Labor Union Blog

Rosa Blumenfeld, an organizer with the Greater Boston Central Labor Council (GBCLC), sends us this report on Occupy Boston actions.

More than 300 union members and protesters at Occupy Boston joined forces on Oct. 13 to demand good jobs and protest the abuses of Wall Street. GBLC Executive Secretary-Treasurer Rich Rogers told the Dewey Square Park crowd that the union movement

applauds the efforts of Occupy Boston to place a spotlight on the imbalance of power in our nation and the role that Wall Street has played in devastating our economy.

Darlene Lombos, executive director of Community Labor United, a coalition of seven unions and eight community groups, told the Occupy Boston protestors:

You have inspired us. There are many of us who have been working for decades for the same things you’re fighting for today. We want to thank you. We are proud of you. We stand with you.

Following the rally, there was a march to a Verizon Wireless store in Boston’s Downtown Crossing area to highlight a current example of corporate greed. Verizon is about to report a $2 billion profits for this quarter while the Electrical Workers (IBEW) and Communication Workers of America (CWA) are still fighting for a contract.

This is a cross-post from Working America.

Right now in Denver, Colo., there is both a jobs and a public health crisis.

Parents are sending their sick children to school. Working adults are unable to take time off and care for elderly parents. Small businesses and taxpayers are spending too much on emergency care. And in restaurants and coffee shops across the city, waitresses and cooks are preparing and serving food while sick.

This fall, the people of Denver have a chance to change all of this by voting ”Yes” on Initiative 300.

Initiative 300 is a very simple proposition:

• For every 30 hours of work, hardworking men and women in Denver can earn one hour of paid sick leave.
• This leave is only usable after 90 days of employment.
• Businesses with 10 or more employees can only accrue a maximum of nine earned sick days, while employees of smaller businesses earn a maximum of five sick days.

This proposition is not partisan or ideological. It is in response to the fact that more than 100,000 Denver workers cannot afford to stay at home when they, or their child gets sick. It is in response to parents having to choose between losing their job and staying home to care for a sick child. It is in response to two out of every five of workers in Denver—including hospital workers, baristas, and food service workers—going into environments and potentially infecting hundreds of others because they can’t afford to miss a day’s wages.

Seniors, who are already facing increased medical costs, are at risk as well. When nursing home workers and other health care professionals work with elderly citizens out of economic necessity, they endanger our most vulnerable—not to mention the workers who don’t have the ability to take time off to care for an elderly relative.

Denver isn’t the only city facing these conditions. Nationally, two out of every three restaurant workers don’t have access to a single day of earned paid sick leave. What’s even more disturbing? An incredible 90 percent of restaurant workers report cooking, preparing and serving food while sick. Not just a little sick either—I’ve heard individuals talk about going into work with incredibly contagious diseases like the flu and H1N1!

It’s no wonder that cities like Seattle and San Francisco and states like Connecticut are passing reasonable earned sick leave provisions. And it’s no wonder that in those cities, earned sick leave laws are receiving support from all sides of the political spectrum. Whether you are a Democrat, Independent or Republican, we’ve all experienced the worry and heartache of taking care of a sick loved one. And I bet neither liberal nor conservative diners want a waiter sneezing in their soup.

I know for a fact that all moms—no matter their political stripes—don’t want to send their child into a school full of sick classmates.

The best news about Initiative 300 is that it’s good for businesses. Studies show that with an earned sick leave provision, between reduced turnover and lower emergency medical costs, Denver businesses will save $1.4 million annually if voters say “Yes” to Initiative 300.

Luckily, we’re finding that Denver citizens support Initiative 300 once they understand it. Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO, has been going to door to door about earned paid sick days and how the measure could help the city. Last week, after knocking on nearly 18,000 doors, they gathered 3,000 postcards from Coloradans in support of paid sick days and a healthier future for our community.

The simple proposition of 1 hour of leave for 30 hours of work is nonpartisan, reasonable, fair and good for Denver. It reflects our shared values of family, responsibility and the drive to make Denver an even better place to do business, go to school and live healthfully. Initiative 300 is good for families, good for public health and good for businesses.

