Labor Union Blog

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka joined California nurses in their one-day strike yesterday.

From Santa Rosa to Fresno and from Sacramento to San Jose, 23,000 registered nurses walked picket lines, joined rallies and sent a strong message yesterday to three large employers that they will not accept reductions in patient services or cuts to nurses and other caregivers. The one-day strike by members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA/NNU) ended this morning at 7 a.m. PT.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who joined nurses on the picket line at Sutter Alta Bates hospital in Berkeley, praised the RNs as “the last line of defense for patients.” Trumka said the 23,000 nurses who took a stand were joined by “millions of patients” and had the support of working people across the country.

The walkout affected Sutter Health and Kaiser Permanente, as well as Children’s Hospital in Oakland.

Sutter nurses protested up to 200 sweeping demands for concessions they say would restrict their ability to effectively advocate for patients. They say Sutter managers’ focus on the bottom line effectively forces nurses to work when sick, dangerously exposing extremely ill patients to infection.

Click here to read more about the strike and here for more photos.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will deliver a major address on the measures needed to end the jobs crisis and rebuild the U.S. economy Sept. 30 at the prestigious Brookings Institution.

“A Conversation with Richard Trumka” begins at 10 a.m. at Brookings’ Falk Auditorium, 1775 Massachusetts Ave, N.W., Washington, D.C. Register for the event here.

Trumka will discuss how a range of proposals now before Congress—including investing in infrastructure, clean energy and manufacturing, extending unemployment benefits and providing aid to state and local governments—can spur immediate job creation and sustained economic growth into the future. 

After the program, Trumka will take audience questions.

AFT President Randi Weingarten says until Congress fixes No Child Left Behind (NCLB), President Obama’s waiving of NCLB requirements for states makes sense. Read the full statement here.

Jenya Cassidy of the Labor Project for Working Families writes that working people don’t just need jobs—they need jobs that pay a living wage and that allow parents to support and nuture their families.

When I was in high school and college, I worked in restaurants. I worked for minimum wage and I worked hard—cleaning, cooking, even counting money and making bank deposits. I remember my pay going from $3.35 an hour to $3.45 an hour when I made “head cashier”—a job that carried a lot more responsibility than a 10-cent raise would imply.

My second year at UCLA, I got my first union job at a deli/restaurant in West Hollywood. There were some differences that I noticed immediately: grown-ups worked here, I had enough money to buy my family Christmas presents that year and, after a probationary period, I was eligible for health benefits. But most striking of all was the absence of fear. I wasn’t used to working in kitchens where the line cook could talk to the boss when he didn’t agree with a decision. He didn’t always win, but at least he wasn’t afraid to speak up. This made a big impression on me and made me a life-long supporter of unions.

Right now, unions are at the forefront of the movement demanding jobs. They have also been at the forefront of the movement for everything that makes jobs livable for working families: minimum wages, health care, the Family Medical Leave Act, Paid Family Leave in California and the most fundamental—the right to have a voice on the job.

There are conservative politicians like Wisconsin’s Gov. Scott Walker and Rep. Ben Quayle of Arizona who seem to be intent on doing away with this most basic right. Quayle is even trying to block a recent NLRB decision that would require employers to post information about employees’ right to join a union. The poster essentially outlines the 1935 National Labor Relations Act stating that employees have the right to “act together to improve wages and working conditions, to form, join and assist a union, to bargain collectively with their employer, and to refrain from any of these activities.”

We are stronger together. This is a basic union principal and it is one that we can lose if we don’t get active in its defense. Unions have a proud history of empowering and mobilizing working people to vote. Many women leaders first found their voices in their unions. And unions have fought for legislation that improves jobs for all workers.

We need jobs. But I worry that the call for “jobs, jobs, jobs” doesn’t get specific enough. The only things that made those first jobs I had doable were the free bed and roof over my head at my parents’ house. How can women—many of whom are single parents or heads of households—work a minimum-wage/no-benefits job (or even two) and support themselves and their families?

We don’t just need jobs. We need jobs that pay a living wage and allow parents to support their families AND be there to nurture them. We need to maintain our right to use our voices, to act together to improve our lives. We need unions.

This blog is part of the #HERvotes blog carnival. Read more HERvotes posts by Ms. and other women’s groups.

All the Republican candidates for president want to repeal the nation’s new health care law.  Maybe because it’s helping solve the nation’s health care crisis?

From the New York Times:

Three new surveys, including two released on Wednesday, show that adults under 26 made significant and unique gains in insurance coverage in 2010 and the first half of 2011. One of them, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, estimates that in the first quarter of 2011 there were 900,000 fewer uninsured adults in the 19-to-25 age bracket than in 2010.

