Labor Union Blog

Union members, Occupy protestors and our allies rallied for passage of a Robin Hood tax on Wall Street at Lafayette Park today.

Taking the stage in Lafayette Park across from the White House in front of nearly 1,500 union members and Occupy D.C., supporters, a not-quite  Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner look alike vowed “Never, Never, Never” to impose a Robin Hood or financial speculation tax on Wall Street.

He then launched into nearly undecipherable litany of financial jargon, before German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who supports such tax, snatched the microphone away and accused Geithner of spouting “Avant garde financial psychobabble.”

The tongue-in-cheek skit was a reenactment of a real press conference in Cannes with Merkel, Geithner, and France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, who also supports a Robin Hood tax. It kicked off the Washington, D.C., rally in support of a financial speculation tax on banks and financial institution to create jobs and rebuild the economy that Wall Street broke. Actions are also scheduled in Los Angeles and San Francisco too.

Earlier today, nurses from National Nurses United, (NNU), held a press conference in Cannes calling for adoption of a Robin Hood tax. The leaders of the world’s top economies—known as the G-20—are meeting there and many of the G-20 leaders support such a tax, but the United States does not.

Yesterday, when a financial speculation tax was introduced in Congress, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who is Cannes for the G-20 meeting and meetings with labor leaders from those nations, said:

Reckless Wall Street gambling has cost Americans trillions in lost wages, savings and household wealth. It is time to put Wall Street to work rebuilding Main Street with a financial speculation tax to create jobs, rein in speculation and lay the groundwork for long-term economic prosperity.

At the Washington rally, Karen Higgins, an ICU nurse at the Boston Medical Center, who is co-president of National Nurses United, said a Robin Hood tax on Wall Street

will put us back on the road to reclaiming Main Street…Its day has arrived.

Metropolitan Washington AFL-CIO President Joslyn Williams said the financial speculation tax was a message to Wall Street.

You put us in this mess and now we’re going to tax you Wall Street, to get us out the mess you put us in.

While the crowd chanted “Heal America, Tax Wall Street,” 11-year-old Amaya Trujillo sat on a park bench near the rear of the large and loud crowd, barely peeking over her sign calling for a Robin Hood tax because “It’s About My Future.”

The Mansfield, Ohio, youngster was visiting her grandmother, Karen See, a member of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW). When asked if she thought that being at the rally would make a difference and get a Wall Street tax passed, the shy sixth grader vigorously nodded her head “Yes!”

For the third time in a month, Senate Republicans killed legislation which would have put hundreds of thousands of Americans back to work. The 51-49 vote fell well short of the 60 votes needed to break their filibuster against the jobs-creating Rebuild America Act.

The legislation would have created jobs immediately by investing $50 billion to repair and rebuild the nation’s roads, rails and airports, establish a national infrastructure bank to fund a broad range of projects and asked millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share. It also would have created an infrastructure bank to fund future projects.

AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department (TTD) President Edward Wytkind says:

The legislation is overwhelmingly supported by the general public. And yet, proving once again they are out of touch with voters, Senate Republicans—in the face of a stalled economy—voted as a block to kill this jobs bill.

Americans once again saw their senators curry favor with millionaires and billionaires who are being asked in this legislation to pay a little more so our economy can turn around.

Last week Republicans blocked the Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act, which would have created or protected nearly 400,000 education jobs while preventing the layoffs of thousands of police officers and firefighters. On Oct. 10, Senate Republicans blocked President Obama’s American Job s Act.

Meanwhile, the Senate Republican response to the job crisis is a plan that centers on tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations, the rollback of essential federal regulations—including Wall Street reform—and the repeal of health care reform.

While Verizon workers toil without a contract, a report issued jointly today by Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy shows that it’s not just its workers the company is short-changing; it’s all of the American people. For the last three years, Verizon has paid less than zero taxes. That’s right—through the use of corporate loopholes, Verizon has actually “made” money through its tax filings, according to the report, “Corporate Taxpayers and Corporate Tax Dodgers.”

