Labor Union Blog

Immigrant workers who belong to unions have a large wage and benefit advantage over their nonunion counterparts, according to a new study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).

The report, released yesterday, shows that, on average, joining a union raises immigrants’ wages by 17 percent—about $2 per hour—compared with nonunion immigrant workers. In addition, immigrant workers in unions were much more likely to have health insurance benefits and a pension plan. Click here to read the report, “Unions and Upward Mobility for Immigrant Workers.” The report is the first in a series on the advantages of joining a union for various groups of workers.

Says John Schmitt, senior economist at CEPR and author of the report:

It is the labor market, not the border that is broken. Unionization raises wages and benefits—and substantially—for both U.S.-born and immigrant workers.

CEPR compared wages and benefits of union and nonunion workers in the same state. But if you compare the nonunion wage in states with high union density to the nonunion wage in low density states, you’ll find that union membership raises wages even more than the CEPR study found, says Ross Hyman, lead researcher for the AFL-CIO’s Center for Strategic Research.

AFL-CIO research found that union members earn 28 percent more than nonunion members. The union wage benefit is greatest for people of color and women. Latino union workers earn 50 percent more than their nonunion counterparts. Union women earn 34 percent more than nonunion women. For African Americans, the union advantage is 29 percent. The union advantage for white male workers is 21 percent. For Asian American workers, the union advantage is 4 percent.

The CEPR report also found:

• Immigrant workers in unions were 50 percent more likely to have employer-provided health insurance than immigrant workers who were not in unions.
• Unionized immigrant workers were almost twice as likely as nonunion immigrants workers to have an employer-provided retirement plan.
• Unionization has the biggest impact on the wages and benefits of workers in the 15 lowest-wage occupations, raising wages by almost 20 percent and more than doubling health and retirement plan coverage rates.

To learn more about the benefits of union membership for immigrant workers, visit the websites of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance  (APALA) here and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) here.

Fed up with their employer paying off its high debt on the backs of workers, employees of Columbia Sussex Corp. rallied around the country this week and called on customers to boycott seven hotels owned by the company.

In the past few years, workers represented by UNITEHERE! at four hotels owned by Columbia Sussex have been laid off, seen their benefits reduced and their pay frozen and been forced to pay higher health care premiums as the company scrambles to pay off more than $1 billion in debt in securities it borrowed to buy 14 hotels in 2005.

The union is calling on customers to boycott seven Columbia Sussex-owned hotels—three union and four nonunion—in support of a fair process for workers to decide for themselves whether to join a union The union hotels include the Baltimore (Md.) Sheraton City Center, Hilton Crystal City in Northern Virginia and Anchorage (Alaska) Hilton. The nonunion hotels are the Westin Washington D.C. City Center, Westin Emerald Plaza San Diego, Wyndham Chicago and Westin Chicago Northwest.

Says Mary Lee Hinant, a Baltimore Sheraton laundry worker for 34 years:

Ever since banks lent all that money to Columbia Sussex to buy my hotel, my paycheck is smaller, I don’t qualify for health insurance anymore, and my co-workers are laid off.

Columbia Sussex, which owns 67 hotels, is the fourth largest owner of full service hotels in the country. The company bought five of the boycotted hotels in 2005 as part of a package of 14 hotels, backed by $1.1 billion in securities.

Laurence Green, a 24-year cook at the Westin Washington D.C., City Center, says:

Since Columbia Sussex bought the hotel several years ago, staffing has been cut. Columbia Sussex reduced our wages by 3 percent across the board and stopped paying the match on our 401(k)s.

“I don’t know who’s to blame: Columbia Sussex, the banks, or both. But I’m tired of being squeezed every which way in their cost cutting,” says Vickie Castro, a housekeeping office clerk for 23 years at the Anchorage Hilton.

Doris Nevill, a Whirlpool worker, says she cried all day about losing her job at the Evansville plant.

Braving a chilly and dreary rain yesterday, several dozen union and community activists rallied outside the gates of Whirlpool’s Evansville, Ind., plant. They were there to show their support for the nearly 500 second shift workers on their way to clock in for their last shift on the line.

Whirlpool is closing the refrigerator plant, laying off 1,100 people and moving jobs to Mexico. Eliminating the second shift is the first blow, the other jobs end in June.

IUE-CWA Local 808 member Lori Houchin says that yesterday’s rally and the massive February march to the plant gates helps spotlight the damage to workers and their communities when corportions like Whirlpool shutter their U.S. plants and ship jobs overseas. She told the Evansville Courier & Press:

It’s happening across America—factories are picking up and moving somewhere the labor’s cheaper…all the factories are moving jobs outside the U.S.

