Blog

Sgt. Kimberly Munley

Sgt. Kimberly Munley, a civilian police officer at Fort Hood and an AFGE member, is being hailed as a hero for shooting the alleged gunman in yesterday’s bloody rampage at the Army base in Texas.

Today, AFGE released a statement honoring Munley’s “service, courage and commitment.” AFGE President John Gage said Munley “acted with great heroism.” Added Gage:

We offer our thoughts, our prayers, our support and our strength to our brave soldiers and their families, and our brothers and sisters, who are affected by this senseless and pointless tragedy.

Munley, 34, is a member of AFGE Local 1920 and the mother of a 3-year-old. She and her partner were the first to arrive at the Soldier Readiness Center, where Maj. Nidal Hasan allegedly opened fire, killing 13 and injuring 31.

Munley shot the alleged assailant four times, despite being shot herself. She currently is recovering from her injuries and is in stable condition.

Lt. Gen. Bob Cone, commanding general at Fort Hood, told CNN that Munley’s actions stopped Hasan cold and saved lives. He said Munley is a “trained, active first responder” who acted quickly after she “just happened to encounter the gunman.”

AFGE represents 1,700 civilian defense employees at the Army base, including civilians in the Soldier Readiness Center, employees at the base hospital and officers of the installation’s civilian police force.

Just when you think you can’t be shocked by Wall Street outrages, we hear Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and other Wall Streeters are getting supplies of the H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine, while school kids, pregnant women and the chronically ill are being turned away at clinics around the country because there is a shortage of the vaccine. 

NBC reported that Goldman Sachs received the same amount of swine flu vaccine as Lennox Hill Hospital that serves a huge population of low- and middle-income New York families. 

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center received 200 of the 27,400 doses that it requested for its workers, according to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The Associated Press reports that while Citigroup received 1,200 doses and Morgan Stanley 1,000, 

manager Linda O’Hanlon at Uptown Pediatrics in Manhattan said her office has received 500 doses so far—not enough for a practice with almost 7,000 patients.

“We have about 800 appointments” set up for patients who want to get vaccinated, she said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says those who should be first in line for a swine shot are those at highest risk, but the CDC has no way to enforce how the vaccine is doled out. The federal government supplies the vaccine to state and city health departments, which in turn determine how the limited supply is distributed.

New York City health officials say the large financial firms and other companies that received does of the H1N1 vaccine have on-site health clinics and the doctors there are obligated to only provide flu shots to those in the at risk groups. But there is no way to ensure that investment bankers and derivative cowboys aren’t muscling their way to the front of the line.   

On the website MomLogic, Julie, whose children haven’t been able to get vaccinated because of the shortage, writes: 

How are bankers, brokers, and traders put before high-risk children who actually need the vaccine most?

My pediatrician is out of the swine flu vaccine and said he can’t get it for weeks. That means my kids are currently unvaccinated. During 2009, at least 114 children have been killed by the swine flu. How many stockbrokers have died of swine flu this year? Not 114, I can assure you!

United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard is outraged—as we all are—over the news that a planned $1.5 billion Texas wind farm—seeking financing with U.S. stimulus money—will create only 30 permanent jobs here, but 2,000 jobs in China.

Taking candy from a baby: A consortium of Chinese and American companies goes to Washington and announces plans to build a $1.5 billion windmill farm in west Texas using $450 million in U.S. stimulus funds, which will create 2,330 jobs—2,000 of them in China.  

The baby—Washington’s Energy Dept., specifically—doesn’t cry or whine or spit in the consortium’s face. That’s what’s really wrong with this story.

So accustomed to being bought and sold, Washington simply begins processing forms so it can hand over your tax dollars to create jobs in a turbine factory in the city of Shenyang, China, at a subsidy of $193,133 each.

It’s like these bureaucrats live in Wonderland. Or an America where the unemployment rate isn’t 10.2 percent. Or where 40,000 American manufacturing facilities didn’t disappear in the past decade. Or where banks didn’t repossess nearly a quarter million American homes in the past three months.