One area where Verizon didn’t mind paying out? CEO compensation—to the tune of $18.1 million last year.

And Verizon is hardly alone: 29 other corporations listed on the Fortune 500, according to the report, paid either no taxes, or, like Verizon, enjoy a negative tax balance on their filings for 2008, 2009 and 2010. Other household names on that ignominious list include Honeywell International, DuPont, Boeing, Mattel, Duke Energy and Wells Fargo (which also benefited from the bank bailout).

As report authors Robert McIntyre, Matthew Gardner, Rebecca Wilkins and Richard Phillips write:

[T]oday corporate tax loopholes are so out of control that most Americans can rightfully complain, “I pay more federal income taxes than General Electric, Boeing, DuPont, Wells Fargo, Verizon, etc., etc., all put together.” That’s an unacceptable situation.

And it doesn’t end there. Examining 280 companies listed on the Fortune 500, the authors find70 companies—25 percent of their sample—”paid effective federal tax rates on their U.S. profits of less than 10 percent.” (On a happier note, they found nearly as many paid their full freight of 35 or so percent.) In a statement, lead author Robert McIntyre, director at Citizens for Tax Justice, said:

These 280 corporations received a total of nearly $224 billion in tax subsidies. This is wasted money that could have gone to protect Medicare, create jobs and cut the deficit.

You can download the full report, Corporate Taxpayers and Corporate Tax-Dodgers, 2008-2010, in PDF format here.

More than 7,000 Occupy Oakland protesters, union members and community and faith activists peacefully rallied against Wall Street greed, bank foreclosures and for good jobs yesterday in one of the largest demonstrations since the Occupy Wall Street movement began last month.

The Alameda County Labor Council endorsed the Day of Action and encouraged local unions and union members to take part. Many of the union members who joined in the action took unpaid time off work to make their voices heard. Unions also worked with the city government, the Oakland school system and other employers to make leave arrangements.

Oakland Education Association Secretary Steve Neat told The Associated Press:

All of these different problems—foreclosures, schools closing, attacks on labor unions—they all basically stem from the fact that the top 1 percent and corporations are never satisfied to just make profit. Their profits need to go up and up every year. It’s sort of a realization that a lot of people are having that we’ve all been fighting our own issues, but really, it’s all related, it’s all the same issue.

In mid-day, several thousand people rallied at City Hall Plaza before they marched to a Citibank. Cat Brooks, co-chair of the Onyx Organizing Committee, an Oakland grassroots organization, told the crowd:

Today is about saying, “No!” to the 1 percent.

At the bank they chanted, “Banks got bail out. We got sold out.” And, “Hey, Chase, what do you say? How many houses did you take today?”

Jennifer Schnell, 25, and her boyfriend, Dave Hald, 26, both of Oakland, said they are frustrated because even though they are both college graduates, they can’t find good jobs. She told the Oakland Tribune:

I’m here because my dream is not to become a waitress. I’ve sent out a hundred resumes and I can’t even get an internship. I have two college degrees and I’m bilingual, and I’m washing cups in a coffee shop. We need to find a solution.

Back at the Plaza, union members grilled hamburgers and prepared large pots of beans and rice to feed the marchers. The cookout was sponsored by the Alameda County Labor Council.

Later in the day, a large group of protesters marched to the Port of Oakland to show solidarity with International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) workers who are engaged in a struggle in Longview, Wash.

ILWU spokesman Craig Merrilees said:

The ILWU and other unions are supporting the concerns raised by Occupy Oakland and the Occupy movement to speak up for the 99 percent and against the corporate greed that is wrecking America.

Chanting, “We are the 99 percent; you are the 99 percent,” Verizon workers represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) yesterday marched through downtown Washington, D.C., joining with activists from the Occupy movement. Some protesters carried signs that read, “Occupy Verizon.”