Even as Whirlpool is forcing workers to the unemployment line and the plant’s closing is sending economic shockwaves through the Evansville community, CEO and Chairman Jeff Fettig won’t have to worry about covering his rent.

Earlier this month, the Dow Jones News Wire reported that his 2009 compensation rose 77 percent.

Fettig’s salary, incentive-based pay, executive perks, and stock and options awards amounted to $10.81 million, up from $6.11 million in 2008, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchanges Commission….The company’s net income fell 21.5 percent from 2008, while sales slipped 9.56 percent. But Fettig received $3.5 million in nonequity incentive pay, up from $420,000 the year before.

Whirlpool also received $19 million as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to build more energy efficient and green appliances. But it is spending $110 million to build a new plant in Mexico. At last month’s rally that drew more than 5,000 people, IUE-CWA President Jim Clark said:

Whirlpool is a bad corporate citizen who is twisting this country’s desire to reduce energy usage and using it to export jobs. We are pushing hard to ensure that good intentions on going green don’t help fund loss of good manufacturing jobs.

Yesterday’s demonstration, organized in conjunction with Jobs with Justice, won’t be the last, says Local 808 President Darrell Collins.

We’re going to agitate them every day we can until the end.

An arbitrator has ruled that American Axle and Manufacturing violated the job security clause in its agreement with the UAW and must make whole the workers affected by its decision last year to move work to Mexico.

The ruling, issued earlier this week by umpire Paul Glendon, found the company violated the terms of its 2008 National Agreement with the union when it moved its 8.25 axle production away from its plant in Detroit to a plant in Guanajuato, Mexico.

UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said:

This is a major victory for these workers, and we’re very gratified that the umpire upheld our strong outsourcing language reached in the 2008 agreements. Our American Axle members went on strike for three months in part to win this measure of job security.

Glendon ordered the parties to determine the exact number of workers affected by the outsourcing, how many were laid off because of it and how much those workers are due in wages and benefits. 

Under the 2008 National Agreement, the company retained the ability to adjust the size of its workforce in response to the economic downturn that hit the auto industry in late 2008 and 2009, but it was not free to outsource the work it had guaranteed for Detroit Axle.

The Party of “No” gets ready to strike once more against working families.

As Congress considers much-needed relief for America’s jobless workers and debates proposals to jump-start the economy, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) blocked a stopgap bill to extend jobless benefits, saying its $9 billion cost should not be added to the national debt. Coburn’s block means the Senate, which goes on a two-week recess today, won’t consider helping jobless workers until at least April 12.

From the New York Times:

As a result, some people who have been out of work for more than six months will at least temporarily lose benefits. Health insurance subsidies for the jobless will also expire. Republicans said Senate negotiations had produced a compromise that did not pass muster in the House.

Coburn is taking up where Sen. Jim Bunning left off in sticking it to America’s workers who, unlike him, don’t have jobs or taxpayer-provided health care and retirement benefits. Bunning, a Kentucky Republican, earlier this month delayed unemployment benefits for 400,000 desperate Americans and forced an unnecessary furlough of another 2,000.

But unlike Bunning, an outsider to his own party, Coburn is supported by the majority of Republican senators who are indicating strong opposition to addressing the suffering of the nation’s nearly 17 million jobless workers.

Here’s Coburn’s online contact page. You know what to tell him.

Activists in Boston called on Bank of America to pay its fair share and restore the jobs destroyed by the reckless actions of Big Banks.

More than 200 union members and community activists gathered outside the Boston headquarters of Bank of America this week to call on Bank of America and other bailed-out Wall Street investment banks to pay their fair share to restore the jobs destroyed by their reckless actions and to stop their selfish obstruction of needed financial reforms.

And yesterday in Detroit, Saundra Williams, president of the Metropolitan Detroit, AFL-CIO, joined a crowd of union families and communities members at the Bank of America to demand Good Jobs NOW! The actions are among the more than 200 nationwide events taking place through today as part of the AFL-CIO Make Wall Street Pay events.

The Greater Boston Labor Council and the Massachusetts AFL-CIO say more than 40 unions and organizations were represented at the event, which they organized with the SEIU State Council. They submit the following report on the Boston event.

Bank of America, a major culprit in the financial industry’s collapse, received more than $45 billion in taxpayer bailout funds. Bank of America and other bailout recipients assured the public they needed the money to loosen up the credit market for small businesses and provide needed investment for building projects. Now, more than a year later, small businesses aren’t hiring due to lack of available credit and stalled construction projects are keeping thousands of men and women in the building trades out of work. In the meantime, Bank of America has spent millions lobbying against financial regulatory reform, executive compensation rules, credit card regulation and the Employee Free Choice Act.

