Workers Independent News Labor Radio
Internet Radio Program 05/26/10
Producers: Doug Cunningham & Jesse Russell
WIN’s Labor Radio is made possible in part by underwriting from the National Education Association & The OPEIU.
Labor Radio Rundown:
1) WIN Newscast
Economic Report:
Is ageism at the root of a battle between Google and a former employee? Jesse Russell takes a look:
By Doug Cunningham
Workers need bankruptcy law reform. That was the message in Congress Tuesday from the Association of Flight Attendants – CWA. Union leaders testified on Capitol Hill on the need for bankruptcy law reform that would protect workers in company bankruptcies. The AFA-CWA says airline companies have used bankruptcies to devastate workers while rewarding executives. The Protecting Employees and Retirees in Business Bankruptcies Act of 2010 tries to spread the burden of corporate bankruptcy more evenly, not just on workers.
By Doug Cunningham
Seniors around the country who count on Medicare for their health coverage and have questions about how the new health care reform law impacts their coverage can find many of those answers in a new brochure that will be in their mailboxes soon or by downloading a copy here.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is mailing the brochure to all traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage enrollees. It assures beneficiaries that “the guaranteed benefits you currently receive will remain the same,” including choice of doctors. It outlines the key provisions and expanded benefits of the new law.
Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services, writes in an introduction that the new health care reform law will
provide you and your family greater savings and increased quality health care. It will also ensure accountability throughout the health care system so that you, your family, and your doctor—not insurance companies—have greater control over your care.
These are needed improvements that will keep Medicare strong and solvent. Your guaranteed Medicare benefits won’t change—whether you get them through Original Medicare or a Medicare Advantage plan. Instead, you will see new benefits and cost savings and an increased focus on quality to ensure that you get the care you need.
This year, people on Medicare who fall into the prescription drug donut hole—the gap in coverage when seniors must pay full price for their needed medications—will receive a $250 rebate check. Next year Medicare recipients in the donut hole will receive a 50 percent discount on covered brand-name prescription drugs. Health reform closes the donut hole entirely by 2020.
The new brochure also reminds beneficiaries that beginning next year, the new health care reform law ensures Medicare recipients will get free preventive care services like colorectal cancer screening and mammograms, in addition to a free annual wellness visit. It also points out that health care reform includes new tools to help fight fraud by helping Medicare crack down on criminals who are seeking to scam seniors and steal taxpayer dollars.
Download an English copy of the brochure here and click here for a Spanish version.
The realities of our workplaces have not changed to meet the new realities of our economy and society, says AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker. Employers and political leaders must create new policies that help working families deal with their basic needs of feeding their families, caring for their elderly parents, paying the mortgage.
Speaking this afternoon to a conference on the “Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict,” sponsored by the Center for American Progress, Holt Baker said, “Our families are trying to live in two different worlds at the same time—and it is just not working.”
Most people—men and women, across race and class—agree that the changing status of women is a good thing, now that we are half the workforce and have the opportunity and the weight of being breadwinners. But we also agree that something’s got to give.
The conflict between work and family is no longer between men and women, Holt Baker said. “It’s between families and the systems that are not meeting our needs.”
To meet the needs of today’s working families, she said, we need public policies that support working families. We need employers to change with the times. And workers need the power to shape work-family policies at our workplaces, which means more working people must be able to form unions and to bargain for what they we need on the job.
On the public policy front, Holt Baker called for giving workers more flexibility to care for their families by passing the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would give employees the tools they need to close the wage gap between men and women and provide the government with enforcement power to correct pay inequities. Another, the Healthy Families Act, would require most employers to provide full-time workers seven days of paid leave a year if they’re sick or have a sick family member, with prorated benefits for part-timers.
Congress also must ensure employers do not use this new flexibility as an excuse to reduce wages and take away workers’ rights, Holt Baker said.
Flexibility is meaningless without a good job, decent wages and benefits. Public policy has to protect workers’ pay, job security and basic workplace rights while expanding flexibility.
It’s also time for employers to recognize that family-friendly workplaces are more productive and profitable, she added:
It’s time for them to recognize that the costs of doing the wrong thing really do outweigh the costs of doing the right thing. The cost of not providing paid sick leave is an unhealthy, unhappy workplace. The cost of not enabling working people to meet their family responsibilities is high and expensive turnover.
The key to gaining a family-friendly workplace, Holt Baker said, is for workers to be able to join unions freely:
When workers can bargain, they can change their working conditions and do it equitably across the workforce.