Latasha Carpenter of CWA Local 2108 said she felt a strong feeling of solidarity with the Occupy protesters. She told us:

There’s an attack on working families across the world. It’s not just unions—it’s about everybody. What the people of Occupy DC and across the world are trying to do—we have to fight. It’s a global movement, and it’s going to flourish…a lot of people fought to get us where we are now….Those of us who are having the baton passed onto us, we have to take it and say, “We’re not going back.”

Beginning their march at Freedom Plaza, just blocks from the White House, where the “Stop the Machine” arm of the Occupy movement has set up camp, marchers took their protest to a Verizon Wireless store, where they informed Verizon customers of the greed shown by Verizon executives, even as Verizon has yet to reach a contract agreement with workers. As we reported:

At Verizon, where CEO compensation totaled $18.1 million, the corporation got a federal $705 million federal income tax refund.

After stopping outside the Verizon store, marchers moved on to the headquarters of the  Chamber of Commerce, continuing their chants outside the Chamber’s offices.

CWA President Larry Cohen refers to Verizon executives as “the 1 percent,” telling GoLocalProv:

This is a $100 billion company that spends $10 billion a year promoting their brand in all kinds of ways. And the Verizon Wireless brand is an anti-union brand, not just a nonunion brand….when you read their profit reports from last week, you see that they’re staking their whole future on the anti-union part of the company.

In August, Verizon workers went on strike, as bargaining broke down over give-backs in health care and pensions demanded by the company. Two weeks later, employees were back at work on the promise of good-faith bargaining.

“We still don’t have a contract,” Dan Frie, a Verizon cable splicer, said, explaining why he came out to march with the Occupiers. His friend, Stacey Adams, a retired Verizon worker, piped up:

Our benefits are on the line as retirees, also….The company said they would bargain in good faith, and they have yet to do that.

The Michigan House of Representatives voted yesterday to gut the state’s workers’ compensation system (H.B. 5002). Michigan State AFL-CIO President Karla Swift describes the bill as slashing benefits by:

subtracting “imaginary wages” and “imaginary pensions” from an injured worker’s benefits, regardless of the worker’s ability to find a job or afford retirement.

Further, Swift says, the bill:

also gives even more power to employers to dictate where an injured worker can seek treatment. It will create devastating changes to a workers’ compensation law that has been one of the best in the nation, with lower costs than other states in the Midwest and across the country.

Along with announced reductions in 2012 state compensation rates by an average of 7.4 percent, Swift says, “This will be the twelvth time in the past 16 years that rates have dropped.

This politically motivated power grab undermines the Michigan Workers’ Compensation system, leaving families with few options and resources when catastrophic accidents happen on the job. This latest attack on injured workers by politicians still unwilling to create good jobs in the state shows that something isn’t working in Lansing. Sadly, instead of addressing the real problems we face in Michigan, including the devastating jobs crisis, politicians are looking to the same greedy CEOs and big banks that shipped out our jobs and wrecked the economy for answers.

The Senate still must vote on the bill, and it’s unlikely lawmakers will vote on it this month. The legislative session ends in December.

Ron Oliver, AFL-CIO Community Services liaison, Erie-Crawford Central Labor Council and United Way of Erie with Halloween party participants.

Just when you thought it was a safe bet you wouldn’t see any more ghouls and vampires lurking around, AFL-CIO Community Services Director Will Fischer sends us this from Ohio.

The Community Services Committee of the Erie-Crawford Central Labor Council, partnered with local church members to sponsor a Halloween party. Several gun incidents prompted parents to come together to provide a safe and fun environment for more than 60 children at the Word of Faith Church in Erie. The good will fostered between the two groups will allow them to work together on future community issues.

Advocates for working families in Denver had hoped to pass a measure in local elections that would have mandated paid sick leave for low-wage workers, but on Tuesday the measure was defeated by Denver voters, who were inundated with advertisements against the measure known as Initiative 300. Opposed by the National Restaurant Association and several local Chambers of Commerce, proponents of the family-friendly measure found themselves outspent by almost two-to-one.

