Labor Union Blog

A new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows that over the past 30 years, the top 1 percent of income earners more than doubled their share of the national income pie. According to the Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, that’s a recipe for disaster—not just for the other 99 percent, but for the economy as a whole.

Writing in Vanity Fair this spring, Stiglitz explained the folly of advocating, as many right-wing pundits do, that it’s not the share of the pie but the size of the pie that matters:

That argument is fundamentally wrong. An economy in which most citizens are doing worse year after year—an economy like America’s—is not likely to do well over the long haul.

Stiglitz argued that the resulting stifling of economic opportunity, the waste of talent put a drag on economic recovery. Moreover, he argued:

[M]any of the distortions that lead to inequality—such as those associated with monopoly power and preferential tax treatment for special interests—undermine the efficiency of the economy….perhaps most important, a modern economy requires “collective action”—it needs government to invest in infrastructure, education, and technology.

Earlier this year, Stiglitz joined AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in Washington, D.C., for a forum to mark the release of a Global Unions Task Force report, “Exiting from the Crisis.” [See video.]

In his preface to the report, Stiglitz wrote:

Any economic system has to be graded on its ability to provide sustainable increases in well-being to the vast majority of its citizens.

Among the key proposals suggested by the experts who came together to craft “Exiting from the Crisis”:

• Measuring economic growth in terms of how well it serves the needs of citizens.
• Building sustainable, responsible corporations that recognize their duties to the workers they employ and the communities in which they operate.
• Using fiscal and monetary policy to achieve full employment and raise living standards and making sure workers’ income keeps pace with increases in productivity.

Download “Exiting from the Crisis” here, in PDF format.

In an eye-opening piece on how high-level politics play out behind the closed doors most of us never got to peek behind, National Journal reporter Chris Frates tracks the plays and the players who put together the just-passed, job-killing Korea, Colombia and Panama trade deals.

For those who don’t believe the power and influence of Big Business , Frates’ story will change their minds. It tells the story of how the business community secretly influenced the trade deals.  He writes:

Far outside the public eye, the business community essentially acted as a shadow party to the bilateral talks. Industry lobbyists worked both governments for information, pushed to keep the talks alive, and offered solutions to clear roadblocks and find a middle ground. The industry groups didn’t all have the same agendas—some considered the Colombia pact a must-have priority, while others worried that fights over Colombia and Panama could jeopardize passage of the far bigger deal with Korea. But the business groups formed a united front in pushing for all three deals simultaneously…Almost all of the maneuvering took place in secret, and few of the details ever spilled into the public.

Click here for a longer excerpt from the story (subscription needed for the full article.)

In Oakland, Calif., police used tear gas last night to disperse Occupy Oakland protesters and arrested dozens (see video at left). Occupy Atlanta, Occupy Chicago and protesters in other cities also have been targeted by authorities. In a statement, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called the actions:

a tremendous dishonor to America when the voices for the powerless are suppressed by the powerful—the top 1 percent. We are extremely alarmed by the increasing number of arrests of peaceful protesters across the country and call on elected leaders to stop ordering the police to make these arrests.

Click here for the full statement.

A new exposé, published by Remapping Debate, lifts the veil on how the anti-regulatory, anti-labor line finds its way into media coverage of business, all under the guise of objectivity.

When the Boston Consulting Group, one of the nation’s largest consulting companies, issued a report on U.S. manufacturing in August, it earned a full-page story in the Financial Times, and uncritical mentions in the New York Times and Washington Post. But the report’s cheerful title, “Made in America, Again: Why Manufacturing Will Return to the U.S.,” belied its underlying agenda, say experts interviewed by Remapping Debate’s Mike Alberti—an agenda steeped in a low-wage, anti-regulatory ideology.

In fact, the report actually lauds the declining working conditions endured by employees of U.S. companies as a good thing and a harbinger of why companies may want to consider moving operations back to the United States—particularly to southern states, where anti-labor practices too often reign and living standards are lower than in the rest of the country. From “Made in America“:

The conditions are coalescing for another U.S. resurgence. Rising wages, shipping costs, and land prices—combined with a strengthening renminbi—are rapidly eroding China’s cost advantages. The U.S., meanwhile, is becoming a lower-cost country. Wages have declined or are rising only moderately. The dollar is weakening. The workforce is becoming increasingly flexible. Productivity growth continues.

