Labor Union Blog

Deborah Dion with the Ohio AFL-CIO field program sends us this.

Machinists (IAM) President Thomas Buffenbarger electrified hundreds of working families and community activists in Cincinnati yesterday when he spoke about the urgent need to mobilize working families to get out the vote to defeat Issue 2/Senate B 5. As Buffenbarger told the crowd:

Issue 2/SB 5 is a deliberate attack on the collective bargaining rights of 360,000 Ohioans. SB 5 deprives workers of their rights and their abilities to seek and maintain the great standard of living that all Americans strive for.

Following the start of early voting in Ohio this week, Communications Workers (CWA) President Larry Cohen also traveled to Ohio, going door to door with Ohio AFL-CIO President Tim Burga to get out the vote. To find out information on how to early vote, click here.

Buffenbarger addressed the attempts by Kasich and his political allies to confuse Ohioans about the real consequences of Issue 2/SB 5.

Don’t be fooled by the rhetoric you’re going to see on television, or the words you’ll hear from the politicians mouth during this campaign. what is right for your family and vote NO on issue 2.  Preserve the freedoms we fought so long and hard for.  One of those freedoms, one of those civil rights, is the right to collectively bargain.

The IAM represents 9,000 members across Ohio and union leaders are doing everything they can to mobilize members to go door to door, make phone calls, and talk with their co-workers about voting NO on Issue 2/SB 5 on Election Day, Nov. 8.

Click here to find out how you can get involved in the fight to defeat Issue 2/SB 5.

A new study finds that defined-benefit pension plans are not only preferred by state employees, but  more cost efficient for state governments than defined-contribution plans like 401(k)s. 

The report, “Decisions, Decisions: Retirement Plan Choices for Public Employees and Employers“ by the National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS), studied seven states that offer both defined-benefit and defined-contribution plans to workers. It also looked at two states, Nebraska and West Virginia, that switched from defined-benefit plans to defined-contribution for new employees–only to switch back to traditional pensions because they were more cost efficient for the state and the workers.   

Ilana Boivie, one of the study’s authors says:

Employers understand that pensions remain the most cost-effective way to fund a retirement benefit, and that switching from pensions to individual accounts can drive up costs for taxpayers. These economic facts coupled with strong employee preferences for pensions suggest that public employers are unlikely to mimic the trend away from pensions that has occurred in the private sector.

Click here for the full report.

Virginia Republican Rep. Eric Cantor’s depiction of Occupy Wall Street protests as “growing mobs” drew an appropriate response from White House spokesman Jay Carney today. Saying he sensed “a little hypocrisy unbound here,” Carney went on to say that

what we’re seeing on the streets of New York is a an expression of democracy. I think I remember how Mr. Cantor described protests of the tea party–I can’t understand how one man’s mob is another man’s democracy.

That is, when members of the so-called tea party shouted down anyone who opposed them in congressional townhall meetings, Cantor said nary a word about a mob gone awry. In fact, he supported them.

CWA President Larry Cohen helps get out the vote in Ohio.

Deborah Dion with the Ohio AFL-CIO field program sends us this.

Yesterday, Communications Workers (CWA) President Larry Cohen and Ohio AFL-CIO President Tim Burga joined hundreds of union members from AFSCME, APWU, BCTGM, Bricklayers, CWA, FOP, IAFF, IBEW, OCSEA, OPBA, Plumbers & Pipefitters, SOAR, TWU, UFCW, USW, and Working America and community activists at a rally in Columbus to ask them to stand up to Gov. John Kasich’s anti-middle class agenda by getting their co-workers, families, and neighbors out to vote NO on Issue 2/Senate Bill 5. Said Cohen:

I’m happy to be here in Ohio today with my CWA members and all the other unions that came out to get active and go door-to-door or make phone calls to talk to their neighbors about what harm Issue 2/SB 5 will do to all of Ohio’s working families. We have to rise up, get active, and not let them strip away our bargaining rights. Public and private sector workers need to stick together, work together, and beat [Issue] 2 and then push for the day when all workers have rights to bargain collectively in Ohio.

Cohen’s visit comes as Ohioans got there first chance on Oct. 4, when early voting started, to vote NO on Issue 2/SB 5. To find out information on how to early vote, click here. Said Burga:

This is a fight we must win to help keep the anti-worker politicians and corporate extremists at bay and to spring forward with a new movement for working families and the middle class.

After the rally, working families and activists joined Cohen in going door-to-door, ultimately knocking on nearly 5,000 doors to talk to Columbus voters about voting NO on Issue 2/SB 5. Workers also phone banked at the Ohio AFL-CIO and made thousands of calls to get the message out.

Phone banking and door-knocking to defeat Issue 2/SB 5 will continue through Election Day. Click here now to find out how you can get involved.

Project labor agreements offer a pathway to the middle class by providing job opportunities to low-income communities, minorities, veterans and others, according to a new study by Cornell University’s Industrial and Labor Relations School (ILR).

The study, Community Workforce Provisions in Project Labor Agreements: A Tool for Building Middle-Class Careers, examined 185 project labor agreements around the country. It found that 97 percent contained community workforce provisions that are designed to open job opportunity doors and career training for residents in the communities where the construction projects take place.

Project labor agreements are pre-hire agreements between labor and management that require all construction jobs be filled by local workers, include diversity requirements, establish wages and work rules covering overtime, working hours and dispute resolution and ensure that safety guidelines on the job site are enforced.

AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD) President Mark H. Ayers says:

The Cornell report confirms and illuminates the “untold story” of PLAs. Not only are PLAs an effective project management tool that delivers “on time, on budget”‘ results…but they are extremely effective at providing job and career training opportunities for historically disadvantaged communities. The bottom line, as exemplified by this report, is that PLAs work.