As a group of labor leaders assembled on the bank’s marble steps to address the marching, chanting crowd, Bank of America’s brass came out to claim that they were not welcome on the bank’s property. Robert Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, responded, saying:

I’d like to remind Bank of America that we own this bank. Not only did we bail them out as taxpayers, but we built this building with our pensions and our wages that are invested here. These are our steps. This is our building.

Also speaking at the rally was former AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who urged Congress to directly invest in infrastructure projects and loosen up credit markets by lending unused federal bailout funds to small businesses. He went on to say that by keeping up the pressure on the banks and on Congress:

We’re going to rebuild the middle class…and we’re going to do it together.

Said Rich Rogers, executive secretary-treasurer of the Greater Boston Labor Council:

Bank of America needs to stop feathering its executives’ nests and start lending to contractors who will create Good Jobs Now!

To view pictures from the rally, click here. For a video, click here.

After Senate Republicans failed yesterday in their last desperate attempt to kill health care reform and allow the insurance industry to control the nation’s health care system, the House last night passed the final piece of legislation that puts working families in charge of their health care.

In a 220-207 vote, the House approved the health care reconciliation bill that fixes several flaws in the health care reform legislation President Obama signed this week—including significantly reducing the tax on working families’ benefits. Says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.):

With this legislation in place, families will have access to even more affordable care than the reform the president signed this week. Seniors will see the prescription drug “donut hole” close faster, and they will start paying less for their prescription drugs this year. Taxpayers will not pay for special deals that favor one state over another, and primary care doctors will receive fair pay for providing critical services to low-income Americans.

Pelosi’s leadership was instrumental in moving the health care reform bills to passage in recent days, despite often hate-filled attempts by Republican opponents to derail what is now the most significant legislation benefiting working families in decades.

Throughout the health care battle, mobilized union members provided a strong and visible counterpoint to the insurance giants’ television and lobbying blitz. Union members made more than 4 million phone calls and sent more than 1 million e-mail messages to lawmakers. Leaders flew to Washington, D.C., and visited members of Congress in their districts, making more than 10,000 contacts.

In addition, canvassers from Working America talked to more than 210,000 people about health care at their front doors, generating 30,000 health care petition signatures, 31,000 phone calls to Congress, 40,000 e-mail messages and 75,000 hand-written letters urging lawmakers to pass health care reform.

The contacts helped win approval of health care reform and improved the bill and ensured that its financing would be fairer.

The corrections bill, passed last night, eliminates 85 percent of the tax on working families’ benefits and delays its implementation until 2018. Along with reducing the tax on working families’ benefits, the bill imposes a small fair share tax on wealthy families’ investments and also increases employer responsibility requirements.

It also boosts the subsidies for middle- and lower-income families to purchase health insurance and increases funding for Medicaid. The reconciliation also removed several state-specific provisions that had received criticism and speeds up several new regulations to end insurance company abuse.

After the Senate defeated each of the 41 Republican amendments during a 21-hour vote-o-rama and passed the bill yesterday afternoon, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said:

This, of course, was a health bill. But it was also a jobs bill. It was also an economic recovery bill. It was a deficit-reduction bill. It was an anti-discrimination bill. It was, truly, a bill of rights. And now it is the law of the land.

Justin Nickels, AFSCME’s state coordinator, is working with the Arkansas AFL-CIO for a few weeks and reports that the state’s working families are outraged over Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s latest attack on them.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s campaign yesterday began a telephone survey asking constituents how they felt about her primary opponent, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, “accepting money from labor unions.” It was an underhanded, negative attack the Democratic senator from Arkansas hoped would distance herself from her opponent and it seems working families. Lincoln doesn’t seem to want to talk about how much money she’s received from labor unions. Her career donations from labor PACs total $576,900. President Alan Hughes of the Arkansas AFL-CIO released this statement Thursday morning:

Only someone who has become a career politician in Washington, D.C., could spend 10 years asking for our support, take hundreds of thousands of dollars from blue-collar workers, then turn around and attack us as “outsiders” because we wouldn’t help her this time around. That’s not the values people in Arkansas believe in.

Later in the afternoon, Lincoln released her questionnaire to the Arkansas AFL-CIO and demanded Halter to release his own. Her questionnaire reiterated her recent opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act, which she in fact supported before the Democrats regained the White House. The Arkansas AFL-CIO then released this statement:

Today, Sen. Blanche Lincoln released her questionnaire to the Arkansas AFL-CIO and challenged Lt. Gov. Bill Halter to do the same thing. We want to thank the Senator for acknowledging that she sought after, and in the past did receive, the support of Arkansas working families—working families she now calls outside interest groups. This just goes to show how empty her promises to fight for them on jobs, health care and trade have been.