Labor Union Blog

Alliance for Retired Americans members protested insurance companies’ anti-reform scare tactics.

Next week, the U.S. Senate is expected to begin debate on long-promised health care reform legislation. We’ve waited decades and fought hard for this moment—but progress could be blocked if a minority of senators refuses to allow a fair debate and a fair vote.

That’s right: Despite huge wins for pro-working family, pro-health care reform candidates in the House and Senate and the election of a pro-health care reform president, a few senators can do the bidding of insurance companies and prevent a bill from getting to the floor or getting a vote.

Now is the time to contact your senators and tell them: Health care can’t wait. It’s time for action.

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

• The Alliance for Retired Americans offered thanks to members of the U.S. House who voted to pass a health care reform bill that will improve Medicare and help the young and seniors alike. Alliance members also are protesting insurance companies like Humana that have used scare tactics and falsehoods to try and stop reform.

• At Open Left, Mike Lux runs down the benefits we will see from health care reform and the big fights still ahead to make reform the best it can be.
• Health Care for America Now (HCAN) is launching new ads urging senators in two key states—Arkansas and Nebraska—to allow a Senate vote on health care reform.
• The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) looks at the employer’s role in health care and finds that the just-passed House bill does well at ensuring that employers can provide high-quality coverage.
• The Center for American Progress notes that the House bill will have big benefits for unmarried women, who are too often uninsured in our current system.

About a dozen workers testified before the first national workers’ rights hearing for Asian Pacific American workers.

Ricky Lau, an electrician with the Electrical Workers (IBEW) and a Chinese immigrant, worked for 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week for his former employer, a contracting company. He and his mostly immigrant co-workers, many of whom did not speak English, were ripped off, he says. While they worked 60 to 70 hours, their weekly time cards read 16 to 20 hours. They had no benefits and no health care coverage.

Fed up, he and three other co-workers left the company and joined IBEW. With the help of his union, Lau and the other workers have been able to assert themselves. Now the four workers are suing the company in a class-action suit for back wages. 

Lau was one of about a dozen workers who told their stories at the first-ever national workers’ rights hearing for Asian Pacific American workers. A standing-room-only crowd of more than 200 people watched the hearing at AFL-CIO headquarters today.

The hearing allowed Asian Pacific American workers from around the country to tell a distinguished panel of union leaders, public officials, community leaders and academics about the conditions they face as immigrants and what happens when they try to join unions to gain a better life. The Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), the AFL-CIO and 18 other organizations co-sponsored the hearing.

The panel heard workers like Xiahong Colucci, a dealer at the Tropicana and Hilton casinos in Atlantic City, who, along with her co-workers, is still fighting for a first contract more than two years after they voted to join UAW. And Peter Ho who has worked for more than 20 years at the HEI Le Meridien Hotel in San Francisco and will retire with no benefits and very little savings. While he believes it’s too late for him to change his future, Ho says he is fighting to form a union with UNITE HERE ”so the next generation of hotel workers will be able to retire with dignity.”

The workers’ rights hearing is an example of the commitment of the union movement to reach out to diverse communities and end immigrant worker exploitation, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler, one of the hearing panelists, said.

The new leadership of the AFL-CIO was elected on a platform that included a commitment to diversity within the labor movement.

Convening the first national hearing on Asian Pacific American workers marks a significant milestone for the AFL-CIO, APALA and Asian Pacific American workers around the country by providing a platform for them to share their experiences.

Asian Pacific American workers are likely targets of labor law violations in the workplace because they can be vulnerable and isolated, said Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.). They may be less informed about labor laws, may not speak English and come to the United States with a distrust of the government and fear of retaliation, Chu said.

There is a national problem of discrimination and exploitation of workers. We need fundamental change in [labor laws] in this country to protect the right of workers to speak out.

APALA President John Delloro added:

Contrary to misperceptions about Asian Pacific Americans, segments of this workforce still experience a litany of abuses in their jobs and worksites, including wage theft, union suppression and immigrant worker exploitation. 

A new report released this week by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) shows Latinos and Asian Pacific Americans are the fastest growing segments of the union movement. The report, “Unions and Upward Mobility for APA Workers,” finds union membership raises the pay of Asian Pacific American workers by about $2 per hour. They also are 19 percentage points more likely to have employer-provided health insurance and 25 percentage points more likely to have employer-provided pension plans than their nonunion counterparts.

The study found about 12.5 percent of Asian Pacific American workers are in unions or represented by unions at their workplace. Nearly half (48.5 percent) of Asian Pacific American workers in unions were women. Click here to download the study.