We’ve got a message for Washington: Hell no! We’re not giving tax dollars to China. What’s wrong with these businesses and our government? It is the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. It’s not the Chinese Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

It’s bad enough that we’ve off-shored our factories and technology and jobs over the past 20 years. We’re not off-shoring our stimulus cash, too. In fact, we’re tired of serving as the schoolyard wimp of the world. We need our own industrial policy so we can stand up and compete in the world market, manufacturing the likes of wind turbines. And we need it now.

China has an industrial policy. And it uses that policy to dominate. Here is how Keith Bradsher of the New York Times described China’s policy to become a world leader in renewable energy, which, of course, would include construction of wind turbine factories:

Calling renewable energy a strategic industry, China is trying hard to make sure that its companies dominate globally. Just as Japan and South Korea made it hard for Detroit automakers to compete in those countries—giving their own automakers time to amass economies of scale in sheltered domestic markets—China is shielding its clean energy sector while it grows to a point where it can take on the world.

China protects its chosen industries in many ways. It provides low-interest loans, some of which don’t have to be repaid. It may give free land on which to construct buildings. And there are other perks that Bradsher described:

When the Chinese government took bids this spring for 25 large contracts to supply wind turbines, every contract was won by one of seven domestic companies. All six multinationals that submitted bids were disqualified on various technical grounds, like not providing sufficiently detailed data…even as Chinese companies that had never built a turbine were approved….

Later, Bradsher describes European disgust at the Chinese treatment:

European wind turbine makers have stopped even bidding for some Chinese contracts after concluding that their bids would not be seriously considered, said Jorg Wuttke, the president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China.

China has a policy. It ruthlessly protects its own industries.

China was among the many countries that complained bitterly when the United States included “Buy American” provisions in the stimulus bill. In fact, Vice Commerce Minister Jiang Zengwei told a press conference in Beijing in February that China would not do such a thing. “We won’t practice a ‘Buy China’ policy,” he said. Four months later, that’s exactly what China did, instituting its own stricter “Buy China” policy as part of its economic stimulus program.

China did what China felt was necessary for its economy. And it ignored foreign criticism.

That’s hardly the U.S. tactic. Wilting under criticism, Congress diminished the Buy American provisions before passing the stimulus.

As a result, we’ve got a consortium—U.S. Renewable Energy Group, Cielo Wind Power and A-Power Energy Generation Systems—so bold that it believes it can get nearly half a billion dollars in American stimulus money for 2,000 Chinese wind turbine jobs. The consortium says it would import 240 Chinese turbines to Texas, where 300 temporary construction jobs would be created and another 30 permanent jobs established.

The wind turbines could easily be made in the USA. Bradsher, of the Times, says the Chinese concede that while their turbines cost slightly less initially, they have higher repair costs. He wrote:

United Nations data from trading of carbon credits shows that the Chinese-brand turbines produce less electricity because they are more frequently out of action.

Really, is that what we want to buy with American tax dollars for a wind farm in west Texas?

If the United States put half the effort into supporting its renewable energy industry that China does, there would be no way this consortium building windmills in Texas would be looking overseas for turbines.

China has a plan. In its strategy, it doesn’t consider America first or the remainder of the world first. And that’s what the United States must do. We need an industrial policy that makes no apologies for putting America and American workers first. And when that’s the calculus, no American official would ever countenance a request to give $450 million in American taxpayers’ dollars to a turbine factory in China. And no American consortium would consider making such a stupid request.   

In the meantime: Hell no! They don’t get our dough!

Long-term jobless workers finally have some relief, with President Barack Obama signing legislation today to provide up to 20 extra weeks of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits for workers who exhaust their benefits before finding new work. The bill had been held up for almost six weeks as Senate Republicans blocked several attempts to bring it to a vote. 

Obama’s signature came just hours after it was announced the nation’s unemployment rate had soared to 10.2 percent in October, from 9.8 percent in September. 