This fall, say yes to a healthy Denver, and vote “Yes” on Initiative 300.

This year’s election in Denver is an all-mail election. In order to have your ballot counted, make sure you mail it in by Thursday, Oct. 27.

Marlene Quinn wants an apology. The fiery, pro-worker Ohio great grandmother had her image and words hijacked then doctored by the extremist groups who are fighting  a citizen veto of a new law that eliminates the collective bargaining rights of 350,000 public employees.

Quinn, whose great-granddaughter, Zoey, was saved from a burning house by Cincinnati fire fighters, first appeared in a television ad urging Ohio voters to vote “No” on Issue 2. If Issue 2 passes it would make permanent Gov. John Kasich’s (R) S.B. 5 that strips workers of their rights. But a “No” vote on Issue 2 repeals the law.

Issue 2 backers lifted Quinn’s footage and distorted it to make it appear as if she was supporting Issue 2.  Says Quinn:

I want an apology, because I did not say that. I said no! How dare them. I didn’t give them permission to do this, they didn’t even ask me! They just stole it and said ‘well she’s just an old lady, she won’t know any better.’ They don’t know this old lady!

More than 30 television stations pulled down the ad. But an apology from Kasich or the anti-worker group behind the doctored ad isn’t forthcoming. Kasich says he has no problem and is “fine” with the pirated and misleading footage. The so-called Building a Better Ohio that stole Quinn’s image and words is now using the controversy as a fundraising tool.

For more Quinn, click here for a series of videos and for more on Issue 2, go to We Are Ohio here.

National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) President Paul Rinaldi says “the most important piece” of a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) study on aviation safety is this: “The [Federal Aviation Administration] FAA has taken several steps to further improve safety at and around airports.”

The GAO study found an increase in the rate of reported runway incursions and other reported incidents of aircraft coming too close to each other. The FAA says a new system of more accurate incident reporting accounts for some of the increase.

As a result of this culture change, the FAA expected to see an increase in reported operational errors. More information will help us find problems and take action before an accident happens, which will help us build an even safer aviation system.

Rinaldi says controllers “are exceptionally proud of our safety record. The GAO reports, ‘the nation’s aviation system is arguably the safest in the world.’ We take that even further: our nation’s aviation system IS the safest in the world.”

He says the past several years NATCA has worked with the FAA and other aviation safety groups on improving runway safety and:

We take this report very seriously, and we are working every day to ensure Americans’ safety in the skies. This includes implementing procedural and technological changes to improve runway safety, collecting more data on safety incidents, finding ways to share usable safety information down to the local facility level and shifting toward risk-based analysis of airborne and surface aviation safety information.

Income inequality has become so severe in this nation that people in Really Important Positions (except for most Republicans in Congress) are starting to take note—and issue warnings.

Saying “income inequality is just getting worse and worse and worse,” James Chanos, president and founder of the New York-based investment firm Kynikos Associates, told Bloomberg this week that the widening gap between rich and poor is reshaping the U.S. economy, leaving it more vulnerable to recurring financial crises and less likely to generate enduring expansions. As Bloomberg paraphrased his comments:

Left unchecked, the decades-long trend toward increasing inequality may condemn Wall Street to a generation of unimpressive returns and even shake social stability….

Separately, Nouriel Roubini, chairman of Roubini Global Economics and economics professor at New York University, published an article yesterday describing “The Instability of Inequality.” In it, Roubini argues that “globalization, unfettered financial capitalism, andredistribution of income and wealth from labor to capital could lead capitalism to self- destruct,” which is why:

Even before the Great Depression, Europe’s enlightened “bourgeois” classes recognized that, to avoid revolution, workers’ rights needed to be protected, wage and labor conditions improved, and a welfare state created to redistribute wealth and finance public goods—education, health care, and a social safety net.

Today, Roubini warned, the United States and many other countries are ignoring these lessons at their peril.

Any economic model that does not properly address inequality will eventually face a crisis of legitimacy. Unless the relative economic roles of the market and the state are rebalanced, the protests of 2011 will become more severe, with social and political instability eventually harming long-term economic growth and welfare.

