Labor Union Blog

Larry Olness from Heart of Florida United Way said the organization’s help line is filled with calls from families lacking the resources for the crises they face.

On the heels of huge jobs rallies in Evansville, Ind., and at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida this weekend, a packed local Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) union hall heard workers and community leaders in the Orlando area discuss the economic struggles area residents face.

Jobs for Justice played a key role in putting together the forum, which included panels of leaders who questioned workers who testified. The panelists included Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) and Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

Larry Olness from the Heart of Florida United Way said the organization’s help line is inundated with calls from families lacking the resources to cope with the crises they face.

Tamecka Pierce, who is unemployed, told of her inability to find a job. She needs a job with benefits because she suffers from a chronic illness.

The truth is, to have a good quality of life, you have to have a good job with paid sick days and affordable health care.

Barbara Medina, an office staff person who works at the IUPAT local union hall where the forum was held, was homeless four years ago. She described how she built a new life, thanks to a good job after she was laid off and had to send her children back to Puerto Rico because she couldn’t afford to support them.

Sister Ann Kendrick, founder of the Office for Farmworker Ministry in Apopka, Fla., asks where the moral outrage is in this nation over the 29 million Americans unable to find jobs or full-time work.
Yesenia Garcia, a college student with a $17,000 debt and two years left, wonders how she can ever achieve the American Dream if she can’t afford to finish her education.
Tamecka Pierce, who is unemployed, told of her inability to find a job. She needs a job with benefits because she suffers from a chronic illness.

Because I was able to find a decent full-time job, I was able to keep my apartment, my kids and my dignity. And I was able to keep my promise to myself and my family that my family would never be broken up again.

Yesenia Garcia, a student at the University of Central Florida who has $17,000 in college debts with two years left to go.

As far back as I can remember, I’ve been told that education is the key to realizing the American Dream. But so much has happened to take this opportunity out of the hands of so many.

Brothers Andy and Steve Contreras are underemployed workers in a fabrication plant:

We’re not looking for a bailout like wall Street. We just want a chance to work…and stay in our apartment and get the medicine we need.

Curtis Duffield, a local small business owner, said banks are making it harder for businesses to get loans.

It’s not that we’ve ever been late on a payment. It’s not something we have done. The reason small business is suffering is that these same banks and bonding companies underwrote the losses on these huge developments. They took the gamble with the insurance companies and the same money that used to be there for construction contracts isn’t there any more.

Other participants described how the community is suffering from a lack of business and the loss of tax revenue and vital services.

Grayson told the crowd because his parents were union members he could get the health care he needed as a child.

Politics is all about choices and I think we need a country where the people can speak about what those choices are.

Sister Ann Kendrick, one of the panelists, said she couldn’t understand why there was not a moral outrage across the country over the injustice of the jobs crisis.

Henderson said the workers’ stories “put a human face on the jobs crisis.”

Lots of people are like those we heard from. Their voices need to be lifted up and their stories need to be told to the people in Washington who are making decisions that affect our lives. They’re giving away billions of dollars to people who don’t work, haven’t earned it and who are not bringing justice to the American people.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told the audience these examples point out the need for good jobs now. He said the AFL-CIO has a five-point plan to put the country back to work and called on working families to take action:

Tonight is the kick-off of our nationwide jobs campaign. The conversation we’re having here is the conversation that’s happening at dinner tables and in break rooms—but we have to take it even bigger. We have to engage entire communities across the country in dialogue exactly like this. We have to move it to action. And we have to take it into the streets.

So often it feels like problems are individual problems but when we recognize them as systemic problems, it becomes clear that the solution is to change the system. We can do that—and only do that—together as an entire community

The forum was held in conjunction with the AFL-CIO Executive Council’s March 1-3 meeting in Orlando. Earlier today, Vice President Joe Biden addressed the council.

Economic Report:

The Economic Policy Institute says this Great Recession is continuing to take an especially hard toll on young workers. While 1.3 million young workers left the workforce wince the recession began in December of ’07, more workers over 55 are in the workforce. That means many older workers aren’t retiring or are being forced by the economy to get back into the workforce. Workers 16-24 face a jobless rate of 18.9 percent compared to 6.8 percent for workers 55 and older.

By Doug Cunningham

Janitors struggling for a decent new contract in Minneapolis-St. Paul have won their struggle, improving wages, health care benefits and safety improvements on the job. Chico Coleman is on the bargaining committee at SEIU Local 26. He a contract breakthrough was convincing management to shift to green cleaning methods, reducing worker exposure to hazardous chemicals.

read more

By Doug Cunningham

The AFL-CIO’s Executive Council is meeting in Florida to strategize about a jobs campaign, labor’s legislative agenda of change for working families, the coming political campaign and organizing new workers. Vice-President Joe Biden spoke at the meeting Monday.

By Doug Cunningham

Huge budget cuts in Washington state have forced tens of thousands of people off the state’s basic health program, with more cuts still to come this year. As politicians cut services, working and poor people are feeling the brunt of the pain. Margaret Viggiani is with a grassroots group called Sisters Organized for Survival or SOS.

read more

Vice President Joe Biden spoke to members of the AFL-CIO Executive Council who are meeting in Orlando March 1-3.

In his second visit to the AFL-CIO Executive Council in 13 months, Vice President Joe Biden outlined plans to shore up America’s faltering middle class with jobs, tax policy and workers’ rights protections.

Biden also said the Obama administration intends to work to make the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) more worker friendly, even though two nominees are being held up by Senate Republicans. Biden said:

We haven’t gotten done yet what we’re going to do with the NLRB, but we’re going to get it done.

