Labor Union Blog

Marie Smith, AFL-CIO Community Services Liaison in Omaha, Neb., sends us this report.

When the switch was thrown earlier this month on a 75-foot tall steel-framed “Tree of Lights” in downtown Omaha, volunteers of Ironworkers Local 21 had their first chance to see their handiwork sparkle.

They had assembled the tree—which kicks off the Salvation Army’s Tree of Lights campaign—and attached some 8,000 LED lights and another 650 LED starbursts to the steel frame. It was an easier task this year as compared with 2008, when the volunteers worked through -20 degrees F to put the 6,000 pound tree together.

This is the 12th year the Ironworkers have donated their labor to the tree, along with contributing more than $26,000 in equipment. In 2009, Local 21 received the Salvation Army’s Territorial Volunteer of the Year” award for their “extraordinary commitment and unmatched expertise.”

The Tree of Lights campaign runs through Dec. 24 and many union brothers and sisters from the Omaha area will be out ringing the bells at the iconic red kettles.

Some of those in the 1 percent are stepping forward to express their support for the 99 percent, agreeing with Occupy Wall Street protestors that the nation’s financial system is seriously harming our economy. The latest to indicate their support for the 99 percent are the financially savvy members of the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment, who are calling for greater corporate transparency, restraint of excessive payouts to executives and support for the federal Consumer Financial Protection Board. The Consumer board does not yet have a director because Senate Republicans have blocked a vote on the nomination of Richard Cordray to lead the agency.

Lisa Woll, CEO of US SIF (as the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment is also known) expressed solidarity with the Occupy protesters:

The Occupy movement occurring across the country, and indeed, around the world, speaks to many of the issues and concerns raised by sustainable and responsible investors over the past several decades– and particularly since the unfolding of the recent financial crisis.

Woll also backed the recent Occupy-allied “move your money” campaign, which urges people move their accounts from commercial banks to community savings institutions and credit unions. Responsible investing, she said in her statement, also includes the backing of “institutions that strengthen low-income communities through access to capital.” The Center for American Progress reports today that the 10 biggest banks could lose $185 billion in deposits next year as customers move their money.

Last week, the newly-formed Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength went to Capitol Hill to advocate for an increase in their taxes so they might pay at least the same percentage in taxes as middle-class taxpayers. That same day, United For a Fair Economy (UFE) delivered to the congressional “Super Committee an open letter signed by more than 100 citizens with annual incomes of more than $200,000, urging an increase of the top marginal income tax rate to 39.5%.

Wednesday is the deadline for the Super Committee to deliver a plan to cut $1.2 trillion from the federal deficit. It is expected to fail to do so, because Republicans on the committee refuse to accept a tax increase for the nation’s wealthiest citizens.

While most of us know what the goal is of the Occupy Wall Street movement—economic justice for the 99 percent and all that it entails—pontificators from Fox News and other right-wingers derisively dismiss it.

Working America has provided what you might call a cheat sheet for those too intellectually lazy or politically disinclined to pay attention to what the Occupiers around the nation have been demanding for more than two months now.

Click here for the “Nine Demands of the 99%.” The first eight are commonsense policies—such as making Wall Street and the wealthy pay their fair share and investing in jobs and supporting education.

The ninth demand is up to you. You can add your own to help get the nation working again. Be sure to share the nine demands on Twitter with the hashtag #9Demands and on Facebook, where already more than 7,000 have given it a thumbs up.

Even for Newt Gingrich, this is bizarre.

The Republican presidential candidate says child labor laws are “stupid.” But that’s just the start. He says schools should “get rid of unionized janitors” and hire low-income kids to clean the schools. He also says that age nine is a good time to get a job.

Wow.

Gingrich was speaking at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government last week when he suggested that putting scrub brushes and floor sanders in the hands of kids and firing school maintenance workers would “lift up the poorest neighborhoods.”

In fact, he says poor kids and their parents should look at the lives of successful people, “they all started their first job between nine and 14 years of age.”

He says child labor laws “entrap poor children into poverty.” Of course most of us know that child labor laws prevent kids from getting trapped on assembly lines or by moving machine parts.

Read more from Politico here.

This is a cross-post by Brendan Fischer from PRWatch on this weekend’s massive rally in Madison to secure signatures to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. In the first four days of the recall effort, proponents have gathered more than 105,000 signatures.

As many as 30,000 people marched on the Wisconsin Capitol Saturday for a rally commemorating the first weekend of the effort to recall the state’s embattled governor, Scott Walker.

The rally was the largest since April, when state residents had been protesting Gov. Walker’s limits on collective bargaining each weekend for months. The campaign to recall Gov. Walker officially began on Tuesday, November 15, and organizers need 540,000 signatures by January 17 to trigger a recall election.

The Saturday event kicked off with a bagpiper-led march by firefighters and police officers, and a new song by Madison musician Sean Michael Dargan called “The Day Scott Walker Is Recalled.” MSNBC host Ed Schultz made a surprise appearance, as did former Sen. Russ Feingold, who assured reporters he would not be running for governor if a recall is triggered. Around 50 Walker supporters circled the Capitol in a pack.

