Labor Union Blog

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to head to New York where Occupy Wall Street is now entering its third week. I had just flown into New York City from Minneapolis and was coming off the enthusiasm and passion of 800 young workers at the AFL-CIO Next Up Summit.  Young workers at the Summit issued a statement of support for Occupy Wall Street, and I had to see and experience the movement first-hand.

I spoke to several students from Rutgers University about why they were participating in the movement.  They were concerned about the imbalance in the economy and the runaway greed they’re seeing in the financial economy.  While the anger and frustration is what’s rightly getting the attention, we also talked about the importance of focusing on solutions. And when we start talking about that, it was clear there are real policy changes that can put power back in the hands of the 99 percent – things like the financial speculation tax that would help pay for the creation of jobs, the Buffet rule and holding banks accountable for corrupt foreclosure practices.

I was inspired by what I saw — people of all stripes are expressing their anger and frustration at the lack of attention paid to “the other 99 percent.”

It’s so exciting to watch a new generation mobilize an organic movement for social justice — it gives me tremendous hope and optimism that we can get our country back on track now and for the future.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), USW President Leo Gerard and IAM President Tom Buffenbarger addressed more than 200 workers from around the country before they lobbied their lawmakers to stop the Korea, Colombia and Panama job-killing trade deals.

Virginia Hewitt has seen firsthand how bad trade deals kill good jobs. Hewitt worked for 14.5 years at the Salina, Kan., Hawker Beechcraft plant building private jets. But little more than a year ago, she and most of the nearly 600 Machinists (IAM) Local 7090 members saw their jobs shipped to Mexico.

“I know about bad trade deals. I had to leave my house, sell my things and move to Georgia because of bad trade deals.”

Hewitt was one of the more 200 union members who came to Capitol Hill today to tell their home state lawmakers to vote “No” on proposed trade deals with Korea, Colombia and Panama. They told their senators and representatives Congress needs to focus on job-creating legislation like President Obama’s American Jobs Act, not job-killing trade deals.

The rally was part of the AFL-CIO’s mobilization to stop the trade agreements that included today’s National Call In Day to tell Congress to stop the trade deals. (There’s still time: Call your member of Congress at 1-800-718-1008. You also can send your message via e-mail by clicking here.)

According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the Korea trade deal will cost 159,000 U.S. jobs while Panama routinely tramples workers’ rights and shelters money launderers and tax dodgers.

Craig Ashford, a member of IAM Local 1414 in San Mateo, Calif., says the United States should not reward a nation like Colombia where more trade unionists are killed than any other nation on the globe with special trade privileges.

They are killing trade unionists in Colombia. They are assassinating them. It’s just not right.

At a rally before the workers hit the halls of Congress, United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard told workers to pose this question to lawmakers:

Can you find a free trade deal that was negotiated, where we were promised better jobs and promised better exports that resulted in net exports from America? Every free trade deal has resulted in us losing jobs, not getting jobs.

These trade deals that are brought forth are designed by Wall Street to benefit Wall Street at the expense of Main Street.

IAM President Thomas Buffenbarger told the rally, “It’s time for Congress to reject these failed, NAFTA-style trade agreements that have helped push this country to the edge of an economic abyss.”

We’re here today to urge Congress to stop listening to Wall Street and start listening to Main Street.

Like Hewitt, Bob, a USW member from Ohio, has seen firsthand how workers and communities suffer from the kind of trade agreements deals now before Congress.

Where I live, there are a lot of people losing their jobs. We’re losing a lot of factories in Ohio. I’m with Cooper Tire and Rubber and a lot of our tire plants are going overseas. We’re going to lose more jobs by letting Congress send more jobs overseas. The trade deals are going to hurt us worse.

Media Outreach fellows Emmelle Israel and Ja-Rei Wang contributed to this report.

New York area union members will join an expected several thousand labor activists and supporters tomorrow in a Wall Street march and rally in support of the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

The grassroots-grown protest is now in its third week, with a diverse array of people from across the country camping out in the heart of the financial district to demand Wall Street is held accountable for the schemes and reckless games that led to the nation’s economic collapse.

The mostly young Occupy Wall Street protesters are “speaking for the vast majority of Americans who are frustrated by the bankers and brokers who have profited on the backs of hard working people,” says Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) President Larry Hanley.

Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), says Occupy Wall Street “has brought into sharp focus a reality that cannot be denied.”