In other words, employees are working hard for less money, and the right to bargain collectively is being eroded. Nice.

Alberti suggests that BCG tipped its hand at the conclusion of “Made in America:”

The tip-off, for many, is the report’s last sentence: “As long as it provides a favorable investment climate and flexible labor force, the U.S. can look forward to a manufacturing renaissance.”

“Flexible,” as we know, often is a euphemism for a low-wage, no-benfit, nonunionized workforce. Further, despite its title, the report is not a roaring endorsement for returning manufacturing operations to the United States. It’s as much a rationale for moving operations out of China and into countries with even lower standards and labor costs. For his article, Alberti spoke with several experts who confirmed the report’s underlying pro-offshoring agenda:

“The consulting industry has had a huge impact on offshoring in the past,” said Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Hira said the role of consulting firms has long been to identify the easiest ways for firms to profit, and, in the context of globalization, that has meant being at the forefront of the drive to offshore production to low-cost countries, even at the expense of social, environmental, or national interests.

Earlier this year, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) proposed some modest rule changes to streamline and modernize the way union elections are conducted. While those rules are still under review, Republicans on the House Education and Workforce Committee today approved a bill that would add months- or years-long delays to union elections.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) says the Republican bill (H.R. 3094) would “encourage employers to spend thousands of dollars on attorneys to file frivolous appeals to gum up the election process.”

The bill’s clear intention is to wear down workers so that they give up fighting for a better deal.

Miller, who dubs the bill the Election Prevention Act, says:

Its singular goal is to delay and ultimately prevent union representation elections. Its aim is to deny workers the opportunity for a voice at work.

The Republican bill establishes several new waiting periods before an election can go forward. It also gives employers more grounds to appeal pre-election decisions by the NLRB and also allows employers—not workers and the union they wish to join—a larger role in determining who is part of a bargaining unit.

The attack on workers’ rights by House Republicans is nothing new. In September, the House passed a bill that would cripple the NLRB and allow employers to retaliate against workers who exercise their workplace rights. Under the bill, employers would even be able to legally eliminate workers’ job. The legislation is part of the Republican attack against the agency for its issuance of a routine complaint against the Boeing Co. in April. Says Miller:

We have seen that, when the NLRB simply enforces the law on behalf of workers, the House majority raises holy-hell. The agency has been met with unprecedented attempts to interfere with open cases, threatening workers’ constitutional due process rights to a fair trial free from political interference.

The nation’s postal unions and allies are fighting back against proposals to eliminate Saturday mail deliveries—and you can join by signing a petition to your senators and representatives to preserve six-day mail service. Click here to sign the petition.

The Save America’s Postal service campaign is a joint effort of the Letter Carriers (NALC), Postal Workers (APWU), Mail Handlers, an affiliate of the Laborers (LIUNA), and the Rural Letter Carriers.

Over the next several weeks, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, the “super committee,” will produce a plan to reduce the federal deficit. It may include a package of proposals to fix the financial difficulties facing the USPS that could include an end to Saturday deliveries. Earlier this this month, a House committee passed a bill (H.R. 2309) that included $3 billion in cuts to t the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), close facilities, reduce door deliveries by as much as 75 percent and  lead to the layoffs of as many as 120,000 workers.

Last month, thousands of postal workers and their supporters held rallies in nearly 500 locations across the country, protesting the proposed cuts in jobs, postal facilities and Saturday service.

Click here to sign the petition to keep six-day delivery.

In North Carolina, the tobacco industry is running roughshod over workers’ rights—and their most fundamental human rights, according to a recent report, “State of Fear: Human Rights Abuses in North Carolina’s Tobacco Industry,” issued jointly by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee and Oxfam, the global relief organization. FLOC represents more than 6,000 farm workers in the state.