Introducing Biden, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka noted the report released last week by the White House Task Force on Middle Class Families, which Biden chairs. The report listed several recommendations resulting from a year-long review of ways to assist middle-class workers and families.

(This is an excerpted cross-post from the California Labor Federation.)

By Rebecca Greenberg

For more than 25 years, thousands of workers in northern California have committed their lives to producing high-quality Toyotas at the Bay Area’s New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI) auto plant. Hundreds of thousands of car-buying Californians have made Toyota the No. 1 car company in the state. So when Toyota announced last year it plans to close the NUMMI plant April 1, the company dealt an undeserved punch in the gut to California’s workers and consumers, not to mention our state’s already faltering economy.

Toyota’s plan to close down NUMMI follows the recalls of millions of Toyota vehicles worldwide and is the latest in a string of remarkably poor management decisions from the Japanese automaker. As it struggles to regain consumer confidence, Toyota has nothing to gain by closing the plant—and Toyota and California have just about everything to lose.

Closing the NUMMI plant is bad for:

California workers and their families. If Toyota has its way, more than 5,000 auto workers at the plant will be out of work, and another 1,500 Teamsters who transport the cars from the NUMMI plant to the dealerships will also be jobless. Additionally, as many as 50,000 workers at hundreds of businesses in California are completely dependant on NUMMI to stay afloat, from the suppliers that manufacture car parts to the restaurants where the NUMMI workers go for lunch and even the shoe stores where the plant workers buy their specialized work boots.

Mari Alvarez, a mother of three, has worked at NUMMI for nine years, and her husband worked there, too, before he got injured. Mari said that if the plant closes, “We just don’t know what we’re going to do. It’s not just an economic disaster, it’s a human tragedy.”

The economy. There’s no doubt that the closure and subsequent layoffs would be devastating to our already faltering economy. California has lost a million jobs since the beginning of the recession. The proposed NUMMI closure would be the largest mass layoff in California since the recession began. 

Earlier this week, state Treasurer Bill Lockyer introduced a new Blue Ribbon commission, to investigate just how dire the effects of the closure will be across California’s economy.

The commission will complete its investigation by next Wednesday, and a delegation will travel to Japan shortly thereafter to present the commission’s findings to the Toyota executives.

The environment. Even though Californians buy more Toyotas than anywhere else, Toyota would rather increase their carbon footprint by shipping hundreds of thousands of cars to California from overseas, when they could be making them right here where they sell them.

In fact, if Toyota stuck by their promise to begin manufacturing the Prius (one of the most popular cars in northern California) and other hybrid vehicles at the NUMMI plant, instead of importing them, it would not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it would more than make up for the work lost when GM went bankrupt and was forced to discontinue manufacturing the Pontiac Vive.

Taxpayers. Toyota has the taxpayers to thank for dropping millions into the “cash for clunkers” program, which benefited Toyota far more than any other car company. Toyota also received a variety of taxpayer-funded incentives and subsidies for training programs. And if the plant does close, the taxpayers will wind up footing the bill for the shutdown costs.

Toyota might think the NUMMI closure is a done deal, but we don’t. That’s why we’re supporting the UAW along with the AFL-CIO, Teamsters and dozens of other unions, environmentalists and community allies on a massive campaign at Toyota dealerships across the country to urge Toyota to make a U-turn and keep the NUMMI plant open.

Toyota’s plan to close the NUMMI auto plant in Fremont is an outright attack on union workers. And if they won’t employ our workers, then we won’t buy their cars. Sign the pledge today and vow not to buy any more Toyotas if the company shuts down the NUMMI plant.

Since the current recession began in December 2007, some 1.3 million young workers have left the workforce, while the participation rate of workers ages 55 and older increased, according to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

This means many older workers are not retiring or are re-entering the labor force because they have suffered a sharp decline in retirement security, say authors Kathryn Edwards and Heidi Shierholz. 

At the same time, workers ages 16 to 24—who face an unemployment rate of 18.9 percent, compared with 6.8 percent for workers ages 55 and older—are having a hard time finding jobs. Many who do find work end up in low-paying jobs with few or no benefits.

One major benefit that young workers lack is health insurance. One-third of young U.S. adults—nearly 13 million people—had no health insurance coverage in 2008, according to a government report released yesterday. In a survey of more than 9,000 people ages 20 to 29, the National Center for Health Statistics found that 30 percent of young adults had no coverage and were nearly twice as likely as adults ages 30 to 64 to be uninsured.

People ages 20 to 29 account for more than a quarter of the uninsured people in the United States, although they make up just 14 percent of the overall population.

AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler says the problems faced by young workers shows clearly the need for more good jobs in our economy now.

A whole generation of workers is being denied the opportunity to gain a foothold in the U.S. economy. We need real jobs with benefits. We need health care reform so millions of young workers will be protected if they get sick. And we need new policies that put people ahead of profits to make sure that something like this recession doesn’t happen again.

Writing at Daily Kos, Meteor Blades says remaking our economy requires more focus on young workers. 

Even before the recession, young adults on average had more debt and lower incomes than their parents did at the same age. And that situation has worsened since the recession began.. If you’ve heard the old expression, “Devil take the hindmost,” it applies these days most directly to young adults.

These new studies confirm the results of an AFL-CIO survey, Young Workers: A Lost Decade, in which one in three young workers say they are currently living at home with their parents. About a third are uninsured, a third also cannot pay their bills and seven in 10 do not have enough saved to cover two months of living expenses. Click here to read the full report.