Labor Union Blog

Nearly 400 flight Attendants at Omni Air International voted overwhemingly—by an 83 percent margin—to join the Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA).

Omni Air flight attendant Mya Grap, interm president of the AFA-CWA Omni unit, says:

We love our work and we want to make it better. We are going to make the most out of this opportunity and make a big difference for our future….Omni Flight Attendants make great contributions to the success of our carrier and to our country through our work with the U.S. military.

AFA-CWA President Veda Shook says, “We look forward to the contributions Omni Flight Attendants will bring to our union and stand beside them as they work to advance their careers.”

Based in Tulsa, Okla., Omni Air operates international and domestic passenger charters and also provides cargo and troop airlift for the U.S. military.

Today, AFGE members who work for the Social Security Administration (SSA) and their allies are staging informational pickets outside some 140 Social Security offices around the nation. They are protesting huge proposed budget cuts that would severely impact services to the elderly, disabled and children.

Joining the AFGE members are activists from the Alliance for Retired Americans, the Strengthen Social Security campaign and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

The cuts would mean many of the agency’s 1,500 field offices would be forced to close, phone calls would go unanswered and benefit applications and other critical workloads would become seriously backlogged, resulting in delayed and incorrect benefit payments. Says Witold Skwierczynski, president of AFGE’s Council of Field Operations Locals:

Cutting Social Security’s budget at a time that record baby boomers are seeking benefits is another example of bad Washington politics.  These cuts will only punish Americans who count on Social Security and Medicare by adding to backlogs and limiting assistance for our seniors, the disabled and families that have lost a parent or spouse.

Congress has proposed reductions of as much as $882 million under President Obama’s request for Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 and the FY 2011 funding was nearly $1 billion under Obama’s request. Because of that, says AFGE, SSA implemented a hiring freeze and laid off 3,500 workers.

In addition, more than 300 contact stations were closed, eliminating in-person services in many rural and remote sites.  SSA indefinitely suspended mailing Social Security statements, without advance notice to the public, eliminating an important link between young workers and the benefits they will receive when they retire.

Meanwhile, the so-called “Super Committee” on the federal deficit is about a month away from its deadline and Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts are on the table.

Yesterday, the coalition Strengthen Social Security released a report showing that in just the 11 states represented by the senators and representatives on the committee, the proposed cuts  that have been reported would affect more than 60 million people and cost their states’ economies more than $620 billion. Says Ed Coyle, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans:

The American people oppose any cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.  Our elected officials need to know that if they ignore this message, they do so at their own peril. This fall, as the Super Committee completes it work, the Alliance for Retired Americans will continue to educate and mobilize seniors and people of all ages on the need to strengthen—not cut—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Asian Americans constitute the fasting-growing racial segment of the U.S. population, according to a new report by the Asian America Center for Advancing Justice (AACAJ), but are under-represented among voters. In “Community of Contrasts: Asian Americans in the United States” (PDF), AACAJ notes that only 55 percent of Asian Americas who are eligible to register to vote have done so, and of those who have, 86 percent cast ballots.

The report, co-authored for AACJA by members of its constituent organizations, the Asian American Justice Center and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, sheds light on a complex category of people often misrepresented through stereotypes. For instance, while Asian Americans are well-represented among the ranks of the educated and professional classes, certain ethnic groups, such as Hmong and Cambodian immigrants, also rank among the nation’s poorest.

The AFL-CIO constituency group, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), is working to mobilize Asian Americans to play an active role in the political process. Jenny Ho, secretary-treasurer for the D.C. Chapter of APALA, and a labor economist with AFSCME, reported in May on APALA’s efforts to rally small businessowners to oppose Ohio’s anti-labor bill, SB 5, which is up for referendum on the Nov. 8 ballot as Issue 2. Ho reported:

We reached out to small local businesses who understood that slashing wages and benefits creates a downward spiral detrimental to the local economy…Taking part in such critical coalition-building activities reinforced my conviction in the power of community partnerships.