This was despite deep hardship imposed by the recession, which has left young adults unemployed at nearly double the rate of older Americans, with incomes sliding far faster than the national average.

 The Times goes on to highlight the story of one such young worker who credits the new health care measures with saving her life. Kylie R. Logsdon was able to get a heart transplant in July because she is covered under the new law. 

“I honestly don’t know what we would have done,” said Ms. Logsdon, 23, of Gerlaw, Ill., who gained coverage under her father’s policy after losing her job as a legal secretary. “There was no way we could have afforded it. I might not be here right now.”

Do the Republicans really want to become the party of “Let him die?”

Sept. 15-Oct. 15, Latino Heritage Month, offers a time to recognize the contributions of the nearly 47 million Latinos living in the United States and to highlight the issues facing our Latino brothers and sisters.

Representatives from Latino advocacy groups, unions, civil rights organizations, community groups and elected and appointed officials will come together to celebrate and recognize Latino working families in the United States Oct. 12 at the AFL-CIO. The theme of the evening is “Siempre Unidos. Our Legacy, Our Future: Celebrating America’s Latino Working Families.”

This is a time of many accomplishments for the Latino community. The past decade has seen a rise in Latino leadership and representation, and today we have the first Latina to serve as the Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis. But while there is much to celebrate, Latinos still face tough problems. The recession hit all workers hard – but Latino workers have been particularly hard hit. The unemployment rate among Latinos last month was 11.3 percent, compared with 9.1 percent for the nation as a whole. 

Employed Latinos disproportionately work in low-paying jobs. The median weekly income for Latinos in July 2011 was $565, while white non-Latinos earned $770. In 2010, more than one in every four Latinos (26.6 percent) lived below the poverty line.

A report, “Latino Workers in the United States 2011,” released last April by the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), shows Latinos also have the highest high high school dropout rate, the highest percentage of people without health insurance, the highest occurrence of wage theft and are the most in danger of being killed on the job.

The median net worth of white households is 18 times greater than that of Latino households, according to a study by the Pew Research Center, which attributes the increase to the decline in the housing market and the ensuing recession. From 2005 to 2009, inflation-adjusted median wealth fell by 66 percent among Latino households, compared with just 16 percent among white households.

One of the key solutions to economic woes for both Latino and immigrant families is union membership. Immigrant workers who belong to unions have a large wage and benefit advantage over their nonunion counterparts, according to a study last year by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).

The report 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.”

Yet today, millions of workers are restricted to working in the shadows- subject to exploitation and abuse. We cannot restore job quality and the quality of life for all workers, without addressing the status of millions of immigrants in the United States.

Many immigrants are students who were brought here at young age and face tremendous obstacles to higher education. That’s why the AFL-CIO and affiliated unions are urging passage of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which would give conditional legal status and eventual citizenship to undocumented students who graduate from U.S. high schools, are of good moral character, arrived in the United States as minors and have been in the country continuously for at least five years. The House passed the DREAM Act last December, but Republicans sidelined the bill in the Senate.

Meanwhile, AFT and the National Education Association (NEA) have developed a wide range of resources to help parents, teachers and others celebrate Latino heritage.

Check out the AFT resource site here and the NEA site here.

With more than 46 million people living in poverty in the United States and unemployment stuck at 9.1 percent, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is calling on other clergy to preach on the issue of   poverty and to educate church members and advocate for the poor and unemployed.

In a Sept. 15 letter, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York urged Catholic clergy nationwide to bring the issue of poverty into their homilies:

Widespread unemployment, underemployment and pervasive poverty are diminishing human lives, undermining human dignity, and hurting children and families. I hope we can use our opportunities as pastors, teachers, and leaders to focus public attention and priority on the scandal of so much poverty and so many without work in our society.

The Roman Catholic church has a long history of supporting working people’s causes. Along with all the world’s major religions, Catholicism teaches that workers should be tyretaed fairly. Read the entire letter here.

Dolan added it is time for everyone to come together and solve the nation’s job crisis.

These economic failures have fundamental institutional and systemic elements that have either been ignored or made worse by political and economic behaviors, which have undermined trust and confidence.

However, this is not time to make excuses or place blame. It is a time for everyone to accept their own personal and institutional responsibility to help create jobs and to overcome poverty.

Maybe this is Hallmark’s answer to threats to cut more than 200,000 U.S. Postal Service jobs, end Saturday delivery and shut down post offices. The greeting card company now offers condolence cards for people who have lost their jobs.

“It’s hard to know what to say at a sensitive time like this,” one card’s cover says over an illustration of—well, it looks like cartoon pigs in an unemployment line. “How about: ‘I’m buying!’”

