Labor Union Blog

This is a crosspost by AFSCME President Lee Saunders from Huffington Post.

Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, the Pravda of the 1 percent, is at it again, continuing its push to gut the retirement security of millions of middle class workers across the country while enriching the Wall Street moneymen who just three years ago took our economy over the cliff.

Virtually everyone agrees that our nation faces a retirement security crisis, but the Journal last week published a shameful op-ed calling for the elimination of pensions for nurses, firefighters, corrections officers and others who still have them. Having punched private-sector workers retirement in the gut, these folks won’t be happy until the whole concept of a secure retirement for working Americans is a thing of the past.

The typical AFSCME member — men and women who plow our streets, care for the sick, protect our children, clean our buildings and keep our communities safe — receives a pension of approximately $19,000 a year after a career of public service. The employees have earned and paid for these pensions. Employee contribution rates commonly amount to 3 percent to 10 percent of their paychecks. These contributions, combined with investment earnings, usually account for 75 percent or more of all pension benefit funding.

The economy’s collapse in 2008-2009 took its toll on everyone’s retirement savings. But our nation’s public pension systems, which were fully funded before the crash, continue their robust recovery earning their highest returns in decades in fiscal year 2011. Pensions continue to provide irreplaceable retirement security to millions of Americans who provide public services. Yet, the corporate-backed
opponents of pensions are creating a myth that the system is falling apart and that state and local governments are going bankrupt because of the $19,000 pensions sanitation workers are earning.

That is simply not true. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the size of the projected state and local government pension funding shortfalls is manageable. In most states, the total shortfall for the pension funds is less than 0.2 percent of projected gross state product during the next 30 years. Even in states with the largest shortfalls, the gap is less than 0.5 percent of projected state product during that period. And, because pension payments are made over generations of workers,
funding can remain stable over long periods, and funding challenges managed over decade long periods, despite short-term economic setbacks. These are facts that the opponents of public pensions simply ignore, as they seek to punish workers for Wall Street’s psychopathic behavior.

Read the full post here.

Here’s a letter to the editor in The Hill by Diann Woodard, president of the School Administrators (AFSA), the only national education union representing principals, assistant principals and school administrators.

The failure of our education system lies not within the walls of the public schools that serve children in crisis, but with the policymakers and policies in place that ignore the fundamental causes of low student achievement: unfair funding formulas, poverty and unproven education policies (“For America’s children, education outlook grows only dimmer,” Jan. 23, by Juan Williams).

Families are increasingly falling into poverty, experiencing a lack of housing and unable to provide adequate health care and nutrition for their children. These children need increased services, yet often do not receive them because of budget cuts, bureaucratic hurdles and gross inequities in state and local funding formulas.

Public schools welcome these children, for our doors are open to all. We do not hand-select the brightest, the ones with involved parents, or the students who will make us look good on half-hour media specials. Their time at school might provide their only stable environment, and we provide it with only a fraction of resources afforded to more affluent districts and private schools.

No evidence exists that suggests closing schools is a good thing, and a recent study conducted by Julian Betts and Richard Atkinson concluded that there is little research to suggest that charter and private schools are better than public ones, and that the limited data that are available are not enough to draw accurate conclusions about their long-term effectiveness.

Education makes up less than 3 percent of the federal budget. If a nation’s priorities are reflected in its budget, then to invest so little in education demonstrates we don’t understand or appreciate its value. We need an increased investment with a focus on quality, not just on quantity.

States and districts should be required to conduct a needs analysis and target resources accordingly. Principals need meaningful training, increased resources and support. All schools should be granted immediate relief from No Child Left Behind’s flawed adequate yearly progress, and in a reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act, schools that serve communities with the greatest needs and challenges should be given the greatest support. 

School children don’t vote—perhaps that is why we have not yet seen a genuine, concerted effort by our elected officials to rebuild and strengthen our public education system.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, asked the Department of Justice to look into evidence uncovered by a National Labor Relations Board Inspector General investigation that found board member Brian Hayes engaged in employment discussions with a law firm with business before the agency. Miller wrote:

The board plays a critical role in adjudicating and administering the rights of employees and employers under our nation’s labor law and Board members must be free of coercion and undue influence when executing their responsibilities.

The NLRB Inspector General investigation found that Hayes and an attorney with Morgan Lewis had a number of conversations beginning in late September or early October about potential employment if he were to resign his position on the NLRB. As part of those conversations, an attorney with the firm, according to Hayes, stated that “if you ever decide to resign we’d like to talk to you.”

More here.

Overall union membership increased by 49,000 from 2010 to 2011, including 15,000 new 16- to 24-year-old members, according to new U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data out this morning. An increase of 110,000 in the private sector was partially offset by a decline of  61,000 in the public sector, making the rate of union membership essentially unchanged at 11.8 percent, with some 14.8 million U.S. workers union members.

Public-sector density increased from 36.2 percent to 37 percent though November 2011. Private-sector union membership remains at 6.9 percent. The largest increases in union membership were in construction, health care services, retail trade, primary metals and fabricated metal products, hospitals, transportation and warehousing.

