Labor Union Blog

Mike Gillis, Ohio AFL-CIO communications director, sends us this.

A new report released today by People For the American Way Foundation, Common Cause, the Center for Media and Democracy and Progress Ohio reveals the deep ties between the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Ohio state lawmakers.

ALEC in Ohio: The Corporate Special Interests that Help Write Ohio’s Laws, demonstrates ALEC’s policymaking influence with an in-depth analysis of the organization’s ties to key Ohio lawmakers, as well as a side-by-side comparison of nine ALEC “model” bills and actual Ohio legislation, including:

• Attacks on workers by severely limiting collective bargaining, eliminating public employment through outsourcing and privatizing government functions;
• Diminishing public education through private school voucher programs and private scholarship tax credits;
• Encouraging the privatization of state prisons to benefit the private prison industry;
• Voter suppression bills designed to disenfranchise thousands of eligible Americans;
• Draconian anti-immigrant measures that criminalize undocumented workers and penalize their employers;
• Creation of barriers for consumers and injured parties in seeking justice from corporations in a court of law;
• Measures to prevent implementation of health care reform.

At a press conference releasing the report, Ohio AFL-CIO President Tim Burga explained ALEC’s influence over many legislative initiatives, including SB 5, which repealed collective bargaining rights for Ohio public employees (and which Ohio voters overwhelmingly overturned in a 2011 ballot intiative). “When Ohioans overwhelmingly rejected SB 5 last year, they sent a clear message that they will not tolerate attacks on Ohio’s middle class,” said Burga.

They rejected the idea that our economic problems are the result of the workers’ rights to collectively bargain. They fully rejected that extreme political agenda and opted instead to support governance with basic fairness.

Lisa Graves, Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy, noted Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s ties to ALEC.

Ohio is led by ALEC alum John Kasich, who has long advanced the agenda of ALEC corporations to the detriment of American citizens during his time in Congress and now in the statehouse in the Buckeye state.

Burga called for legislators to cut their ties with ALEC and align themselves more closely with the interests of those they were elected to represent.

What is needed is an agenda that focuses on doing the most good for the most Ohioans rather than legislating for the narrow benefit of so few.

Christian Sweeney, AFL-CIO deputy organizing director, sends us this.

A busload of teaching and research assistants from New York University (NYU) traveled to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) headquarters in Washington, D.C., in recent days to call on the board to affirm their right to form unions. The NYU TAs and RAs, members of the UAW, filed a petition seeking a union recognition election in the spring of 2010 but are still waiting for a board decision.

Chanting “Two years is too long to wait,” as they rallied outside the NLRB, the TAs and RAs are among tens of thousands of private university graduate employees seeking their legally protected right to form a unions. That right was taken away by a ruling from the George W. Bush-appointed NLRB in 2004. 

In December, TAs and RAs from the University of Chicago protested outside the NLRB offices in Chicago, calling on the NLRB to issue a decision in the NYU case affirming teaching and research assistants’ right to form unions under federal law. The University of Chicago grad employees, who are part of Graduate Students United, an organizing project jointly affiliated with the AFT and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), stood in solidarity with the UAW campaign at NYU.

Teaching assistants and research assistants—grad employees—are critical to the mission of our universities. They are paid modestly to teach classes, grade papers and tests, tutor students, run labs and do the research that make U.S. universities the envy of the world.  Since the 1960s, thousands of these student workers have formed unions.  Many of our most prestigious public universities—Wisconsin, Michigan, UC Berkeley, UCLA and the University of Washington—have graduate employees who are union members, and more than 50,000 graduate employees are members of AFL-CIO affiliate unions.

“We are proud to support the efforts of these young workers in the UAW and the AFT,” said AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler, who heads up the AFL-CIO’s Young Workers Initiative.

They deserve the same rights that other workers have and we look forward to the day when the NLRB restores their rights under the law.

With the graduation of seven newly certified weatherization technicians from its Eastern New York Laborers Training Center, the New York State Laborers’ Union (NYSLIUNA) is blowing holes in several right-wing myths all at once, proving that jobless people do want to work, government programs can spur the creation of good jobs and labor unions can lead the way to prosperity.

Working in partnership with Peter Young Housing, Industries & Treatment (PYHIT), a non-profit that provides treatment, housing and vocational training to disadvantaged people struggling with drug and alcohol addiction, the Laborers trained these first members of Green Jobs Local 58, chartered by the Laborers (LIUNA) as the first local in the Albany, N.Y., region dedicated exclusively to green jobs. Participants in the training had to be clean and sober for at least six months in order to be accepted into the program.

Thanks in part to the state’s 2009 Green Jobs/Green New York Act and a new program launched by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), the demand for the retrofitting of homes to be more weather-resistant and energy-efficient is expected to climb. (Through the NYSERDA program, residents will be able to finance the weatherization of their homes via their monthly utility bills.)

The new Local 58 members will work for Eagle Street Construction, one of PYHIT’s vocational enterprises. Local 58 Business Manager Frank Marchese Jr. told the Albany Times Union that the workers would earn $14 per hour, plus a benefits package. He told the paper:

We are taking people involved in social programs who are now moving into being viable taxpayers.

Pete Wilcox, one of the local’s new members, expressed his enthusiasm to the Times Union this way:

I am very thankful for the opportunity to get green jobs training. I live in Albany and it means a lot to me to be able to have the skills to weatherize homes in my own backyard.

Sounds like a win for everybody.

Donna Gratehouse, who blogs at DemocraticDiva and elsewhere on all things Arizona, sends us this.

