Labor Union Blog

AFL-CIO communications staffer Nora Frederickson sends us this.

At a time when the tea party-driven Republican agenda in New Hampshire’s state capitol is more unpopular than ever with voters on both sides of the aisle, Republican House Labor Committee Chairman Gary Daniels and his allies have ramped up their attacks on working people. In a work session yesterday, the House Labor Committee took another step towards dismantling New Hampshire’s collective bargaining rights law by voting no fewer than five anti-worker bills ‘ought to pass.’

The bills voted out of committee included:

• A new right-to-work for less bill similar to last year’s bill.
• A second right-to-work bill that is a backup in case HB 1677 fails.
• A bill that once repealed collective bargaining rights for teachers,  firefighters and other public workers; was stripped and amended in  committee to allow employers to lead decertifications of public unions.
• A bill that strips the requirement for a union to be the exclusive  representative of a bargaining unit out of the collective bargaining law.
• A  bill that gives the Legislature veto power over state and municipal employee contracts.
• A bill that prohibits automatic payroll deduction of union dues, but was  stripped and amended to split increases in health insurance 50-50 between  employers and employees if a contract expires.

Mark MacKenzie, president of the New Hampshire AFL-CIO, said Daniels has “admitted that his plan is to throw this handful of bills to the wall and see what sticks.”

Clearly, they have not listened to the thousands of working men and women in New Hampshire who have pleaded with them to stop attacking workers and move on to fixing the economy and creating jobs.

The House Committee’s vote comes at a time when the tea party-driven Republican agenda in Concord is increasingly unpopular with voters on both sides of the aisle. More than half of New Hampshire voters oppose bills to eliminate or alter the collective bargaining rights law, according to a poll from the Beneson Strategy Group.

Since November, Democrats or pro-labor Republicans have won five of five special House elections, indicating that voters will take their frustrations with the tea party-driven Republican leadership with them to the polls in November.

Elizabeth Boomer of the AFL-CIO International Affairs Department sends us this report.

Burma needs to address chronic human rights abuses before sanctions are lifted says a new report from the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

Despite some positive signs of change in Burma, forced labor is still widely practiced, trade unions are illegal and hundreds of political prisoners remain in jail. The AFL-CIO agrees with the ITUC that the time is not ripe for a major revision of sanctions, and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton solidifying this position.

• The report argues that sanctions should only be lifted if the government of Burma:
• Eliminates forced labor. Widespread forced labor practices by civilian and military authorities in nearly all of the country’s states and divisions continue. The government of Burma has failed to fulfill any of the steps required of it to eliminate forced labor in the country, as recommended by the International Labor Organization (ILO) in 1998.
• Allows independent and democratic trade unions. Despite recently passing a Labor Organization Law, the government has yet to implement it. The law also contains significant flaws, and is undermined
  by other legislation. Further, the Federation of Trade Unions – Burma (FTUB), a member of the ITUC, is still a banned organization. The government of Burma, unions and employers and the ILO need to redraft the law and oversee its effective implementation.
• Frees all political prisoners. The government has released hundreds of political prisoners, yet more than a 1,000 remain in jail, and many more remain in exile. Prisoners need to be released unconditionally, and provided with rehabilitation. The laws that put them in jail in the first place need to be scrapped.

The report also calls on the Burmese authorities to end all other serious human rights abuses; enter into a nation-wide ceasefire and address the root causes of conflict; hold free and fair elections, including through amending the flawed 2008 constitution; and curtail the role of the military in government and the economy.

Specifically, the report calls for “a gradual, measured lifting of sanctions as the government of Burma makes progress on this complete list.”

The report has been developed in close consultation with the FTUB, and is in response to growing calls for the EU, US, Canada and Australia to lift their sanctions against Burma.

While the ITUC report mainly focuses on labor rights, it urges governments to be also guided by the recommendations of other civil society organizations that raise additional and compelling human rights
concerns.

Download the ITUC Burma sanctions benchmarks report.

For more information see also Are workers now free in Burma?
A note about Burma:  Although the military junta decided to change Burma’s name to Myanmar some years ago, the National League for Democracy, the Federation of Trade Unions-Burma, and all other exile and opposition groups continue to refuse to recognize this change and continue to use “Burma” as the name of the country.

This is a cross-post from Think Progress.

Though oil demand is at its lowest since 1997, oil prices (and gas prices along with them) are once again on the rise. Analysts are projecting gas prices will top $4 a gallon nationally and perhaps reach record highs later this year. Despite relatively low demand and surging production levels in the U.S., prices are of course rising due to myriad factors, including speculation and instability in the Middle East.