“Communities of Contrast” also highlights the benefits of union membership for Asian Americans:

• From 2003 to 2007, Asian American workers who were unionized earned 14 percent more than nonunionized Asian American workers.
• Some 12 percent of Asian Americans are in unions [including Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders], a slightly higher rate than workers overall (11 percent).

As Jenny Ho noted here last May:

There are some 800,000 Asian Pacific American (APA) workers represented by public-sector unions and recent research revealed that APA workers and their families depend on the wage and benefit protections that unionization brings. The majority of APA workers are immigrant workers who look to unions as the first line of defense against unfair employment practices.

The Dream Act, as noted here by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, would allow a path to citizenship for immigrants who were brought to the United States as children by undocumented parents. And according to the new report, one in 10 of the young people who would qualify for legalization through the DREAM Act is Asian American.

“Community of Contrasts: Asian Americans in the United States,” 2011 is available for download here in a PDF file.

Brenda Loya in AFL-CIO Media Affairs sends us this from North Carolina, where she is on a fact-finding trip to witness the brutal conditions endured by tobacco workers.

We joined a diverse delegation of 25 activists, students, labor and community leaders and traveled to farm labor camps in Dudley, N.C.., to witness firsthand the appalling and abusive conditions of tobacco farm workers.

Our journey began with a visit to the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), where we learned about a recent report, “State of Fear: Human Rights Abuses in North Carolina’s Tobacco Industry,”  that brings light to the tobacco industry’s impact on the human rights of farmworkers in the fields of North Carolina. Issued jointly by FLOC and Oxfam America, the report presented human right violations that we would later witness.

We drove 40 minutes into the country to visit labor camps where farmworkers live while they harvest tobacco to supply companies like RJ Reynolds, one of the richest corporations in U.S. agriculture—in fact, one of the largest tobacco corporations in the world, with annual profits of over $2 billion.

We what saw was never to be imagined. When the workday ends, farm workers—men, women and children—returned to grim camps, often overcrowded shacks once considered chicken coops and horse stables. They are housed in conditions that clearly violate internationally recognized living standards.

We saw mattresses that are dirty, wet from the leaky roof, or missing entirely. Workers shared stories about infestations of bedbugs, roaches and other vermin. We saw nonfunctional showers and toilets. With lack of ventilation, workers sleep in overcrowded rooms. Kitchens and access to healthy, nourishing food is non-existent. Workers endure these inhumane conditions out of fear of losing the jobs they desperately need to provide for their families—jobs with sub-poverty wages that threaten their lives on a daily basis.

It’s an appalling reality. The climate of fear is perpetuated by the tobacco industry which exploits the farmworkers, forcing them to live under conditions that no one should have to bear and denying them a voice in making changes.

Despite the odds, workers are joining together to form a union. Says FLOC President Baldemar Velasquez:

The job of unions is to organize the unorganized. Workers are workers regardless of documented status. Workers deserve to have rights; they deserve working visas with labor rights and justice. Once workers see and feel justice, a fire is ignited that cannot and will not be extinguished it.

Our delegation represented a dozen progressive labor and community organizations including the AFL-CIO, two AFL-CIO constituency groups, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) and the A. Phillip Randolph Institute (APRI) and the Hispanic National Bar Association and Duke University.

Teresa Casertano in the AFL-CIO Organizing Department’s Global Campaigns section sends us this report.

Some 50 leaders from communications and information and technology unions around the world took time out from a global conference to sign a letter to Deustche Telecom CEO Rene Obermann, demanding that Deutsche Telecom end its assault on workers’ rights at T-Mobile USA. T-Mobile USA, the largest Deutsche Telekom subsidiary, is waging a vicious anti-union campaign against workers who have chosen to join the Communications Workers of America (CWA).