The incredible tenacity of protesters at Occupy Wall Street actions around the country has ratcheted up this much-needed discussion, one in which even the son of a billionaire sides with the 99 percent. Says Howard Buffet, Warren Buffet’s son:

“There has never been a larger gap between earnings in this country. There has never been a time in my lifetime when the governement is going to cut an incredible amount of programs that support poor people and feed them.”

Following a huge and rapid public outcry that included hundreds of thousands of online petition signatures and phone calls to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office, a threatened clean-up/eviction of Occupy Wall Street protesters was postponed early this morning.

Yesterday afternoon, Bloomberg said the city would use force if necessary to evict the protesters who have been camped in the privately owned Zuccotti Park for nearly a month. He claimed the action was needed to “clean up” the park and that the protesters would be allowed to return, but under strict rules that in effect would shut down the 24/7 protest against Wall Street greed.

As soon as the threat was made public, MoveOn.org, the AFL-CIO and other progressive groups launched a huge online and e-mail campaign to fight back against the eviction. In just a matter of hours, more than 20,000 people signed an AFL-CIO petition calling on Bloomberg to respect the protesters’ First Amendment rights. (Many thanks to everyone who took part!)

Also, New York City Central Labor Council (NYCLC) President Vincent Alvarez met yesterday with Bloomberg and urged the mayor to respect the protesters’ rights and allow them to remain in the park.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka denounced the threatened closing of the park, saying,

It is clear that what is being threatened in Zuccotti Park is nothing but silencing the voices and stomping out the rights of Americans. The AFL-CIO stands with Occupy Wall Street and the 99 percent of Americans just trying to level the massively unequal playing field.

Representatives from the real estate company that owns the park and Occupy Wall Street met late last night and early this morning and reached an agreement to develop a clean-up plan on their own that would not include forcible eviction. Occupy Wall Streeter Tyler Combelic told CNN:

We’re extremely excited. This is an example of what people power can do.

The protesters have been cleaning the park since they began their action and have formed on Occupy Wall Street Sanitation Operation. Says New York City Councilmen Charles Barron:

You want to clean up something? Clean up these crooks on Wall Street.

In other news from Occupy Wall Street, National Nurses United (NNU) will set up a first aid station in Zuccotti Park  to provide basic medical assistance to the protestors. RN volunteers from NNU will staff the first aid station. The union says it will set up similar first aid stations in other cities where the protests are growing.

Steve Stallone, secretary of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, sends us this from a San Francisco Occupy Wall Street demo.

Chanting “We are the 99 percent” and calling for democracy and economic justice, participants in Occupy Wall Street West targeted foreclosure champion Wells Fargo bank in recent days, the second big demonstration in San Francisco in two weeks. The action came as the movement is gaining momentum and spontaneously combusting coast to coast, throughout the heartland and in the reddest of states.

Gathering near the foot of Market Street at the Federal Reserve Building, more than 500 “occupiers” marched noisily through the financial district. The San Francisco action reflected the recent trend in New York and around the country—the presence of union members, their colors and banners ablaze in the dim early morning light, swelling the ranks of the young, bold occupiers. Union members, including teachers, janitors, longshoremen and telecommunications and electrical workers and many more, were welcomed as natural allies.

As the march approached the Wells Fargo headquarters, occupiers quickly blocked the entrances on all four sides of the bank building before workers arrived in the morning. The police moved to the back alley entrance, arresting almost a dozen blockaders—who were cited, released and back at the action within an hour.

Protesters continued unfazed, holding with rallies at the two main entrances of the bank. They posted foreclosure notices on the doors, claiming the trillions Wells Fargo has stolen in foreclosures and cost communities because of the resulting destruction of neighborhoods and cities is now due and payable.

Oakland resident, Mateo Nube said he was there for, “Everyone who’s struggling to make ends meet, and who’s in one of those foreclosures maybe because they lost their job recently or they’re fighting high health care bills.”

They should get to stay in their homes. It’s unconscionable that owners are getting big new bonuses when people are losing their homes.

Maria Poblet of Causa Justa/Just Cause (CJJC), a multi-racial grassroots housing and immigrant rights organization said “Wells Fargo has been the poster child for discriminatory lending, especially targeting people of color and low-income communities in California.”