For their part, Republicans have latched on to these rising prices as proof that President Obama has pursued an “outrageously anti-American” energy policy. As with most other overheated conservative attacks on the president, the facts don’t line up in their favor.

Here’s FIVE key facts about rising gas prices, the GOP and Big Oil.

1. Domestic Energy Production Has Soared Under President Obama: The number of oil drilling rigs in the U.S. hit a record last week, having quadrupled in number over the past three years . Between oil and gas drilling rigs, the U.S. now has more rigs at work than the rest of the world combined. The current oil boom has buoyed the projections of some leading oil industry analysts:

“It’s staggering,” said Marshall Adkins, who directs energy research for the financial services firm Raymond James. “If we continue growing anywhere near that pace and keep squeezing demand out of the system, that puts you in a world where we are not importing oil in 10 years.”

2. President Obama Has Taken Huge Steps to Reduce Our Dependence on Oil: In addition to overseeing a dramatic increase in domestic energy production (including from renewable sources), the president has also taken steps to reduce the amount of oil we consume. Most notably, new modern standards requiring cars and light-duty trucks to achieve an average fuel economy rating of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 will cut U.S. oil use by 2.2 MILLION barrels of oil per day by 2025—a move that will save consumers $1.7 TRILLION and also cut greenhouse gas pollution by 6 BILLION metric tons. The 54.5 MPG standard by 2025 builds on an earlier Obama administration policy to increase fuel efficiency to 35.5 MPG by 2016, a one-third imrovement to fuel economy standards that had previously languished in neutral for more than 20 years. Even as gas prices are rising, Americans’ cars are becoming significantly more efficient.

3. Big Oil Made a Record $137 BILLION in Profits Last Year: Just the five largest oil companies—ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, BP, Chevron and Shell—booked a combined profit of $137 BILLION in 2011, even though these companies produced 4 percent less oil in 2011. And of course Big Oil’s record profits are directly related to increasing pain at the pump for American consumers.

4. Republican Politicians Oppose Ending Taxpayer Handouts to Big Oil: Every Republican presidential contender and nearly every Republican member of the House and Senate has signed a pledge to oppose ending taxpayer handouts to Big Oil—handouts that will add up to more than $40 BILLION over the next 10 years. In addition, Republicans have repeatedly voted in lockstep to block efforts to repeal the tax giveaways to Big Oil. President Obama, however, remains undaunted and has once again included repeal of these wasteful giveaways in his budget for 2013.

5. Republican Politicians Want to Cut Big Oil’s Taxes Even More: Both the House Republican budget plan released last year (and supported by nearly every Republican member of the House and Senate) and the tax plans of every GOP presidential contender call for cutting the corporate tax rate by one-third or more. This huge tax cut could result in another big windfall of billions of dollars for Big Oil. By contrast, President Obama has proposed closing wasteful tax loopholes and wants to clamp down on the use of foreign tax shelters (ExxonMobil uses at least 20) that allow huge corporations to avoid paying their fair share in U.S. taxes.

IN ONE SENTENCE: Instead of giving billions more in handouts to Big Oil despite the industry’s record-breaking profits, President Obama has presided over a dramatic increase in domestic energy production coupled with unprecedented efforts to decrease Americans’ spending at the pump by modernizing fuel economy standards.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka met with carwash workers and joined them in a press conference to announce new contracts.

Workers at two more Southern California carwashes won their first contracts with carwash owners after they voted last year to join the United Steelworkers (USW) Local 675.

The workers at Vermont Carwash and Nava’s Carwash in South Los Angeles came together in the CLEAN Carwash Campaign to fight for their rights. The CLEAN Carwash Campaign is a coalition supported by the USW, the AFL-CIO and more than 100 community, faith and labor organizations in Los Angeles. For more information, visit www.cleancarwashla.org.

Today, the carwasheros celebrated their victory at a ceremony with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Says Trumka:

The headline should read: “Carwash workers make history in LA.” The labor movement and Los Angeles community stand shoulder to shoulder with them and their brother and sister carwash workers across LA who are working to follow in their path.

There are thousands of carwash workers who face deplorable working conditions every day: violations of health and safety laws, wage and hour laws, and anti-discrimination laws. Most of these workers are immigrants who all of them are without the power to fight back against the horrible conditions in which they work.