On the Family Values @ Work website, Executive Director Ellen Bravo writes:

Deep-pocketed lobbyists may have defeated Initiative 300 in Denver, but they can’t stop the momentum for paid sick days around the country.

We salute the broad coalition in Denver, made up of 160 grassroots groups and business owners, who made visible the incredible need in their city for allowing workers to earn paid sick days. Thanks to the hard work of this coalition, the people of Denver have begun to make themselves heard.

Their voices will be magnified by groups across the country who will continue to add to the wins our movement has already achieved.

Read more on Initiative 300 here.

The day before participants at demonstrations in Washington, D.C., Cannes, France, Los Angeles and San Francisco will call on Congress and global leaders to adopt a small “Robin Hood” tax (financial speculation tax) to create jobs, bills were introduced in the U.S. House and Senate to adopt such a tax.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) introduced the Wall Street Trading and Speculators Tax Act that would assess a financial speculation tax of .03 percent. The European Commission is proposing .10 percent, on trading in stocks and bonds. In a statement this afternoon, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who is in Cannes for the G-20 summit of the world’s top economies, says:

In order to maximize revenue and minimize opportunities for tax arbitrage, Congress should pass a U.S. financial speculation tax in line with what has been proposed in Europe.

Sen. Harkin and Rep. DeFazio are showing real leadership in introducing this important legislation that would help the 99 percent. America’s most urgent economic challenge is the jobs crisis and we must invest money today to create jobs and rebuild our broken economy. In the medium to long term, that money will have to be repaid, and it is only fair to ask Wall Street to pay for rebuilding the economy it helped destroy.

A well-designed tax that has greatest revenue-raising capacity would, says Trumka, “raise hundreds of billions of dollars over the 10-year budget window.”

Reckless Wall Street gambling has cost Americans trillions in lost wages, savings and household wealth. It is time to put Wall Street to work rebuilding Main Street with a financial speculation tax to create jobs, rein in speculation and lay the groundwork for long-term economic prosperity.

There are reams of reports, tons of studies and rivers of statistics that prove investments in infrastructure pay off in jobs and economic boosts to the communities. When more people have good paychecks in the pockets, they pump money into their local economies.

But it’s the up close and personal examples that can be the most convincing to anyone who doubts the economic wisdom of spending money to create jobs by rebuilding roads, bridges and schools.

Before Senators cast their voites on the Rebuild America Jobs Act—we’re talking primarily to you, Republican lawmakers—they should read this article from the Seattle Times on how a massive bridge building project in Aberdeen, Wash., “is pumping new life into a once-thriving timber town that fell on hard times and stayed that way for years.”

In February, the Washington State Department of Transportation chose Aberdeen as the site to build 33 new huge pontoons—some as long as a football field and weighing 11,000 tons each—for a new bridge on state Highway 520.

While the project itself creates some 300 well-paid jobs, “it’s not the only burst of recent good news for Aberdeen.”

The pontoon project is projected to pump millions of dollars into Grays Harbor County before it’s completed in June 2014.

Already, workers are renting hotel rooms and buying houses, eating at restaurants and shopping at such places as Home Depot and Safeway. Retail sales are up 25 percent from a year ago in Grays Harbor.

Deanna Russell, owner of Teri’s Steakhouse, which opened about a year ago downtown: “It has done nothing but boost the economy, a real plus to the community.”

Tim Gibbs, executive director of the Grays Harbor Economic Development Council, tells the paper: “This $367 million project is providing much-needed stimulus for the county. The community wants to get back to work.”

Paul Harris, with the Laborers (LIUNA) Local 252 in Grays Harbor County, said Kiewit [the contractor] has made good on a promise to hire locally — a plus for workers.

“They can work close to home, and they’re loving it,” Harris said. “Kiewit made a commitment to work hard and put local people to work, and they’re doing a good job.”

Click here for the full article and here to tell your U.S. senators to help other communities to put people back work by passing the Rebuild America Jobs Act.