The legislation provides an additional 14 weeks of benefits to unemployed workers in all states and an additional six weeks for jobless workers in states with an unemployment rate of 8.5 percent or higher. 

The House first passed a UI extension Sept. 23. But it wasn’t until Nov. 4 that Republicans dropped their fight against the bill and allowed a vote. The House passed the Senate’s version the following day.  

In a statement announcing the signing, the White House says the bill 

builds on the successes of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to help spur job creation and help struggling workers [and] strengthens the safety net for workers who cannot find jobs—immediately helping 700,000 people and eventually helping over a million.

Signing up for spcial activist training are (L-R) Beverly Curphey (IBEW), Claudie Pouncey (president of the Space Coast AFL-CIO) and Marita Palmer (AFGE).

Joshua Anijar, a zone coordinator for the Florida AFL-CIO, sends us this report on a recent activist training session that drew more than 200 union members from Central Florida Labor Council unions in Orlando late last month.  

This was the Central Florida AFL-CIO’s first activist training and it will become an annual event to help equip union members with the skills and training that will help in organizing, political and other mobilizations. We had rank-and-file union members from more than two dozen unions and constituency and other labor groups. 

Fernando Redon from Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 606 says the daylong session with speakers and workshops 

gave my members a chance to get training on topics that can help them be more active in their local meetings or on the job site, while giving them a larger perspective and education of worker struggle, dignity and justice. 

After Florida AFL-CIO President Mike Williams opened the session, several members of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) talked about their campaign to improve working conditions and wages for workers in Florida’s tomato fields. 

CIW’s keynote presentation described their successfully waged mobilizations against some of the nation’s largest fast-food corporations, including McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway and Taco Bell. They also spoke about CIW’s new campaign aimed at Publix, Florida’s largest grocery store chain. (Click for more on CIW’s most recent win). 

The union activists were also briefed on state legislative issues, labor law and workers’ rights and the role constituency groups such as the A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI), Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), Alliance for Retired Americans and AFL-CIO/United Way Community Service Project. 

The afternoon’s workshops included sessions on the current fights for health care reform and the Employee Free Choice Act, organizing strategies, labor law, communication and media relations and labor history. 

Josh LeClair from AFSCME Council 79 says the well-attended and successful training session 

is another example of how we have been building a strong and powerful labor movement in central Florida.

San Francisco hotel workers rallied in September for a fair contract.

Hotel workers began a three-day strike this morning at the Grand Hyatt Union Square in San Francisco. The strike comes two weeks after members of UNITE HERE Local 2 voted by a 92 percent to 8 percent margin to authorize strikes at any of the 31 upscale hotels in San Francisco.

Local 2’s contracts with the luxury hotels expired in June. Since then, the union has been trying to negotiate new agreements. But despite earning record profits over the past five years, the hotels are using the recession as an excuse to demand changes in eligibility for the employees’ health care plan that would eliminate coverage or put it out of reach for many workers.

“This is a limited strike,” said Local 2 President Mike Casey. 

It’s intended to send a clear signal to this corporation that they cannot use a temporary downturn to permanently drive down workers’ living standards.

While demanding workers take concessions, the Pritzker family, which owns the Grand Hyatt, is conducting an initial public stock offering today expected to raise close to $1 billion.

Says Aurolyn Rush, a 13-year telephone operator at the Grand Hyatt:

Hyatt’s cashing out almost a billion dollars for its owners, but at the same time they’re pushing to make health care unaffordable for me and my family? That is unforgivable, and we’re not going to stand for it.

Penny Pritzker, who chairs four major corporations, including Classic Residence by Hyatt, is a vocal opponent of workers’ freedom to form unions, strongly opposing the Employee Free Choice Act.

Earlier this year, Pritzker, who serves on President Obama’s White House Economic Recovery Advisory Board, joined with other billionaires to fight the Employee Free Choice Act. She also served as the Obama campaign’s national finance chairwoman. Click here to learn more about Penny Pritzker.