Tobacco farm workers, researchers found, routinely work in blazingly hot fields without access to clean water and contract nicotine-related illnesses because of employers’ refusal to outfit them with the most basic of protective gear such a gloves. Many say they are forced to live in overcrowded facilities infested with rodents and devoid of working showers or toilets. The report traces the deterioration of working conditions for tobacco workers to a 2004 deregulatory law passed by Congress. One in four of the 103 workers interviewed by FLOC, under the guidance of Oxfam researchers, say they receive less than the legally required minimum wage for their labor.

Yet even in this atmosphere of Dickensian working conditions, workers are afraid to form unions. Why? Because nine out of 10 North Carolina tobacco workers are undocumented immigrants, according to the report, and the extreme anti-immigrant measures sweeping legislatures throughout the South have strong advocates among North Carolina lawmakers. (Just last week, a FLOC organizer reported that one of the committee’s leaders was deported after a routine traffic stop.) Adding to workers’ fears, a legislative committee, chaired by state Rep. Frank Iler, is currently studying measures such as the draconian law recently put into effect in Alabama. Iler recently told a local reporter at the Wilmington StarNews:

My personal opinion is that we need to make North Carolina as unwelcome for any illegal alien from wherever they come from.

Among the largest tobacco producers in North Carolina is R.J. Reynolds. As we reported in May:

Late last month, the workers gained another major victory when executives of British American Tobacco (BAT), which owns 42 percent of Reynolds American, agreed to meet with FLOC later this month. This is the first time any corporation with close ties to Reynolds American has agreed to meet with workers.

That meeting has yet to take place. FLOC is applying pressure to Reynolds American Inc. (RAI) by targeting JPMorgan Chase, one of RAI’s major lenders, which cleaned up in the bank bailout. As FLOC President Baldemar Velasquez told us in March:

Chase and the other financial giants made a killing from government bailouts, and now they have turned their backs on the suffering of the taxpayers who came to their rescue.

FLOC has been joined in this effort by the UAW, whose president, Bob King, announced last year that, in solidarity with the farm workers, the UAW divested millions of its dollars from Chase. At that time, King explained:

With my own eyes, I witnessed the squalid conditions farm workers are forced to live and work in. Chase Bank has an opportunity and a social responsibility to bring Reynolds Tobacco to the table to stop this human exploitation.

Last year, International Labor Rights Forum named R.J. Reynolds as one of the worst companies of 2010 in the world, ”selected on the basis of their ties to suppressing workers’ right to organize,” according to the forum’s report.

There were many factors that led up to the April 5, 2010, explosion that killed 29 coal miners at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch (W.Va.) mine, according to a new Mine Workers (UMWA) report on the disaster. But according to the report—”Industrial Homicide“—“there is only one source for all of them:”

A rogue corporation, acting without real regard for mine safety and health law and regulations, that established a physical working environment that can only be described as a bomb waiting to go off.

And that same company established a working environment where, operating through subterfuge, fear and intimidation, management prevented any opportunity for the workers to know the full range of dangerous conditions in the mine, or to effectively protest them even if they did know.

Upper Big Branch was a nonunion mine, but following the explosion miners and their families asked the UMWA to be their designated representative in the investigation. The final Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) report will be released later this year.

The UMWA report says management at Upper Big Branch (UBB) “deliberately flouted” well-established safety and health laws even after the mine was cited multiple times by state and federal agencies.

The only conclusion that can be drawn is that Massey simply did not care if it broke the law. The safety of its employees was not worthy of its concern. The only thing that mattered was getting the coal out.

This attitude was not a creation solely of management at the UBB mine. Far from it. This was a company-wide practice, fomented and directed by those at the highest corporate levels.

In February, Alpha Natural Resources bought Massey Energy for $8.5 billion.

But the report also criticizes both state agencies and the Bush-era federal mine safety administration, saying it was “unconscionable” that they allowed Upper Big Branch to be operated the way it was.

They failed in their responsibilities to be effective and thorough enforcers of the law.