Click here for the full report.

Beginning Monday, Oct. 10, the AFL-CIO’s America Wants to Work initiative will bring working people together in hundreds of events through Oct. 16 to demand action from Congress to promote a real jobs creation agenda.

Click here to find an America Wants to Work action near you next week and here for information on the Oct. 12 America Wants to Work National Teach-In. You also can sign an America Wants to Work petition to Congress here. Follow the action on Twitter with the hashtag #want2work .

Monday in Raleigh, N.C., worker activists will light hundreds of luminaries to highlight the state’s 1.2 million jobless and low wage workers who need good jobs. Later in the week, they will hold accountability actions at the home offices of Rep. Renne Ellmers (R) and Rep. Sue Myrick (R) who campaigned on promises to create jobs, but instead are playing political games and not focusing on jobs legislation.

The Washington State Labor Council and the King County Labor Council will join with the Occupy Wall Seattle—an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement. In message to the protestors, labor leaders said:

Labor, youth, seniors, the poor, and immigrants — the 99 percent — must raise their voices and call the question on what type of society we want to live in. It is time for us to create an economy and a political system that is based on a concept of shared prosperity.

During the week of action, Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA) will co-host a forum in Las Vegas on jobs housing with the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

Says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:

Hundreds of thousands of people are standing up together by joining in this week of action and they will continue to call for passage of President Obama’s American Jobs Act and a just economy—and they’re not going away. They’ll be back and back and back until lawmakers finally listen. Every elected leader will be held accountable for creating the jobs we need and putting America back to work.

The Big Banks still don’t get it. Bank of America recently announced that it will start charging its customers $5 per month to use their debit cards. Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase are considering similar fees on their customers.

For many workers, debit cards have replaced credit cards as a more affordable way to make purchases with their money. Unlike credit cards that carry high interest rates on their balances, debit card transactions transfer money directly from customers’ bank accounts like writing a check.

The Big Banks claim that these new fees are necessary because the Federal Reserve cut the amount that banks can charge merchants each time their customers swipe a debit card. These so-called “swipe fees” are passed on to customers in the form of higher prices.

In reality, Bank of America is hurting for revenue because of its colossal losses due to the financial crisis. Last year, Bank of America lost $5.4 billion and as a result, the bank didn’t pay any federal income taxes. This is after the federal government bailed out Bank of America with a $45 billion TARP loan.

The good news is that there are plenty of credit unions and community banks that offer customers no-fee debit cards. Ironically, Bank of America may end up making even less money with these new debit card fees if they lose customers or their customers start paying with checks and cash.

For the 99 percent of us who are tightening our belts to survive, Bank of America’s debit card fee grab is one more sign that our financial system is working against us. Shame on Bank of America for putting its bottom line ahead of its customers’ needs.

More than 800 Occupy Wall Street protests have sprung up across the nation, from Washington, D.C., to yes, Occupy Missoula (Mont.). While Republican Rep. Eric Cantor has called the protestors “mobs,” President Obama said yesterday the protests show a “broad-based frustration” among Americans about the U.S. financial system. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is in New York City today to meet with Occupy Wall Street protestors. He brought along bagels and water for the protestors, and since he’s a big reader, he first stopped by the ”library” at Occupy Wall Street (see video).

The U.S. economy added just 103,000 jobs in September and the nation’s unemployment rate remained at 9.1 percent, according to the latest figures released this morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data  out this morning. Some 45,000 of those jobs, however, reflected Verizon workers’ return to work following a strike. According to Economic Policy Institute (EPI) economist Heidi Shierholz, at the current rate of job creation, “the unemployment rate will soon begin to rise again.”

We are mired in high unemployment with miserably low job growth.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said the jobs figures offer all the evidence lawmakers need to pass the President’s American Jobs Act.

The solutions to put our economy back on track are not fiscal austerity, bad trade deals and cuts to core middle class programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  We have real solutions at hand:  Putting people to work to fix our roads, bridges, schools, transit and other basic national systems that also need work; providing aid to states to prevent the layoffs that are dragging down the economy; directly hiring people who need work in hard-hit local communities; and investing in our manufacturing to make things in America again.

September’s slight increase in jobs follows August’s bleak report which initially showed no jobs were added to the nation’s battered economy. The August figures were revised to reflect a 57,000 increase in jobs.

The report on the unchanged jobless rate also comes at time when congressional Republicans continue to play political games rather than focus on legislation to create jobs and as they the vow to block President Obama’s American Jobs Act. 

Some 14 million workers remain unemployed, but a total of some 26 million Americans are unemployed, underemployed or have stopped looking for work. The number of long-term jobless (more than 27 weeks) was 6.2 million or 44.6 percent of the total jobless.

Click here for the full report.

In July, 11 religious leaders were arrested for holding “pray-in” in the Capitol Rotunda protesting federal budget cuts and calling on Congress to pass a budget to meet the needs of the poor, unemployed, children, seniors  and others threatened by the cuts.

On Tues., Oct. 11, they will gather again shortly before they are due in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., to answer the charges. The faith leaders and other activists will meet at 8 a.m. on the steps of the court building at 500 Indiana Ave. N.W., and hold a brief prayer service before entering the court.

Several Republicans backing the budget cuts claimed that the poor and others wouldn’t be effected because religious groups would pick up the slack.  Rev. Dr. Welton Gaddy of Interfaith Alliance told Politico that notion was “sheer fantasy.”

I’ve heard some say, for example, that all of these cuts can be compensated as the religious community picks up the weight and needs. That is sheer fantasy. We are already carrying a huge burden of helping people who need help and it’s time for government to step up.