Hyatt has sought to maximize profits on the backs of workers at its hotels across the country:

• In Boston, Hyatt recently fired all 98 housekeepers at its three nonunion hotels, replacing them with lesser-paid temporary workers with no benefits. Since then, these housekeepers have been engaged in the fight of their lives. The Massachusetts AFL-CIO is leading a march and rally at the Boston Hyatt Regency on Sept. 11 in support of the housekeepers.
• Some 150 workers, union activists and students rallied Oct. 28 at the Indiana Statehouse to show solidarity with workers at three Indianapolis hotels, including the Hyatt Regency. The workers have been trying to form a union at the hotels for year despite a fierce anti-union campaign by management. The Indianapolis workers were joined by members of the nationwide “Hope for Housekeepers” tour. “Hope for Housekeepers” is a movement of women, founded by Hyatt housekeepers to stop the abuse of women in the hotel industry and bring a message of hope to Hyatt housekeepers and women working as housekeepers across the globe.

Union members are fighting for health care across the country.

Union activists across the country are taking part in the National Week of Action for Health Care, and you can see what’s happening on the ground and share your own experiences with our new health care photo site.

You can submit your own photo here and vote for your favorite photos here.

Don’t forget to call your members of Congress using our easy call-in tool here. Your efforts will make the difference in finally winning affordable, high-quality coverage for everyone.

Health care reform means real benefits for working families—lower costs, better coverage and a fairer system. We can’t wait, and thousands of grassroots union members have been leading the way in making sure we get reform.

Stunningly bad news on the nation’s jobless rate today: Unemployment worsened in October to 10.2 percent, a huge jump from 9.8 percent in September. That’s 15.7 million jobless workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Worse, the unemployment and underemployment rate is a shocking 17.5 percent—more than 27 million American workers without full-time jobs.

The construction, manufacturing and retail industries had the biggest losses, with 62,000 construction jobs lost in October, 61,000 in manufacturing and 40,000 in retail. Health care and temporary employment were the only bright spots, with health care jobs increasing by 29,000 and temp jobs by 44,000.

The nation’s jobs situation would be even more dire without the Obama administration’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Nearly 1 million jobs have been saved or created because of the economic stimulus plan, and the White House says the nation is on track to meet the president’s goal of 3.5 million by the end of next year.

But as today’s numbers show, the overall jobs situation isn’t improving any time soon, according to Economic Policy Institute Director Larry Mishel, who predicts that one-third of the U.S. workforce will be unemployed or underemployed in 2010.

Long-term unemployment is the worst in 24 years, and there now are more than six workers for every available job. The U.S. Senate finally passed an extension of unemployment insurance, and President Obama is expected to sign the bill today. But far more needs to be done.

In short, the nation needs jobs.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman says although “the apocalypse has been postponed” because of the Obama administration’s economic recovery package passed by Congress earlier this year, it’s essential to follow up with further fiscal action—that is, spending money now to create long-term benefits, like jobs—to prevent prolonged suffering.

Economist Julianne Malveaux puts the case succinctly:

Absent public job creation, it is likely that the economy will not fully recover.

Help certainly isn’t coming from Wall Street or Big Business.

Now that they have pocketed their bailout cash, Wall Streeters are impervious to the nation’s ongoing jobs disaster. In fact, an annual report by Johnson Associates on financial industry payouts projected they will be up 40 percent from 2008, when they plunged in the midst of the financial crisis.

In 2008, Wall Street handed out nearly $20 billion in cash awards and billions more in stock and other incentives to employees based in New York.

Wall Street is celebrating a “recovery” based on a 3.5 percent increase in the gross domestic product (GDP) in the third quarter of this year. But America’s workers know there can be no recovery unless everyone who wants to work can find a good job.

