Workers Independent News Labor Radio
Internet Radio Program 06/04/10
Producers: Doug Cunningham & Jesse Russell
Labor Radio Rundown:
1) WIN Newscast
Economic Report:
Payroll giant ADP says private sector jobs increased by 55,000 last month. That makes it four months in a row for gains in the private sector, but it continues to be a slow pace. The average job increase has been 39,000 new jobs compared to 103,000 new jobs being added after the recession of 2003.
By Doug Cunningham
Labor leaders are rallying behind Boston firefighters, demanding that the city honor an arbitrator’s decision to give the firefighters raises. The union says the raise totals 16.5 percent over a four year contract. It includes a two and a half percent increase in return for firefighters undergoing drug and alcohol testing. Hundreds rallied to support the firefighters in Boston Thursday. Unions supporting them include the Greater Boston Labor Council, the Boston Teachers Union, United Steel Workers, a Boston police union and Boston’s Newspaper Printing Pressmen union.
By Doug Cunningham
It’s been a long time comin’. But thousands of Tyson workers are finally getting overtime wages they’re owed. Jesse Russell reports.
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Laura Askelin, president of the Southeast Minnesota Area Labor Council in Rochester, is being honored as one of the state’s future leaders within the union movement and the political arena. Recently, Askelin received the 2010 DFL Rising Star award from the Women’s Summit Committee of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.
The committee called Askelin a “force to be reckoned with now and in the future.” Askelin entered politics as a volunteer in Howard Dean’s presidential campaign in 2008. She later signed on as the campaign manager for the winning candidate in an election for state representative.
She now works as a political organizer for AFSCME Council 5 as well as serves as president of the labor council and holds several local and state party positions. She tirelessly campaigned for health care reform over the last year.
Lynn Wilson, DFL chairwoman in Olmsted County, Askelin’s home county, says:
Laura has the “it” factor in politics equivalent to what Simon Cowell looks for on “American Idol.” She views the world with astute political perception and then embarks on making it a reality. She personifies what [late Minnesota Democrat] Senator Paul Wellstone was talking about.
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Working America’s canvassers knock on some 25,000 doors a week in neighborhoods across the country to talk with working people about the economy, jobs, health care, Wall Street reform and more. And, says Working America Executive Director Karen Nussbaum:
Glenn Beck is often on the other side of that screen door.
The flame-fanning influence of extremist media monsters like Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News’s hard right news coverage are often cited as the engine driving what is undeniably a growing working-class anger.
But, as panelists at a special AFL-CIO and Working America forum explored today, it isn’t Beck’s bellowing or Rush’s ranting that’s really behind that anger—they’re just exploiting it.
Working people are mad about an economy that’s punished them with vanishing jobs and lost homes and rewarded Wall Street with bailouts and bonuses while they see a government that doesn’t seem capable of fixing what’s gone wrong or holding anyone accountable. Says Nussbaum:
They’re worried about jobs, they’re angry at Wall Street and they don’t trust the government.
But will the far-right be able to continue to exploit people’s legitimate economic anger into ballot-box victory in the fall elections and move the nation down an extremist path marked with divisive social issues and pro-corporate, free-for-all economy?
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told the nearly 200 people attending the Working Class at the Tipping Point forum at the AFL-CIO here in Washington, D.C.:
It’s up to us to continue to educate, it’s up to us to continue to give people hope…to channel that anger to a positive direction….We’ve e been successful in the past when we give people economic facts, union members stuck together while the other side tried to use divisive social issues to tear us apart.
Joining Trumka and Nussbaum were Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.), The Nation’s Christopher Hayes and The Wall Street Journal’s Peter Wallsten. Thea Lee, AFL-CIO deputy chief of staff, moderated the discussion.
The anger and distrust toward government isn’t new, says Hayes:
Historically there has been a low-level of trust in institutions, but now this distrust is being captured and channeled toward reactionary ends.
People tell Working America organizers every day that jobs and job creation are their key concerns. Two out of three people cite jobs and a just economy as their reason for joining the now 3 million-strong Working America.
Edwards says that the best way Congress can win back trust is to
get back to the business of creating jobs in this country, not just talking about it. We need to use Americans’ taxpayer dollars to invest in American jobs and America’s workers.
Without that emphasis on jobs and job creation, says a briefing paper prepared for the forum:
Economic populism is the hinge of the tipping point. If elected leaders don’t lead on jobs, people look rightward for economic answers.
New York is on the verge of becoming the first state to require overtime pay and one day off a week for domestic workers after the state Senate on Tuesday passed landmark legislation extending those rights to more than 200,000 housekeepers, nannies and other domestic workers in the state.
The state Assembly passed a similar bill last year and lawmakers must reconcile the differences in the bills. The new law would take effect Jan.1.
State Sen. Diane Savino, a Staten Island Democrat, told the Associated Press:
New York has long been a leader in protecting the rights of workers. We enacted child labor laws long before the federal government did and were the first to pass labor protections for those toiling in sweatshops.
Domestic Workers United (DWU) estimates there are 200,000 domestic workers in New York City alone. Most are female immigrant workers. Formed in 2000, DWU is an organization of Caribbean, Latina and African nannies, housekeepers and elderly caregivers in New York who fight for the rights of domestic workers.
Some 100 domestic workers rallied at the state capitol in Albany on Tuesday to urge lawmakers to vote “yes” on the bill. The vote capped a long campaign by the workers to gain justice. On its website, DWU says:
We have come so far, since we first set out on this journey. We have gotten everyone to learn about the domestic workers’ plight and the history of exclusion. We have built and deepened strong alliances with many different sectors of our society. Everyone has been touched and moved in some way. We could not have accomplished all that we have without your support and without you standing alongside us in this struggle.
Minimum wage laws apply to domestic workers nationally, but those workers who live in their employers’ homes are excluded from overtime requirements. Workers’ groups in California mobilized to get similar state legislation introduced to extend overtime pay to domestic workers.
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Barbara Shailor, former international affairs director of the AFL-CIO, has been named U.S. State Department’s new special representative for international labor affairs.
Shailor will lead State’s efforts to promote worker rights, conduct liaison with the global labor movement and focus on strengthening the labor officer operations in U.S. embassies around the world.
Shailor led the AFL-CIO International Department for nearly 15 years, serving as senior adviser to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and AFL-CIO President Emeritus John Sweeney on foreign and international policy issues. Prior to joining the AFL-CIO staff, Shailor served as international affairs director for the Machinists (IAM).
A State Department announcement says Shailor is
internationally recognized for her lifelong work to secure economic, social, and political rights for workers in the U.S. and throughout the world.
The Bush administration did not fill the special representative position, and the job has been vacant since 2002. Testifying before a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee in March 2010, Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, said the special representative would “greatly enhance” the Obama administration’s work to promote labor diplomacy:
This individual will take the lead for the department in promoting strong labor diplomacy and ensuring a high-level focus on labor rights and employment issues. This position…will also serve to strengthen the traditional ties of my bureau to labor stakeholders, including the global labor movement, as key contributors and partners in labor diplomacy.
On June 7, Cathy Feingold will take over as director of international affairs for the AFL-CIO, succeeding Shailor.
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