Banks are a clear example of how corporations have evaded taxes and profited from the current economic crisis, while regular people like our members are struggling just to survive.

In response to the media’s constant and dismissive drumbeat that the movement doesn’t know what it wants, the occupiers listed specific demands:

• Banks, corporations and the rich must pay their fair share.
• Wells Fargo must implement an immediate moratorium on foreclosures.
• Wells Fargo must divest from private prisons.
• Wells Fargo must cease predatory loans.

The police kept up a large and visible presence in the area, as if this movement has ever been anything but completely nonviolent and disciplined. But they stood back, mostly just directing traffic around the crowds and not moving in for more arrests.

Kevin Christensen of the California Labor Federation’s Labor’s Edge blog contributed to this report.

When housing prices began to take a dive, revenues to state and local governments plummeted. Housing construction shuddered to a halt, creating ranks of unemployed workers who began drawing unemployment benefits rather than paying local taxes on their previously middle-class salaries. The businesses of suppliers and  service-providers to contractors were forced into downturn. And many states continued to cut taxes, causing a perfect storm of budget woes for the states.

Yet who got the blame for this economic morass? Public-sector employees and their unions, who have been made the scapegoats for a budget crisis that had nothing to do with them—convenient targets for the right-wing forces that seek an end to unionization in all sectors.

“The Wrong Target: Public Sector Unions and State Budget Deficits,” a new study released today by the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California,Berkeley, makes clear the real causes of the state- and local-government budget crisis. Using data compiled from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, authors Sylvia Allegretto, Ken Jacobs and Laurel Lucia show that when the impact of the housing bust is added into tables that purport to link public-sector labor contracts with state-level budget crises, public workers’ compensation becomes statistically insignificant. (Study is available here in PDF format.)

The findings are especially significant in light of the Issue 2 ballot measure on which Ohioans will vote next month when they decide whether to accept or reject the anti-labor bill, S.B. 5, that passed the Ohio legislature earlier this year. The bill would sharply curtail collective bargaining for public-sector workers and eliminates binding arbitration for the settlement of disputes.

On a conference call with reporters today, hosted by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the authors made the following observations:

• Despite fear-mongering, the size of the public sector has not grown in recent years, neither in terms of public-sector employment levels nor in public sector-compensation.
• State spending on compensation of public-sector workers has actually declined—falling steadily between 1992 and 2002 and remaining stable from 2002 to 2009.
• When compared with workers of comparable education levels in the private sector, public-sector workers are under-compensated.
• States with higher union density actually employ fewer public workers than those with low union density.

Talking with reporters, author Allegretto expressed rueful astonishment at the need for her own study:

The way I often talked about this paper as we were writing it was, it was the “Duh” paper. I mean, really? We have to write a paper to basically show that this $8 trillion housing bust that was the impetus for the Great Recession—that to [not take stock of that] in this debate [about state budget crises] was pretty remarkable.

Joining the authors on the call was Amy Hanauer, executive director of Policy Matters Ohio. We asked her if she thought the message was getting to Ohio voters that the housing bust was to blame for their state’s budget woes, and not the public workers whose bargaining rights they’re set to vote on. Hanauer said:

Most polls show Ohioans favor retaining collective bargaining rights, by a small double-digit margin. The Occupy Wall Street protests are having a little echo effect here in Ohio.  I think people don’t want [public-sector] workers to be devalued….Whether people connect it to the housing crisis—you know, I think that some people do, and some don’t. These are complicated issues.

Allegretto followed up with this comment:

The attack on pubic-sector workers—it turned worker against worker….I think workers now are starting to understand now [thinking], “I shouldn’t be so angry that public-sector workers have what is really the last bastion of a solid, middle-class, quality job—that have health care, that have retirement benefits. Private-sector workers are now saying, “Why don’t I have those things?”

Allegretto also credited the Occupy Wall Street movement with calling attention to the wealth inequality that’s been growing for decades.

As their libraries are closing, as their parks are closing, as their kids’ teachers are being laid off, as schools are closing, as school class sizes are getting larger, people are starting to understand that public-sector workers play a crucial role in the community….