This alarming jobs report “should be a wake-up call to sleepy politicians,” says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:

Every day, it becomes more urgent that the federal government step up to the plate with bold actions to boost job creation. Such action should include urgently needed fiscal relief to state and local governments, community jobs programs, additional investments in infrastructure and green jobs and credit relief to small and medium-sized businesses. Failing to act puts us at very real risk of a lost generation—of hard-working Americans who can’t put food on the table and bright young people who never realize their potential.

The AFL-CIO and our allies are unveiling an effort this month to push for immediate job creation, among other critically needed economic aid for working families. The nation needs to act fast to stop the hemorrhage of jobs and the economic crisis among working families.

Imagine voting on a ballot initiative and knowing that everyone who didn’t show up at the polls still got to vote—because their votes would be counted as “No.”

That’s the process for airline and railway workers when they vote on whether to join a union. The election results are tallied not by how manypeople voted—but by the entire pool of workers in the bargaining unit, with all non-voters automatically “casting” a “No” vote.

Given the undemocratic process, it’s no surprise these workers have an even harder time than usual getting a union voice on the job.

Unlike most of the nation’s workforce, airline and railroad employees are governed by the Railway Labor Act (RLA), which was passed more than a decade before the Depression-era National Labor Relations Act that created the bulk of our nation’s labor laws.

The AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department (TTD) and its 32 unions in September requested the National Mediation Board (NMB), which governs the RLA, to allow airline and railroad workers to vote either “Yes” or “No” for union representation and to determine the outcome by a majority of the votes cast. Majority voting. What a concept.

And this week in a 2–1 majority, the NMB proposed new rules. But it’s not a done deal. The NMB has said it will decide whether to adopt the proposed rule after the 60-day public comment period, but its adversaries started campaigning against this weeks ago.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is one of the biggest opponents of the rule change. The same outfit that is spending $100 million to push “free enterprise” as a publicity stunt while in reality attacking financial regulatory reforms that would aid the free enterprise system, doesn’t cotton much to new-fangled ideas like democracy. Good thing that group wasn’t around in 1776.

Meanwhile, the Bush-appointed Republican member of the NMB is having fits over the decision. In a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ken.) and eight Republican lawmakers who had written the NMB opposing the rule change, Elizabeth Dougherty whined that she had been left out of the decision-making, according to the Daily Labor Report (subscription required).

Dougherty would know something about leaving people out. This from Ed Wytkind, TTD president:

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.

Dougherty was one of the two NMB Republican members leaving the Delta workers out in the cold.

Another opponent of the majority voting process, Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), joined McConnell and his cronies, saying if the proposal is adopted, he will “use all available tools at my disposal,” including options available to lawmakers under the Congressional Review Act, “to see that this assault on employee rights does not stand.”

How is it an assault on employee rights to insist on a more democratic voting process, Johnny?

And as the Wonkroom points out today, opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act have portrayed themselves as defenders of democracy, protecting the “secret ballot” for workers everywhere. But when it comes to bringing democracy to union elections covered by the NMB, these supposed lovers of fair elections show their true colors and oppose the rule changes.

Flight attendants and most other workers at pre-merger Delta, based in Atlanta, are nonunion, while most of Northwest’s frontline employees are represented by unions. Says Flight Attendants-CWA President Patricia Friend:

Now that the NMB has announced that, for the first time in recent years, airline employees seeking union representation will have a chance for truly fair elections, flight attendants at Northwest and Delta are excited for that opportunity.

The airline CEOs and their friends seem to be the only ones trying to defend the current system. But sitting members of Congress would never choose the NMB election standards for themselves. As Wytkind states:

Even when more than 90 percent of those who vote choose a union, they are routinely denied representation by those who didn’t vote….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.

(Comments may be submitted by mail or hand delivery to the National Mediation Board, 1301 K St., N.W., Suite 250E, Washington, D.C. 20005; by fax to 202-692-5085; by e-mail to legal@nmb.gov; or through the Federal eRulemaking Portal at www.regulations.gov.)

This is a cross-post from the Firedoglake blog.