Another advises: “Don’t think of it as losing your job. Think of it as a time out between stupid bosses.”

If you want to do your part to support mail service and the people who make it happen, join postal workers Tuesday, Sept. 27, in a rally to Save America’s Postal Service. Rallies are planned across the country. Find one near you here.

AFL-CIO communications staffer Nora Frederickson sends us this report from New Hampshire.

Union-endorsed working family candidates have gone for four-for-four in the special elections held after Republican House Speaker Bill O’Brien rolled out an anti-middle class agenda that puts partisan high-horsing above the needs of Granite Staters. Peter Leishman, a Democrat from Hillsborough, swept the final special election for state representative by an astounding 20-point margin on Tuesday night.

The elections were directly tied to O’Brien’s attempt to make New Hampshire the first so-called right to work state in the Northeast. From Politico:

This is the fourth straight union-endorsed victory in New Hampshire since the state speaker’s attempted override of John Lynch’s veto of what they viewed as Wisconsin-style, anti-labor efforts.

All four union-endorsed candidates—three Democrats and one Republican—pledged in their campaigns to sustain Gov. John Lynch’s override of H.B. 474, the “right to work” for less law introduced by O’Brien in the spring session. They will join all 104 Democrats and more than 40 Republicans opposing the override of Lynch’s “right to work” veto in the New Hampshire House.

“The Republican leadership in our state needs to wake up and smell the coffee,” New Hampshire AFL-CIO President Mark MacKenzie stated after results were announced.

This isn’t about party. Voters will support candidates who support the middle class. They want leaders who will strengthen their communities and create good family wage jobs, not strip our most vulnerable residents of vital services and pursue Tea Party-fueled policies like right-to-work.

Dave Suetholz says he got fed up with “the right wing’s effective use of the echo chamber through its network of reactionary think tanks and media.”

So the Kentucky labor lawyer climbed aboard his American-made Ford pickup truck and drove across the Bluegrass State seeking support for a Kentucky Labor Institute (KLI).

His travels bore fruit. Says Sy Slavin, Ph.D., KLI acting director:

If you look at the seven months since we have been in operation, the record is impressive. More than 60 articles supporting labor have been published in blogs around the country. We have had an op-ed piece in the Lexington Herald-Leader.

We endorsed protest efforts by unions in Wisconsin, Ohio and Kentucky. We have developed a labor history curriculum. We have had two sessions on labor history conducted by two of our board members—one at a UAW hall in Bowling Green and another at the recent Young Democrats of America biennial national convention in Louisville.

In addition, KLI board members distributed literature and talked up the organization at large Labor Day celebrations in Paducah and in Louisville. In addition, the KLI sponsored a Sept. 20 program in Louisville that featured a panel discussion and a labor art display.

Suetholz, a 33-year-old native Kentuckian and general counsel for the Kentucky Labor Cabinet, aimed to team up union activists with academics like Slavin, a retired University of Louisville professor. Suetholz explains:

As a relatively young lawyer who cares about the labor movement—both its legacy and mission for the future—I am troubled by my generation’s lack of understanding of labor’s righteous past. I know many wonderful academics in Kentucky who believe in and defend the labor movement. The blending of my concern and their insight led to KLI.

Based in Louisville, the KLI is a nonprofit corporation which seeks “to educate working people and the public about the history of workers’ movements, to assess the current conditions of workers in Kentucky…to offer recommendations for improving those conditions” and “to help forge a strong alliance between the union movement and academics for the benefit of all Kentucky workers.”

The board of directors includes progressive labor leaders, academics, social justice activists and retirees from across Kentucky. Suetholz says the group reflects “the rich racial, ethnic, cultural and religious diversity of the Bluegrass State.”

Board members include Bill Londrigan, president of the Kentucky State AFL-CIO, who says:

The primary benefit of the KLI is to improve our ability to deliver education and information about the union movement and workers’ rights to a broader spectrum of society as well as to workers who haven’t been exposed to unions very much. We are grateful for Dave’s hard work, dedication and foresight in organizing the KLI.

Along with labor history, the KLI offers short courses on union-media relations. Suetholz hopes the KLI’s curriculum will expand to encompass labor law, economics and other topics important to union members. “KLI is born and is directed by righteous people,” he says. “We’ll see what it grows up to be.”

Says Slavin:

The bottom line is this: We are a Kentucky think tank responding to all of the right-wing think tanks which pollute the political process with their corporate ideologies. We also generate new ideas and new approaches for trade union thinking and action in Kentucky and around the country.

More information about the KLI is available from Slavin at 2551 Woodbourne Ave., Louisville, KY 40205. His email address is sslavin@insightbb.com. Also check out the KLI at: www.kentuckylaborinstitute.org.