Bottom line, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:

Despite an unprecedented volley of partisan political attacks on workers’ rights and the continuing insecurity of our economic crisis, union membership increased slightly last year. Working men and women want to come together and to improve their lives.

Yesterday, 282 Cablevision technicians and dispatchers in Brooklyn voted to join the Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 1109 in a union election administered by the National Labor Relations Board, overcoming a vigorous anti-union campaign led by Cablevision. They are the first Cablevision workers to join a union. Cable TV is an overwhelmingly nonunion industry while the traditional telecommunications industry remains highly unionized.

“I’ve waited 13 years for this,” said Cablevision technician Clarence Adams. “United, as members of Communications Workers of America, we now have the power to negotiate a fair contract that will give us the dignity and respect on the job we deserve.”

Cablevision workers are currently subject to arbitrary discipline and favoritism by managers, their health care coverage is inadequate, their workload is unreasonable and they have insufficient 401(k) retirement plans. Cablevision workers also make at least one-third less than Verizon workers, who are represented by CWA.

“This is about my son, his future, and the future of the Cablevision 99%,” said Cablevision technician Marlon Gayle. “We can now negotiate with management for a safer work environment, better health care, a more secure retirement and a salary that will allow us to support our families.”

Cablevision leads the Cable TV industry in “average monthly revenue per subscriber of $153.97.” And outgoing COO Tom Rutledge made $28 million in 2010, about twice the combined pay of the 282 technicians in Brooklyn.  Rutledge’s $28 million is more than 600 times the average technician’s pay.  Despite $361 million in profits, Cablevision paid no federal income taxes in 2010.

As soon as Cablevision’s management learned of the organizing drive, they began a campaign of harassment and intimidation, including forcing workers to attend high-pressure, anti-union “captive audience” meetings, and pressuring workers to oppose the union in one-on-one meetings with managers.

“Over the past few months these courageous workers withstood a blistering assault on their right to form a union,” said Chris Shelton, CWA District One vice president. “Cablevision truly took the low road by pressuring workers with endless amounts of misinformation, but these workers—backed by countless community leaders and elected officials—stood strong. Now we will bargain collectively for a contract that gives the Cablevision 99% equity and dignity on the job.”

The vote could signal a shift in the telecommunications industry. Only 2 percent to 4 percent of eligible cable TV workers are members of a union, compared to 90 percent in the traditional telecommunications industry. Despite the recent news coverage on the increasing skill levels required of cable workers, their wages lag far behind those of traditional telecom workers.

“Cablevision’s owners—the Dolans—have successfully negotiated contracts with unions at Radio City Music Hall and Madison Square Garden,” said Local 1109 Executive Vice President Chris Calabrese. “We look forward to negotiating with them a fair contract for Cablevision workers.” 

Read more here.

Here’s a bipartisan solution: Labor and management working together to create jobs.

In Washington State, where construction workers are experiencing up to 50 percent unemployment, a labor-management coalition is working to push a jobs bill through the state legislature to alleviate the jobs crisis and rebuild infrastructure.

The Washington State Labor Council, the Washington State Building and Construction Trades Council, the Association of General Contractors are sponsoring the Infrastructure Jobs Bond legislation and have released lists identifying which capital construction work around the state could be funded through the legislation.

Says Dave Myers, executive secretary of Washington State Building and Construction Trades Council:

These jobs will become a reality right away for thousands of laid off constructions workers and returning veterans. The projects will also be targeted toward key sectors of economic development including construction of aerospace training facilities and college research facilities, both of which will spin off other economic development.

Read more here.

Hours after Apple released its first quarter earnings, which showed a mind-blowing 44.7 percent profit, the New York Times published another in a series of articles illustrating some of the reasons behind Apple’s profit margin. Describing the conditions in which Chinese workers assemble iPhones, iPads and a panoply of Apple products, the report states:

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers’ disregard for workers’ health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning.

A separate article details a New York Times survey that found Apple consumers are less likely to worry about the conditions in which products are made.

Over all, 52 percent of the public said it was very important that the products they buy were made in the United States; only 42 percent of owners of Apple products agreed.

Earlier this month, the Fair Labor Association, a non-profit organization dedicated to ending sweatshop conditions in factories worldwide, announced Apple was admitted as a “Participating Company.” That means that Apple promises to clean its supply chains from labor abuses during the coming two years.

The International Metalworkers’ Foundation expresses skepticism that Apple will carry through on it promises.

In fact, if Apple and other companies that outsource their work corrected the massive abuses of workers at their factories overseas, their incentive for shipping jobs from the United States would be greatly reduced.

Donald Cohen, founder and executive director of In the Public Interest, a national resource center on privatization and responsible contracting, sends us this.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott and the Republican-controlled legislature are moving fast to privatize all 29 prison facilities in 18 counties in southern Florida.