Corporate greed is responsible for harming the lives of millions of working people and unemployed people.…A small group of firms, banks, and corporations now hold trillions worth of our collective wealth and assets. That money should be invested in job creation on a massive scale and used to rebuild countless lives damaged by the recklessness that caused the recession.

Over the weekend, the 800 young activists at the AFL-CIO’s Next Up Young Workers Summit in Minneapolis threw their strong support to the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

Wall Street symbolizes this simple truth: a small group of people have the lives and livelihoods of working Americans in their hands…. We stand together in calling for a country that doesn’t just work for the top 1 percent. We stand together to call for a sustainable future that doesn’t begin with massive tax breaks for the wealthy and end with austerity measures and a jobs crisis.

Jim Gannon, a spokesman for the Transport Workers (TWU), told the Daily Beast:

We view the protests as young people who are articulating the same kind of things that we’ve been trying to articulate… they’ve really thrown a spotlight on issues that are bothering people, especially bothering workers like our members.

Click here for more information on the action which begins at 4:30 p.m. EDT and here for a map and directions. If you are not in New York, can also click here to join the Virtual March on Wall Street from Rebuild the Dream and MoveON. Follow the action on Twitter with the hashtag #occupyWallStreet.

Dave Johnson, a fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future, sends us this.

At the Take Back the American Dream conference this afternoon, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka described the unequal economic situation in the country today, saying:

Think about it:  Bank of America, which makes about $1 billion a month, announces it’s going to charge customers $5 a month to use their own money to shop with their debit cards. Mind you this is the financial giant that paid its global banking and markets president nearly $30 million last year—and this year turned around and announced it’s going to fire 30,000 workers!

Trumka told the audience that the right wing is “banking on an upside-down America for its path to political power.” He described the right’s four-part plan:

• First, they’ll do everything they can to keep our economy on the rocks—no money for jobs, no way—keep people hurting and angry.  
• Second, they’ll fan the flames of anti-government angst by making sure our government looks dysfunctional—gridlocked and lurching from funding deadline to deadline.  
• Third, they’re ginning up this season’s version of “divide and conquer”—set taxpayers against public employees, jobless Americans against immigrants.  
• And finally, they’re doing their damnedest to make sure the electorate in 2012 looks nothing like the electorate of 2008—disenfranchising new voters with voter ID laws, suppressing student voters and a whole lot more. 

Trumka said now is the time for “a mighty movement for jobs and a just economy.”

First, he said we need to support President Obama’s American Jobs Act. Next, we should support the president’s call for millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share of taxes.

Trumka said it is time to turn up the heat with a massive, militant movement for jobs.  “This fight cannot be part-time work for us. This isn’t something we “also” do. This is it!  And to win, we have to come together. “

He said we need to hold Congress’ feet to the fire and invite people to visit the AFL-CIO website at aflcio.org, to see a map that lets people send a message to Congress about the crumbling bridges and the unemployment rate in each state that people can share that with e-mail lists and website visitors. 

Trumka said the real job creators in America are regular working people.  “When we do well, we create demand. And companies hire more workers to keep pace! That’s how it works. I call it trickle-up economics. Sisters and brothers, nothing less than the character and future of America is at stake.  And as my friend Van Jones likes to say, we stand for one nation under God, with liberty, and justice, for all. “

To deafening applause and a standing ovation, he continued:

When we call for investments in jobs, they’ll say America’s broke. No, it isn’t—but our politics are broken! We’ve got politicians whose priorities are broken!”

When we call for fair taxes on those who’ve fed on America’s economic collapse, they’ll cry, “Class warfare!” 

But it wasn’t us who declared war on people who work for a living.

And if they want to have that class warfare debate, I say:  “Bring it on!

Sisters and brothers, nothing less than the character and future of America is at stake.  And as my friend Van Jones likes to say, we stand for one nation under God, with liberty, and justice, for all.  

Dave Johnson, a fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future, sends us this.

Speaking at a noon press conference at the Take Back the American Dream conference, Robert Borosage, co-director of Campaign for America’s Future, said his organization plans to move the American Dream movement by engaging activists across the country to push a “Jobs not Cuts” agenda and to partner with organizations to identify, recruit and support 2,012 American Dream candidates up and down the ballot, from the school board to U.S. Senate. Borosage also announced a commitment to launch 100 major state and local actions engaging 100 leaders across the country over the next year. 

AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker noted that “Americans are dreaming about jobs because America wants work,” and said the AFL-CIO is “committed to fighting alongside all working people whether they are in our union or in our communities.”

That means working with allies like the ones here today.  We stand aligned and in partnership.