Recall group United Wisconsin estimated that 30,000 signatures were gathered around the Capitol, with proponents weaving through the crowd with clipboards and booths set up around the Capitol where supporters could add their names to petitions or sign up to volunteer. Rally attendees also were urged to donate canned food items for the hungry in a “can Walker” food drive. Around the state, many thousands more went door to door to collect the 9,000-11,000 signatures needed per day.

Workers’ Rights Are the Wisconsin Way
From the stage, speakers urged the crowd to sign petitions, portraying Walker’s policies as an attack on Wisconsin traditions.

“As Wisconsinites, workers’ rights and workplace justice are part of our make up,” said Al Peltier, a welder and member of Ironworkers Local 881. “We know the pride that comes from a hard day’s work, and the dignity from knowing that we have a say in the way that work is done,” Peltier told the crowd. “In other words, workers’ rights are the Wisconsin way.”

“When Scott Walker gutted public workers’ rights back in February, it was NOT the Wisconsin way, and it was NOT about the budget,” he said. Peltier noted that “tens of thousands of [public] workers were offering to make deep sacrifices in their family budget” by voluntarily agreeing to contribute more to their pensions and health care “so that the state budget could be balanced.” But, he said “when they offered their hand, Gov. Walker slapped it away.”

Is It Working?
Wisconsin State AFL-CIO President Phil Neuenfeldt said Gov. Walker is “out of touch.” Apparently referencing the “It’s Working!” ad campaign promoted by the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity and MacIver Institute, Neunfeldt said Walker “keeps telling us that everything is OK and that everything is working, but we know better, right? Gov. Walker: It’s not working!”

Forklift driver and grandmother Julie Wells also questioned the “It’s Working!” claims. “What [Gov. Walker] fails to tell us is who it is working for,” she said. “It is working for special interests and corporations. It is working for political cronies. It is working for [the] billionaire [Koch] brothers.”

“It is not working for workers, it is not working for children, it is not working for seniors, it is not working for the people of Wisconsin,” she said.

Education vs. Corporations
Also speaking was Heather Dubois Bourenane, who said she was “a mom, a teacher, a state worker, a PTO member, [and] a grad student” who had not been politically active until Scott Walker took office. “I’m just a regular person who was shaken into action over the past year,” she said.

“How is it OK to cut $1.6 billion from public education and yet still justify increasing the budget? How is it OK to force 4000 teachers into retirement and the rest of them to take substantial cuts to their take-home pay then not turn down a raise to your own salary?”

“I thought we all agreed that education, not corporations, come first. I thought we all agreed that teachers deserved our respect and appreciation, not condemnation and demoralization…Scott Walker doesn’t seem to think so,” she said. “We cannot afford to fund the coffers of the rich and leave our kids in the gutter.”

In September, Dubois Bourenane attracted attention when, during NBC’s Education Nation conference, host Brian Williams read to Walker a critical letter she had written. At 4 a.m. Thursday morning she received a death threat from an unidentified caller saying her life and the lives of her family were in danger because “you’ve attracted the attention of some very bad people.”

Intimidation and Inspiration
The threat to Dubois Bourenane appears to be part of a trend to intimidate leaders in the recall effort. Reports have emerged in recent weeks of recall opponents destroying or threatening to destroy petitions, throwing a rock through a window of a business with a “recall Walker” sign, and hacking the website of a leading recall group.

Sarah Hammer, a registered nurse from Fort Atkinson and co-coordinator of the Walker recall effort in Jefferson County, has also been the subject of intimidation tactics. Hammer told the Center for Media and Democracy that someone in her community had posted the home addresses of recall leaders on a pro-Walker Facebook page, and she awoke Wednesday morning to find her tires flat.

Hammer also said a person had broken into the Fort Atkinson recall headquarters and stole recall signs and materials. “The office had a sign saying “no guns allowed,” she added, “and the person posted a handwritten sign over it that said ‘what part of infringe on my rights don’t you understand.’”

But Hammer is undeterred.

“I am proud to be part of this movement,” she said. “The people involved and the energy has been amazing.”

Hammer said she had never been politically active before Walker and never strictly voted for Democrats. “But I would never vote Republican again,” she said. Hammer was not only concerned about union rights and cuts in education (the impact of which she says she has seen firsthand in her child’s school), but also proposals to introduce iron ore mining in Wisconsin.

Hammer said that Jefferson County has traditionally been regarded as a “red” county, but volunteers for the recall effort “have been coming out of the woodwork.” The recall effort had 50 volunteers in August, 250 by the end of October and continue adding numbers, she said. “We’ve quadrupled our expected goal for signatures in the first four days.”

Recall proponents across the state have also been off to a successful start, gathering more than 105,000 signatures in the first four days of the recall effort.

Capital police reported no arrests.

(The Center for Media and Democracy does not endorse or oppose any candidate for office. Since 1993, CMD has been reporting on corporate spin and government propaganda, exposing public relations tactics, and debunking PR campaigns.)