Last year, the GOP prison privatization proposal was ruled unconstitutional because it was wrapped into a budget proposal, a violation of Florida laws that requires policy changes be in separate laws. Tallahassee Judge Jackie Fulford ruled that the lawmakers rushed the process. 

The privatizers aren’t making the same mistake this time. Not only are they proposing to privatize the prisons but they are changing the law to be able to privatize any service as fast, as easily and as secretly as possible. Under the latest proposals, an agency would not have to report its privatization of a program or service until after the contract is signed. And they also would eliminate a current legal requirement to do a cost-benefit analysis before privatizing any government function.

In other words, don’t let the public know what you’re doing and don’t bother to find out the costs.  

Scott, former CEO of hospital giant Columbia/HCA, came into office on a mission to privatize Florida government. Scott left HCA as the company was being investigated for the “biggest Medicare fraud case in U.S. history.”  Columbia/HCA ultimately paid a record $1.7 billion in fines, penalties and damages.

Scott has already proposed privatizing the state’s Medicaid system, state park campgrounds, the state’s three remaining public mental hospitals, three centers for the developmentally disabled and six veterans’ homes. 

The two largest prison companies, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut), are poised to strike, in what Judith Greene, director of Justice Strategies calls, “an unprecedented” expansion of the use of private prisons that no other state has undertaken.

GEO has been a consistent force within Florida politics. GEO Group alone gave more than $400,000 to the party in the past election cycle. Geo Group‘s lobbyist, Brian Ballard, hosted Scott at his Tallahassee home to watch the Super Bowl. GEO Group and CCA donated nearly $1 million toward the Scott’s inauguration celebrations.

A much-discussed report in the Sunday New York Times on why iPhones are made in China highlights the transition of Apple guru Steve Jobs who, a few years after Apple began building the Macintosh in 1983, bragged it was “a machine that is made in America.” Today, millions of Apple products like iPhones, iPads and Kindles are made in China sweatshops like Foxconn.

So what happened?

In a nutshell, this:

Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul [at a Chinese factory]. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”

China’s use of near-slave labor conditions creates its “competitve edge.” But its advantage is not so much due to lower wages as to speed and turnover—an on-demand supply of workers who are housed little better than assembly parts, stacked in multiple dorm beds per room with no chance to escape.

Yet the New York Times repeats the mantra that corporations don’t create such jobs in the United States because of a “skills shortage.” Economist Clyde Prestowitz takes apart this tired refrain:

The Apple argument is that the U.S. schools and education system are not turning out the kinds of workers with the kinds of skills we need. So, we have no choice but to go overseas. But the truth is more nearly the opposite. It’s because the companies are moving the jobs overseas that no Americans are learning the necessary skills. This is true for two reasons. One is that Americans are generally not stupid and recognize that because of off-shoring there won’t be any of those kinds of jobs and thus there is no sense in learning the skills necessary to do them. The second is that most of this kind of job or skill training occurs on the job, and if there are no jobs then there will be no skills.

Prestowitz applauds President Obama for asserting in his State of the Union address Tuesday night that a U.S. “economy built to last” must have a robust manufacturing base and that corporate tax incentives to offshore jobs must be reversed.

But as AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka notes, Obama alone can’t turn around this nation’s economy and create good jobs.

Now it’s time for Congress to stop standing in the way of rebuilding our country and act.

This is a cross-post by Karen Hickey, communications director at the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO.

Amid John Doe investigations into former staff and a recall election imminent, Gov. Walker delivered his second State of the State address last night. In one year in office Gov. Walker has torn our state apart, attacked workers’ rights and dismissed our democracy. As job loss continues to plague Wisconsin, Walker’s actions speak louder than words.

“Gov. Walker lied to the electorate last November, concealing his plans to attack Wisconsin workers and slash funding for local schools and communities. [Last night], his State of the State speech rang hollow to too many Wisconsinites who are living with the everyday realities of the current Wisconsin economy,” said Phil Neuenfeldt, president of the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO. “Six months of job loss show that Gov. Walker’s policies are not working. It is time to change course, stop rewarding special interest allies at the expense of the working people of Wisconsin, and get Wisconsin back on track.” 

“In the last year Gov. Walker has cost Wisconsin job after job.  First, by rejecting high-speed rail initiatives than by enacting a job-killing budget and attacking the rights of Wisconsin workers,” said Stephanie Bloomingdale, secretary-treasurer of the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO. “The people of Wisconsin are smart and see through the rhetoric and half-truths. We look forward to recalling Gov. Walker in the coming months.”

Earlier [yesterday] Wisconsinites throughout out the state gathered in the Senate parlor in the statehouse for the “State of the 99%” to describe what everyday life is really like for ordinary citizens since Gov. Walker took office. 

“I depend on BadgerCare to keep my 12-year-old twins healthy,” said Catherine Capellaro, in Madison, who is concerned about the pending cuts leveled at the program. “I’m dismayed that Gov. Walker rewards those already at the top by taking from those who have so little.”

On Jan. 17 more than 1 million signatures to recall Gov. Walker were delivered to the Government Accountability Board. Currently the signatures are in the process of being certified.