Labor Union Blog

Kurston Cook, AFL-CIO Young Worker coordinator, sends us this.

Next week, 20 members of the AFL-CIO Young Worker Advisory Council will meet in Washington, D.C., to finalize the 2012 work plan for the AFL-CIO Next Up Young Worker Program.  The advisory council advises the AFL-CIO on its programming as it relates to young people, and leaders implementation of these programs. One major goal of Next Up is to be a voice for all young workers and to provide inspiring and relevant opportunities for participation within the labor movement.

So, we want to hear from you!

What would you like to see the AFL-CIO’s Next Up Program focus on in 2012? How about in the next three years? How can the AFL-CIO and the advisory council best meet the needs of young workers, young worker groups, and your respective communities? Next Up is for young workers by young workers, so your ideas and insights are important.

Please send us your ideas on Facebook here or via the Twitter hashtag #YWAC2012. We will review them at next week’s Young Worker Advisory Council meeting and report back with a plan.

As cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead has said:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

We look forward to hearing your ideas.

Republicans trying to ram through a “right to work” for less bill in Indiana cannot seize the pay of Democratic House members who are staying off the floor to filibuster the measure, a judge ruled last evening.

A Marion County judge issued a temporary restraining order barring the seizure after three of House Democrats challenged Republicans’ decision to fine filibusterers $1,000 a day by stealing their pay. The ruling allows the ines to be levied but blocks withholding paychecks.

The fines are the latest moves by Republican state legislators and Gov. Mitch Daniels to ram the “right to work” for less bill into law. Earlier tactics included temporarily shutting the protesting public out of the statehouse and reneging on an agreement to take up an amendment putting the issue to a statewide vote.

Hoosiers, 71 percent of whom support putting “right to work” on the ballot rather than
having it forced through the legislature, have been making their voices heard at the statehouse in Indianapolis. They’re turning up the heat with lobby days planned Monday and every day next week.

Follow the events on Twitter with the hashtag #InUnion.

Fire Fighters President Harold Schaitberger joins union members at a rally in New Hampshire.

AFL-CIO communications staffer Nora Frederickson sends us this report.

Workers in New Hampshire took over the floor of the New Hampshire House chamber yesterday to testify against a spate of anti-collective bargaining bills debated in the House Labor Committee. The hearings were relocated to the people’s chamber after the hearing rooms were flooded past their capacity by more than 600 firefighters, state workers, truck drivers, teachers, and community members protesting the most recent anti-worker onslaughts in the Granite State.

Barely a month after right-to-work was definitely beaten down in the House, the House Labor Committee held a hearing on a slew of anti-worker bills ranging from dues deduction and other attempts to dismantle aspects of the labor relations law, to HB 1645, an outright repeal of collective bargaining for public employees.

State representative Andrew Manuse, sponsor of HB 1645, made it clear that he had no idea of what his bill would actually do after he compared a firefighters’ job to “changing a light bulb,” claimed he “respected” public workers—while trying to take away their rights—and said public employees “weren’t taxpayers.”

Diana Lacy, president of the State Employees Association, promptly asked Rep. Manuse to refund her $250,000 in back taxes.

But the most contentious bill, HB 1570,  would allow public-sector workers to opt out of a union in their workplace by surrendering any wages or benefits negotiated by the union, HB 1570 effectively creates two classes of employees in a workplace, opening employers to discrimination lawsuits. The sponsor of HB 1570 was so stumped by the good people of New Hampshire’s questions over how his bill would save the state money that he solicited advice on how to improve the bill on the floor of the House.

Jim Allmedinger of the New Hampshire Education Association put it most simply:

The consequences of HB 1570 are good for nobody but lawyers.

New Hampshire AFL-CIO president Mark MacKenzie cut through the brouhaha in his testimony and set the record straight about the true purpose of the hearings:

The real purpose of these hearings today is dismantling the collective bargaining law at the state level and at the local level. This law has been effective. We have negotiated thousands of collective bargaining agreements and attracted terrific employees to the public sector — this is not a broken system. Our legislators need to take their eyes off of this and focus on what really matters. They need to focus on creating jobs.