Mike Matthews, president of the Kanawha Valley (W.Va.) Labor Council, knows why more and more people are taking to the streets and speaking out against Big Banks, Wall Street and congressional Republicans who are standing in the way of job creation.

Everybody’s frustrated, especially when you don’t have work.

Wednesday in Charleston, union and community activists marched and rallied as part of the AFL-CIO’s America Wants to Work National Week of Action to promote a real jobs agenda. See more from WSAZ-TV.

In Fort Collins, Colo., several dozen gathered to highlight one of the most effective and quick ways put Americans back to work—rebuilding the infrastructure, including the states’ 128 bridges that are rated in poor condition. Says Colorado AFL-CIO Executive Director Mike Cerbo:

America is still suffering from the worst job crisis since the Great Depression, yet our infrastructure is still crumbling—we can put people back to work tomorrow.

In Eau Claire, Wis., union members and student and community activists held a wake for the death of good jobs. They also expressed support for the Occupy Wall Street movement that is growing across the nation. Mark Slepica told the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram:

I just want to show solidarity for the movement that’s beginning all across the U.S. It’s not just a Wall Street thing. It’s not just a big cities thing. I hope that people see that their neighbors are part of this.

This afternoon in Boston, union members from the Greater Boston Labor Council are joining in solidarity with the Occupy Boston protesters in Dewey Square to demand that Congress act to create jobs and financial institutions invest some of the trillions they are sitting on into job creation.

In Baltimore tonight, hundreds of working families are expected to attend a townhall forum on joblessness and its devastating impact on the local economy and on communities of color.  The town hall is sponsored by the Metropolitan Baltimore Council of AFL-CIO Unions in coalition with the NAACP, BUILD and Ministerial Alliance.

The National Week of Action runs through Oct. 16. Click here to find an America Wants to Work action near you. You also can sign an America Wants to Work petition to Congress here. Follow the action on Twitter with the hashtag #want2work. Find an Occupy Wall Street event near you here. You can share Occupy Wall Street events on Facebook here.

A new study suggests one path to helping people struggling in today’s economy find their way into the middle class, via Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) for large-scale construction projects. Among the most successful PLAs, the Cornell University study found, are those that incorporate Community Workforce Agreements born of partnerships between community organizations, unions and employers. Community workforce provisions require the hiring of local residents on construction projects, and often target specific populations, including low-income people, women and veterans.

The best of these programs, according to the report, incorporate paid apprenticeships for those who have never worked before in the building trades, which add the longer-term bonus of helping to create a skilled workforce in a given community.

Among the report’s key findings, according to a summary from American Rights at Work:

• Of the 185 PLAs analyzed for the report, 97 percent incorporated one or more community workforce provisions—most often including goals for hiring local area residents and utilizing apprenticeship programs.
• 139 PLAs included Helmets to Hardhats provisions to promote the entry of veterans into the construction industry.
• 103 PLAs included provisions to encourage hiring of women and minorities.
• 45 PLAs included provisions for employment and career opportunities for economically disadvantaged populations.

Kimberly Freeman Brown, executive director of American Rights at Work, contends that if President Obama’s jobs bill, currently stalled in Congress, were to include such community workforce agreements as those included in the PLAs studied by Cornell, the $105 billion dedicated to construction projects in the plan could yield about 525,000 good jobs, including 114,000 paid apprenticeships. The Americans Rights at Work release says that some 70,000 of the apprentice slots created by such agreements could be filled by workers of color, as well as thousands of women, veterans and low-income residents.

Freeman Brown explains:

Despite creating good jobs that benefit all Americans, PLAs continue to get assailed by special interests who embrace a “race to the bottom” business model. As growing income inequality cripples our local communities, and our military veterans are rewarded for their service with a trip to the unemployment line, we can’t afford to let attacks on a critical economic development tool like PLAs succeed.

The report, “Community Workforce Provisions in Project Labor Agreements: A Tool for Building Middle-Class Careers,” issued by the Cornell University ILR School, was co-authored by ILR’s Maria Figueroa, Labor and Industry Research director; Jeff Grabelsky, Construction Industry Program director; and research associate Ryan Lamare. A PDF version of the report can be downloaded here.