Even as the union movement focuses on creating new jobs, this is the right time to push for policies that support working families, Holt Baker said. In answer to a question during a panel discussion, she called for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, federal legislation to level the playing field for workers seeking to form unions, as the necessary step for workers to regain a solid place in the U.S. economy.
We have the clearest evidence of our lifetimes that this economy has failed working families. It may be working for people who speculate for a living—but not for people who work for a living.
So while the labor movement’s focus is on getting America back to work, we know the longer term solution is to build a new economy responsive to the needs and realities of working people. Resolving the conflicts between work and family must be part of that agenda, and the time to get to work is now.
 |
|
Workers at Mott’s upstate New York applesauce plant launched an unfair labor practice strike against the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group (DPS) subsidiary Sunday after earlier rejecting a concessions-laden contract from the food and drink conglomerate, which, last year, made a $550 million profit. (Click here for an audio report on the strike from Workers Independent News.)
More than 300 workers—members of the Retail, Wholesale, Department Store Union/UFCW (RWDSU/UFCW) Local 220—were forced to strike says RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum. They are the workers who
helped make Mott’s the highly profitable company they are, and they should not be treated like a bunch of rotten apples by overpaid executives….Whittling down wage and benefit standards, while exponentially increasing CEO compensation is rotten business, and frankly un-American.
DPS CEO Larry Young made $6.5 million last year in total compensation—double what he earned in 2007. Last week, several Mott’s workers traveled to the company’s annual shareholders meeting in Frisco, Texas. Timothy Budd, who has worked at the plant for 24 years, told Young and the board, “forcing these cuts on us when DPS made $555 million in profit last year is unacceptable.”
The workers’ contract at the Williamson, N.Y., plant expired April 16 and the company demanded a $1.50 per hour wage cut for all workers, a pension freeze for current employees and elimination of a pension for future employees, decreased employer contributions to the company’s 401(k) retirement plan and increased employee contributions toward health care premiums and co-pays.
For more information on the workers’ struggle at Mott’s, click here.
If you want to take action to help Mott’s workers, click here to go to American Rights at Work and sign a letter to CEO Young urging a fair contract for Mott’s workers.
 |
|
Word from Capitol Hill is that tomorrow is the day lawmakers will get a chance to prove they are for creating jobs by voting for the Promoting American Jobs, Closing Tax Loopholes and Preventing Outsourcing Act of 2010 (H.R. 4213).
We still have time to build support for the bill. Call 877-442-6801 and urge your representative to vote for H.R. 4213 to create and save jobs and make Wall Street pay. Tell your representative a vote against the bill is a vote against jobs.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says congressional candidates can “back up their rhetoric with action,” by pledging their support for the bill. For both members of Congress and those who hope to be elected:
If you’re not for this bill, you’re not for jobs. Period.
Trumka says the bill will put Americans back to work by
repairing crumbling infrastructure; stemming public-sector layoffs in states; encouraging more bank loans to small business; extending unemployment benefits and health benefits for the unemployed through the end of this year; and providing over 300,000 summer jobs for unemployed youth.
To help pay for the cost of the legislation, the jobs bill starts the process of making Wall Street finally pay to restore the millions of jobs Big Banks and financial institutions destroyed with their reckless and risky practices. It closes a tax loophole that allows rich Wall Street hedge fund managers to pay lower tax rates on their income than the rest of us. It also closes a similar loophole on corporations that ship jobs overseas.
According to the latest analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the bill could create and save more than 1 million jobs. Failure to enact it, EPI warns: “could have serious consequences for an economy that is just now turning the corner from job loss to job creation.”
Without the added demand that the Act will generate, the economy risks sliding back into a weakened state and repeating the cycle of consumer retrenchment, lost business, layoffs and further erosion of consumer confidence that has characterized most of the last two-and-a-half years.
If the bill wins House approval tomorrow, it will immediately go to the Senate where Senate leaders will attempt to bring it to a vote before Congress adjourns for the Memorial Day recess. Republican leaders are likely to filibuster the jobs bill, meaning it will take 60 votes for passage.
But if it isn’t passed and signed into law before the recess, millions of jobless workers will lose their unemployment insurance (UI) and COBRA health insurance benefits beginning June 2, when the extended programs for both expires.
In a separate analysis, EPI estimates the legislation, which extends UI payments through the end of 2010, will provide an estimated 5 million unemployed workers with support, while ensuring access to affordable health care. But
without this extension, over 8 million Americans will run out of unemployment insurance benefits by the end of this year. The extension will ensure that 5 million of these workers continue receiving support until the end of 2010.
Take a minute and call 877-442-6801 and urge your representative to vote for H.R. 4213 to create and save jobs and make Wall Street pay.
Recent Comments