Labor Union Blog

A new study shows the connections between low income, poor health and overall inequality and how providing better access to quality health care—exactly what health care reform is all about—can improve more than just health.

Alexander Hertel-Fernandez of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) explains:

“In their new book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett review the medical and sociological research that links inequality to poorer outcomes, not just in health but also for trust, political institutions, violence, social mobility and education.”

In other health care news:

• The Youngstown Vindicator reports that health care reform was the focus of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day forum, “Health Care as a Human Right.”  Read more here.

• Last week, we pointed out how the private health insurance industry funneled millions of dollars into a U.S. Chamber of Commerce multistate ad blitz to kill health care reform. Jason Rosenbaum at Health Care for America Now (HCAN) found out the insurance companies got quite a bang for their buck. He calculates that viewers in a half-dozen key states saw the ads as many as 160 times, or three times a day.

Every day, voters were being bombarded with lies about health reform. These ads made preposterous claims like calling out “hidden taxes” in the health care bills where none exist. And they’re ubiquitous on the television screens of voters in these states. And all along, these voters didn’t know the insurance industry was behind these ads and was simply protecting its profits.

• Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts last night was not a rejection of health care reform, as Media Matters points out, citing election night polling by Rasmussen Reports that showed:

A higher percentage of Martha Coakley voters than Brown voters said that health care reform was the most important issue in determining their vote.

• As talks of the Wall Street-backed Brown’s possible victory grew, so did speculation of the fate of health care legislation. As a result, stock prices rose, says the Los Angeles Times, because the prospect of Brown’s win

eased concerns that profits at companies like insurers and drug makers would suffer.

What a surprise.

Economic Report:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 25 states saw increases to the number of workers holding down more than one job; while 22 saw decreases. Nationally, 5.2 percent of workers were holding multiple jobs in 2008. North Dakota, Idaho, and Massachusetts saw the largest increases of workers needing to take on more than one job. Missouri and Montana saw the largest decreases. Nebraska has the highest rate of workers with multiple jobs at 9.8 percent.

Maine utility workers see “SmartMeters” as job killers. Jesse Russell reports:

read more

By Doug Cunningham

Thirty one million of us are either unemployed or underemployed as this Great Recession continues its horrific toll on working families. The International Association of Machinists has launched a new web site to bring together this army of the unemployed – both for support and to unite the jobless for change. IAM’s Rick Sloan says he hopes this new union of the unemployed will be a powerful engine for change on a variety of issues facing America’s workers.

read more

Erroll Southers, the choice of President Obama to head the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and whose nomination was held hostage by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) because DeMint opposes allowing TSA workers the freedom to form a union, withdrew his name from consideration today.

During the 2008 campaign, Obama pledged to make bargaining rights for TSA workers a priority. In 2003, President George W. Bush took bargaining rights away from transportation security officers (TSOs) and other workers at the TSA in one of the first shots in his war on America’s workers.

DeMint has even made the ludicrous claim that if TSOs were allowed to unionize, national security would be put at risk and terrorist attacks on the United States could increase.

Southers, assistant chief for homeland security at Los Angeles International Airport and a former FBI agent, said:

It is clear that my nomination has become a lightning rod for those who have chosen to push a political agenda at the risk of the safety and security of the American people. This partisan climate is unacceptable, and I refuse to allow myself to remain part of their dialogue.  I am not a politician. I’m a counterrrorism expert.

Although TSA workers have been denied the freedom to bargain collectively, 12,000 of them are members of AFGE, which regularly represents them before the TSA Disciplinary Review Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Congress and in the courts.

Said AFGE President John Gage:

With the sudden development of Erroll Southers withdrawing his name from consideration to lead the Transportation Security Administration, the American Federation of Government Employees will continue to urgently press the Obama administration for strong leadership at the helm of TSA. The flying public is better served with stable, cohesive leadership at an agency which is vital to our nation’s homeland security.

For the latest news on the drive to win rights for TSA workers, be sure to visit AFGE’s website here.

Seven months after the U.S. Catholic Church released guidelines aimed at improving sometimes bitter relations between workers and management in Catholic hospitals, the church’s social activists will learn how well the guidelines are working and what more can be done to ensure justice for workers. 

Paul Booth, executive assistant to AFSCME President Gerald McEntee, and John Carr, executive director of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development, will lead a panel on the guidelines Feb. 6 at the Catholic Labor Network Gathering in Washington, D.C.

For more information and to register, please click here or contact Fr. Sinclair Oubre at aos-beaumont@dioceseofbmt.org or phone 409-982-5111.

The document, “Respecting the Just Rights of Workers: Guidance and Options for Catholic Health Care and Unions,” was developed by a committee of Catholic clergy, members of the Catholic Health Association and representatives of the AFL-CIO and SEIU. 

The members of the network also will hear from union organizers campaigning at Catholic hospitals about what‘s happening on the ground today. For example, the guidelines do not seem to be helping workers at Chicago-area Resurrection Health Care hospitals, who for years have worked to form a union for a voice at work and better patient care. Resurrection management has responded with an aggressive and expensive anti-union campaign. Resurrection has not committed to follow the new guidelines. 

The 16-page guidelines, which were released June 22, 2009, offer an alternative to what retired Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington called the “antagonistic, confrontational and resisting tactics which too often come in” when workers in Catholic hospitals seek union representation. McCarrick chaired the committee. Click here to read the guidelines.

Says McCarrick:

The heart of this unusual consensus is that it is up to workers—not bishops, hospital managers or union leaders—to decide through a fair process whether or not to be represented by a union and, if so, which union, in the workplace.

Catholic activists also will hear from Fr. Thomas Reese of Georgetown University, who will analyze the recent social encyclical, “Caritas in Veritate” (”Charity in Truth”), by Pope Benedict XVI.

New Jersey AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Laurel Brennan, State Senate President Steve Sweeney, a member of Ironworkers Local 399, and New Jersey AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech.

Steve Sweeney, a member of Ironworkers Local 399 and one of the early graduates of the New Jersey State AFL-CIO’s Labor Candidates School, was sworn in last week as president of the New Jersey State Senate.

Sweeney, who was first elected to the State Senate in 2001, is the first union member to serve as president of the upper chamber.

He said at his swearing-in ceremony:

“I accept this task with great humility and an ironclad belief that New Jersey’s best days are ahead of us. I will bring the work ethic here that I did in my career as an ironworker.”

New Jersey AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech says Sweeney’s swearing-in “marks a milestone for the labor movement in New Jersey.”

As a union member, Sweeney now holds one of our state’s most powerful and prestigious positions.

Also, for a few days last week, Sweeney became New Jersey’s first labor governor when he was sworn in as acting governor while outgoing Gov. Jon Corzine (D) was traveling out of state. Sweeney had the opportunity to sign several labor-related bills, including one strengthening collective bargaining rights for Delaware River Port Authority workers. He told reporters that after his brief time in the governor’s office:

I guess I’m going to be a trivia question.

The Labor Candidates School was founded in 1997, and more than 500 of its graduates have been elected to public office in the Garden State. The school gives union members an opportunity to learn campaign basics, including fundraising, election law, public speaking and media relations.

The American people are urgently expecting RESULTS from Washington. If elected officials want the support of working families, they need to fight to win legislation on jobs, health care and financial regulation. Americans need champions who will fight for their cause.

Scott Brown’s victory as the next senator from Massachusetts is a giant step backward for working families. Brown has already promised to be the 41st vote for the Republican party of NO on crucial improvements for working men and women.

Let’s just hope, as Jason Rosenbaum warns at the Seminal, that the Democrats don’t take the wrong lessons from this loss.