We at AFL-CIO have declared our political independence. We will oppose politicians who favor policies that hurt the middle class. We will support politicians who stand up for the middle class. We are comfortable sitting out elections if need be if they are not standing for working people.

Van Jones, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who also served as the green jobs adviser in the Obama White House, said “people have been shocked and dismayed to see the unopposed dissolution of the middle class.” But now, the American Dream movement will reach and engage 1 million leaders ”We will have 2012 candidates in 2012 to shake up politics up and down the ballot.  We are about to shake up politics.”

People are standing up now, and they’re saying enough is enough.  You are going to continue to see the sleeping giant awaken.

We have the opportunity now to let the people who know we are a better country than this finally do the one thing they have been unable to do:  Find something they could join to do something about.

It’s not just participation and not just politics, it is also a protest.  We are tired of this, we are a better country than this.

Last week, we had a great Twitter campaign pointing out how House Speaker John Boehner is failing to create jobs.

Looks like Rep. Eric Cantor has now joined the Republican jobs fail crowd, saying President Obama’s American Jobs Act is “dead on arrival.” As AFSCME President Gerald McEntee put it:

Rep. Cantor just doesn’t get it. The country needs jobs, not another out-of-touch politician.

Enough with the grandstanding, Rep. Cantor needs to get to work.  Get his party to work, to do the job they were elected to do, stand up for their constituents.  It is time for politicians in Washington to come together and rebuild our economy and pass the American Jobs Act now.    

Yesterday, the Republican Majority Leader in Congress, Eric Cantor, said that right now, he won’t even let the jobs bill have a vote in the House of Representatives.  He won’t even give it a vote.

Challenging Cantor’s statement, President Obama said today in Dallas:

Well I’d like Mr. Cantor to come down here to Dallas and explain what in this jobs bill he doesn’t believe in.  Does he not believe in rebuilding America’s roads and bridges?  Does he not believe in tax breaks for small businesses, or efforts to help veterans?

Come tell Dallas construction workers why they should be sitting home instead of fixing our bridges and our schools.

Come tell the small business owners and workers in this community why you’d rather defend tax breaks for millionaires than tax cuts for the middle class.

Take action and tell Cantor—America Wants to Work. Tweet this:

Another #jobsfail. @EricCantor wants to kill American #Jobs Act. Tell him we #want2work.

A tentative four-year agreement between the UAW and Ford Motor Co. will create new jobs and bring back work from overseas, UAW leaders said in a press conference today in Detroit.

UAW President Bob King says the tentative pact will add 5,750 new jobs, bringing to 12,000 the number of new jobs when combined with recent announcements from Ford.

As the nation’s economy remains stalled and uncertain, and its employment rate stagnates, we were able to win an agreement with Ford that will bring auto manufacturing jobs back to the United States from China, Mexico and Japan.

The agreement, the second reached between the UAW and the domestic automakers, builds on the UAW-GM contract, ratified by workers last week. That agreement created 6,400 new jobs at GM.

The tentative agreement includes $16 billion to produce new and upgraded vehicles and components by 2015, of which, $6.3 billion will be invested directly into retooling and upgrading plants. A complete list of plant investment can be found on the UAW’s website.

UAW Vice President Jimmy Settles, who directs the union’s Ford Department says:

UAW members sacrificed when the company was struggling, and this agreement ensures that our members will now share in Ford’s prosperity. While new jobs, investment and new products for our plants are the most important components of a secure future for our members, we were also able to make important gains in both income and benefits in this tentative agreement.

The UAW Ford Council voted today to recommend the tentative four-year agreement to local unions who will be conducting ratification votes at meetings throughout the country this week.  Details of the tentative agreement can be found at the union’s website.

The UAW represents approximately 41,000 hourly and salary workers at 27 Ford assembly and manufacturing facilities in the United States, making vehicles with the Ford and Lincoln brands.  The UAW also represents workers at four Automotive Components Holdings Inc. (ACH) plants.

The UAW’s current contract with Chrysler Group LLC has been extended, and negotiations continue.

Watch AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in a live webcast at the Take Back the American Dream conference here at Free Speech TV today at 1:30 EDT.

Dave Johnson, a fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future, sends us this.

At another great Take Back the American Dream conference session this morning, panelists discussed how the nation doesn’t just need millions of new jobs, but it needs jobs that pay well and enable workers to support themselves and their families. 

At ”Make Work Pay: Why Empowering Workers and Holding CEOs Accountable Is Vital to Economic Growth,” Christine Owens, director of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), noted that ”we have a net deficit of over 11 million jobs,”

and 75 percent of the jobs that are returning pay between $7.50 and $13.50 an hour.