The 154-page, highly detailed and technical report (click here to download) says the powerful blast occurred after a long wall-cutting machine encountered a pocket of methane gas that had built up because of a lack of adequate ventilation. A spark from the machine’s worn cutting bits ignited the methane and the machine’s faulty water sprayers failed to contain it.

The initial blast then encountered a mine atmosphere ladened with highly explosive coal dust that had been allowed to accumulate to dangerous levels—despite citations from both MSHA and the West Virginia Office of Mine, Health Safety and Training.

The dust fueled a blast that was so powerful that it traveled more than seven miles underground, destroying hundreds of ventilation controls and miles of the beltline that carries coal to the surface, and hurled heavy equipment throughout the mine.

The report concludes that Massey Energy “must be held accountable for the death of each of the 29 miners.”

Theirs is not a guilt of omission, but rather, based on the facts publicly available. The Union believes that Massey Energy and its management were on notice of and recklessly tolerated mining conditions so egregious that the resulting disaster constituted a massive slaughter in the nature of an industrial homicide.

Here’s a great video that shows in part how the nation got to the point where inequality is so rampant, CEO greed so unrepentent and Wall Street so not held accountable that people across the nation have taken to the streets—and are staying there.

As Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren says here:

We go with this idea of “Let’s get rid of regulation” and what happens? Late 1980s, savings and loan crisis—should have been a warning. Late 1990s, remember long-term capital management, hedge funds? Should have been a warning. Early 2000s, Enron—should have been a warning. But we let it go and where did we end up? In the biggest crisis since the Great Depression.

H/T to MoveOn.org for featuring this clip from Lance Baxter’s YouTube channel.

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

Working families rallied at the Firefighters Memorial in front of the Cleveland Browns Stadium and distributed football-shaped stickers and 250 pounds of “Vote No on Issue 2″ peanuts to tens of thousands of football fans as they entered the stadium. Issue 2 would repeal S.B. 5, the law passed this spring that takes away the right of public employees to collectively bargain for a middle-class life.

Tom Lally, president of Fire Fighters (IAFF) Local 93, said during Sunday’s event:

“S.B. 5 is a safety issue for citizen and for firefighters, plain and simple. Issue 2 makes it illegal for us to negotiate for enough firefighters to do the job. We will be doing more with less staffing under Senate Bill 5. We are concerned that politicians are risking the safety of citizens and firefighters for political gain. We are asking citizens of Ohio to vote “No” on Issue 2 because if they keep us safe, we will keep them safe.”

Cleveland-area firefighters also canvassed tailgaters to talk with them about the safety concerns that firefighters, police and other safety personnel will face if Issue 2 passes in November. The rally took place the same day the Browns celebrated Safety Forces Day to commemorate firefighters, police and other safety personnel for the work they do each day to protect Cleveland.

For police officers, Issue 2/S.B. 5 is not necessarily about getting new equipment for officers but more about maintaining the equipment that we already have to keep patrol officers safe, said Steve Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrol Association. Loomis currently serves on the Safety Forces Coalition, a statewide group of union leaders that came together in January to fight S.B. 5 and build a united front on the safety issue.

Politicians want to take away the computers in an officer’s car because they don’t understand the value that computer brings.

“I’m here to support ‘No’ on issue 2 because both of my daughters are school teachers,” said Norma Davis, a member of OAPSE/AFSCME who works for the Wickliffe City School system.

There is a lot of misinformation out there on TV and I want to diffuse any confusion about how harmful Issue 2 really is.

Working families will continue to work hard every day through the election, Nov. 8, to get the message out about voting NO on Issue 2/S.B. 5. If you live in Ohio, click here to find out how you can get involved and here to learn how to early vote.

Politicians are trying to balance the budget on the backs of Ohio’s working families,” said Adam Reichman, a member of IAFF local 337 and firefighter in the City of Euclid.

S.B. 5 is nothing more than a power grab by Gov. Kasich to crush unions and all the rights we have fought for in the labor movement.

As firefighters chanted, “Here we go Brownies, here we go,” and “Vote no on Issue 2,” Browns fans gave high-fives, took stickers to show their support, and some even stopped to volunteer before the support, and some even stopped to volunteer before the game started.