Arizona’s teachers and first responders are under full-frontal attack this week, as union-stripping bills that have been called “Wisconsin on steroids” are being shuttled through the legislative process at whirlwind speed. These bills would prohibit public-sector unions from negotiating pay and benefits, ban paycheck deductions for union dues and ban compensation for union activities. They passed through committee hearings last week and are going to be debated in the full Senate this week. It’s expected that they will pass through both chambers easily due to the anti-labor GOP majority in both. It’s unclear if Gov. Jan Brewer will sign them into law. A Phoenix-based right-wing pressure group, the Goldwater Institute, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are behind the measures.

Like their counterparts in Wisconsin last year, working people in Arizona are not taking this lying down. Rebekah Friend, Arizona AFL-CIO executive director, told Phoenix newscaster Brahm Resnik on Sunday morning that the Arizona union movement is planning to use “every option available” to fight these attacks on working families. The Arizona AFL-CIO and member unions are mobilizing people to call and write their state representatives to oppose the bills. Friend assured Resnik that, if necessary, they can fill the state Capitol with people.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi attending BAYDA Institute.

This is a cross-post from the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center.

Almost 22 years ago, the National League for Democracy (NLD) won a landslide in a free and fair election in Burma—but the military dictatorship refused to let the NLD take power. Instead, the ruling junta crushed the organization and imprisoned its members and activists, including its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

In the past six months, Burma seems to be thawing, opening to the outside world it long shunned. And Suu Kyi, who spent many of the interceding years under house arrest—and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her struggle—is out again among the people, speaking at rallies and renewing her call for democracy.

On a recent trip to Rangoon, I had the opportunity to sit down with Aung San Suu Kyi for a conversation about the future of the labor movement in Burma. We discussed my meetings over the previous few days—with journalists, farmers, textile and garment workers and industrial workers—all of whom had started to form independent unions. She thanked the Solidarity Center and the U.S. labor movement for its support.

Suu Kyi had already given a lot of thought to what a future Burma labor movement should look like. She felt that it was important for unions to be responsible and to work for their members. She said the new unions should not be tools or fronts for any political parties, including her own NLD. She did not say that unions should not be involved in politics or support the political parties they wanted, but she did voice her position that parties should not create unions and the NLD had no desire or intent to do so.

When we talked about economic development, she stressed that Burma should not be just about garment factories; other, more creative economic development was necessary, she said. I said that Burma had the opportunity to engage in a variety of economic activities and mentioned natural resources and extractive industries as possible but also problematic. She laughed gently and said there were a lot of opportunities “to do things right or do them very wrong.”

We ended the meeting with a promise to stay in touch, and she said that they would be busy until April 1, when by-elections are scheduled. The NLD is going to participate in elections for the first time in 20 years.

“We should meet soon,” she said as I was leaving. And she reiterated the importance of independent, responsible unions, saying she did not want to see unions run by demagogues. 

“Being a demagogue is so boring,” she said with a laugh.

The Solidarity Center over the past two decades has supported Burmese labor activists that have worked with Burmese migrant workers in Thailand, have reach within the country, and have trained workers about their rights and international labor standards. Today, these workers in Burma are beginning to form and register their own unions.

AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker, Indiana AFL-CIO President Nancy Guyott and others distributed fliers in Super Bowl Village, welcoming fans and reminding them the stadium was union built, the stadium staffed by union members, the half-time show courtesy of union members, the beer made by union members and the game played by union members.

Over the weekend, all eyes were on the Super Bowl in Indianapolis, where tens of thousands traveled to see the event and hundreds of thousands more watched it on television. But while the spotlight was on the game, workers across the city took to the streets to protest the outrages happening to working people.

In one such event, we rallied at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Indianapolis, where hardworking hotel housekeepers are fighting to keep their jobs and boost their poverty-level pay at a hotel where rates can be more than $1,000 a night for a Super Bowl week room. Twenty longtime hotel workers may be out of jobs in a few days when the hotel ends a subcontract with Hospitality Staffing Solutions.

The hotel workers are not in this fight alone. In the midst of what is undoubtedly the busiest few days for football players, DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), and NFL players joined Hyatt housekeepers at the rally to demand Hyatt end its abuse of subcontracted workers and hire outsourced workers directly. Smith said NFL players would  continue a year-old boycott of Hyatt over its treatment of  workers and told the crowd:

I love people who stand together to fight for what’s right.

Just blocks from the Super Bowl, these football players, together with construction workers, office staff and steelworkers, stood side by side with hotel housekeepers, joined in common cause by the struggles that unite all working people—all of the 99 percent in this country who are fighting against corporate greed and challenging politicians who seek to take away our rights as citizens of this great country.

AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker on the picket line with UNITEHERE! members and allies.

Days ago, some of those politicians right here in Indiana pushed through the state legislature  legislation that is a massive assault on the wages of the state’s working people. The “right to work” for less bill was hustled through the legislative process in a series of dirty tricks in outright contempt for democracy.

What’s happening in Indiana is just one part of the massive assault on working families across the country. Yet over the past year, we saw again and again the strength of collective action, of public protest in state after state as the rights of workers came under attack. We re-learned that we are not alone, and we have seen that when we stand together with those who share our values, victory is ours.

Hours after Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) signed Indiana’s contemptuous bill, tens of thousands of Hoosier workers came together in solidarity to march from the statehouse to Super Bowl village. Construction workers and teachers, grocery clerks and truck drivers chanted “Remember November,” vowing to take back the state door by door, neighborhood by neighborhood.

This year, as in Indiana, we will stand together for jobs and for economic freedom across the nation. We’ll congregate in the public square. And on Election Day, we’ll march to the ballot box to cast our votes for economic, social and political justice.