We are in a very deep hole, and this explains why personal income is falling as well, in the wage and poverty data. Meanwhile corporate CEO pay has exploded.

Raising the minimum wage is essential, Owens said, as is ensuring employers actually pay workers what they are owed. The minimum wage is $7.25 but would be close to $10.50 if it kept up with inflation. Some 26 percent of the workforce makes less than $10.50 an hour. But all wages are anchored by this minimum—called a “spill up effect.” Meanwhile,  a 2008 survey showed one-quarter of low-wage workers had not been paid the minimum wage and three-quarters had not received overtime pay. For low-wage workers, such wage theft accounts for a big chunk of what they need to survive.

Also on the panel, Damon Silvers, AFL-CIO policy director, said CEO pay is supposed to reflect performance, which is supposed to reflect wealth-generation making us all better off. But if you look back to 1964, the apex of performance of the economy, CEO pay relative to regular workers was 24 to 1.  Now it is 340 to 1. 

Silvers said that people once had a pension, health care and a family wage through a single worker. Not anymore. The difference between 1964 and today is diminished unionization of private-sector workers. In 1964, 35 percent of American workers were in unions. Now, it’s about 7 percent. 

If we are going to rebuild the dream that conversation has to run differently. Where workers have a real voice at work and in their communities and in the politics of society. When societies have that wages and productivity move together.

Silvers said countries that have high industrial union densities are more competitive. So how do we change the conversation? he asked. You have to convince workers their future lies in their own hands. In the movie “Modern Ties,” a man can be swallowed by a machine.  Working people in the United States have been swallowed by the machine. The key to empowerment is making people realize they can get out.  Everything a boss does to stop union organizing is to convince people they are powerless. That change has to happen on a national scale. 

Silvers concluded, saying that it is happening in front of us on Wall Street.  Citizens are beginning to get the feeling that, in fact, we can be accountable.  Every day a few more people figure this out.

Stan Sorscher, labor representative for the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace/IFPTE  Local 2001 (SPEEA/IFPTE), describes what he sees as an emerging American Aristocracy in this excerpt from Washington Policy Watch.

I went to France in June and couldn’t help comparing the French revolution to our own. So, let’s start with aristocracy, then we’ll get to Ayn Rand. Stick with me.

In a nutshell, shortly after our revolution, peasants in France concluded that aristocrats were giving them a really crappy deal. Within a short time, peasants and workers rounded up aristocrats, took them to Place de la Concorde in downtown Paris, and chopped off their heads. Very serious stuff.

In a museum, I saw “The Gleaners,” a famous work by Jean-François Millet, depicting three peasant women stooping over to pick up wheat left behind in the harvest. I knew this painting from Sunday school, where I learned as a child that people of wealth have a moral obligation to acknowledge the dignity of poor people. Gleaning in the fields was a case in point, going back to the Old Testament.

Which brings me to Ayn Rand.

Ayn Rand’s books, Atlas Shrugged in particular, serve as an intellectual foundation for free market ideology. “Atlas Shrugged” came out as a movie recently. At the time, Rand’s outlook regarding the rich was characterized in these terms:

… wealthy people “produce” and are rich because they “produce.” The rest of us are “parasites” who suck blood and energy from the productive rich, by taxing them.

Jon Stewart captures this in one of his videos.

I completely disagree with Ayn Rand’s reasoning about how rich people become rich. My success depends on strong communities, shared prosperity, opportunity and fairness, and investment in the future. Alexis de Tocqueville called this “self interest, properly understood.”

As Paul Wellstone said, “We all do better when we all do better.”

Read Sorscher’s full article here.

Dave Johnson, a fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future, sends us this.

At this morning’s Take Back the American Dream conference plenary, Ai-jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), told the audience that the people who care for others are a national treasure, but the nation has yet to adequately value their work. Poo described the situation of one domestic worker who cared for a disabled child 18 hours a day, six days a week for less than $3 an hour—and who was fired without notice, leaving her homeless overnight.

Some 2.5 million domestic workers are vulnerable to such abuse, Poo said.  America does not value care culturally, and such work has been explicitly excluded from labor law since the 1935 National Labor Relations Act was passed without covering farm workers or domestic workers. Poo described the incredible efforts by domestic workers to organize in New York, where

after six years of organizing in New York, they passed the nation’s first statewide domestic workers bill of rights, and now are taking this to other states.