Strongly objecting to DT’s behavior in the United States, the leaders stated:

Today we demand that Deutsche Telekom end its systematic messaging assault against T-Mobile workers who choose to participate in union organizing. We also demand that DT take concrete steps to demonstrate respect for workers’ rights by implementing a policy in which management agrees not to oppose the organizing efforts of T-Mobile USA workers and to allow the workers the freedom to participate in union activities without fear of reprisals or job loss.

Participants at last week’s UNI Global Union ICTS global conference in Mexico City also pledged to send an e-mail to Deutsche Telekom calling on the corporation to put an end to T-Mobile USA’s union-busting behavior. (You can send an e-mail to Obermann telling him to demand that T-Mobile USA stop bullying workers and agree to end all interference in their workers’ decision to join CWA. Click here.)

The more than 150 trade union leaders attending the conference from around the world pledged to support the fight to end union-busting at Deutsche Telekom’s subsidiaries outside of Germany.

The union leaders who represented nearly 60 unions, also endorsed a solidarity motion demanding Deutsche Telekom end its double standard of respecting union rights at home but not abroad. In the motion, union leaders said they will demand that the German government, which owns 32 percent of Deutsche Telekom stock, intervene to stop the union-busting and will lobby the Germany government, socially responsible investors and Deutsche Telekom customers to remind the company of its global responsibilities.

“We Expect Better,” the global campaign for union rights at Deutsche Telekom, is supported by UNI Global Union, ver.di, CWA, the AFL-CIO and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

AFL-CIO Field Communications staffer Cathy Sherwin sends us this report.

When Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker headed over to Iowa to raise money for the right-wing special interest group, the Heritage Foundation, union members and Occupy Des Moines protesters were there to greet him. A crowd of more than 200 filled the sidewalk outside the fundraiser: teachers and jobless Iowans, construction workers and retirees, community activists and families with children.

Joining the crowd, Iowa Federation of Labor President Ken Sagar talked with reporters about why this “Welcome Walker” protest was so important.

Gov. Walker needs to understand that we recognize what he’s done to working people and the middle class in Wisconsin and we don’t need that here in Iowa. We don’t need to destroy jobs, we need to create jobs.

Inside the private event, Iowa’s Gov. Terry Branstad seems to have been listening intently to Walker. Branstad told KCCI television news that the protesters are misunderstanding Walker. Asked about the Iowans outside the hotel calling out Walker for his union-busting, Branstad said, “I think that is an unfair and inappropriate characterization.”

Maybe not a surprising assessment from the Iowa governor, considering that collective bargaining was under direct attack in Iowa last session, when teachers, firefighters and nurses were at risk of losing their basic rights at work. A slim Democratic majority in the state senate was enough to stop the bill last session, but holding onto that majority means a a worker-friendly candidate must win a critical race for state senate in a Nov. 8 special election.

Many in the crowd outside of the Walker/Heritage Foundation fundraiser have been volunteering in that state senate race. Local union members have been knocking doors for Liz Mathis in the 18th district to stop the attacks on collective bargaining for public workers by the GOP-controlled House and Branstad.

Check out our new video from the Occupy Wall Street movement and click here to go to our We Are the 99% site to share your photos, video and stories from Occupy Wall Street actions in your community. Click here to find an Occupy Wall Street event near you.

The former director of security at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch (W.Va.) mine  was found guilty in federal court of lying to federal agents and destroying documents sought by investigators looking into the deadly blast. Twenty-nine  miners were killed in the 2010 explosion.

Hughie Elbert Stover faces up to 25 years in prison after being convicted on two felony counts of making a false statement and trying to cover up records in a federal investigation.

At press conference following yesterday’s verdict, U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin said:

This will send a very clear message that this is way too important an investigation to obstruct. We need to get to the bottom of what circumstances led to this explosion and who was responsible.

Click here and here to read more on the trial and verdict from the Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward.

Also yesterday, the Mine Workers (UMWA) released its report on the blast, “Industrial Homicide,” that called Massey “A rogue corporation, acting without real regard for mine safety and health law and regulations.”  Click here for more.

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.)