As part of the agreements, the carwasheros will receive a pay increase, additional safety equipment, and on-the-job training to prevent injury and illness.  The agreement also establishes rights that protect workers from being unfairly punished or dismissed by both car wash companies. Edwin Leones, a worker at Nava’s Car Wash, said:

We were able to negotiate fair schedules and a pay raise. But most importantly, we’ve been able to get a voice on the job and have a say in our conditions.

Villaraigosa says the contracts represent “a good paying job, a better standard of living, and a voice on the job for some of our city’s most exploited workers.”

Trumka is on a two-day California trip to highlight and support the efforts of low-wage, immigrant workers in Los Angeles and Sacramento. Earlier today he spoke at the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) conference in Los Angeles. In Sacramento tomorrow, he will join with domestic workers who are mobilizing to pass a Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights in the state legislature.

Locked-out workers from American Crystal Sugar and Cooper Tire will begin a 1,000 mile Journey for Justice tomorrow from Fargo, N.D., to Findlay, Ohio. The journey will highlight the corporate greed that marks their lockouts, and the growing drive by corporate CEOs to drive down wages and benefits to pad their own pockets.

More than 1,300 Crystal Sugar workers–members of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM)–have been locked out of seven facilities in Minnesota, North Dakota, and Iowa since last August. More than 1,000 United Steelworkers (USW) members were locked out of their jobs at Cooper Tire’s Findlay, Ohio plant in November.

The justice trek kicks off with a rally in Fargo and then workers and their allies will deliver tens of thousands of signatures on a petition to American Crystal CEO David Berg at company headquarters in Moorhead, Minn. The six-day journey will make stops in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana, before concluding in Findlay, with a “hands around the plant” action.  There will be rallies, fundraisers for the locked out workers and their families and other actions along the way.

The march will not only highlight the plight of the Crystal Sugar and Cooper Tire workers but also focus attention on the most recent wave of greed-motivated corporate attacks on workers and their unions including recent lockouts of thousands of workers at Caterpillar, Rio Tinto Alcan, HealthBridge and elsewhere.

You can follow the workers on twitter  @JourneyJustice and here on their blog.

On more than 120 college and university campuses around the nation, Occupy College activists will hold teach-ins tomorrow and Thursday focusing on vital education issues such as solutions to soaring student debt, reducing the cost of education, improving the quality of education and more. The teach-ins are in preparation the March 1 National Day of Action for Education.

You can follow the teach-ins on Twitter with the hashtag @occupycolleges, here on Facebook and here for more information.

The AFL-CIO stands in support with the students of Occupy Colleges as they fight to keep the cost of a quality college education affordable, oppose the corporatization of public education, support job creation efforts to increase the number of opportunities available to young people after graduation and organize to fight the influence of corporate money in American democracy.

A good college education has long been a critical step for many young people in their journey toward the working world. Similar to the way union membership provides working people with a ladder to the middle class, a college degree has long been synonymous with access to better paying jobs that allow young people the opportunity to establish themselves in the world after graduation.

But when the richest 1 percent crashed the economy in their attempts to add to their already large fortunes, they not only ruined the livelihoods of many working families, they jeopardized the futures of American college students as well.

Young people are well aware of the conditions that spurred the Occupy Wall Street movement, and they are taking action on campuses around the country to stand in solidarity with the movement to solve our country’s income inequality problem and hold Wall Street accountable for their fair share.

The success of our country’s college students and Occupy Colleges is a necessity for the success of our nation’s economic recovery as a whole.

Over at Forbes, Susan Adams notes that Steven Colbert took family medical leave to be with his mother, and asks: Does Law Protect Your Right to Do the Same?

While the unpaid Family Medical Leave Act is federal law, it covers only firms with 50 or more employees and contains other restrictions. Writes Adams:

Employees who need to take sudden leave to care for a loved one often try to  use accrued vacation days or sick days. Ellen Bravo, executive director of  Family Values @ Work, a network of 16 state coalitions that support family-friendly policies, says many workers don’t realize that federal law does  not mandate that employers provide either vacation time or sick days. Also, many employers who provide those benefits, require advance notice, and don’t allow workers to take sick days to care for family members.

A few states, like California and Minnesota, also have flexible care laws, which require employers who offer paid sick days to allow workers to use the time to care for family members.

Bravo’s group hopes more states pass such laws. In New York City, where Colbert lives, a paid sick day law is pending and statewide, there is a bill that would  provide family leave insurance, similar to California’s and New Jersey’s. “Our  goal is to have many more men do what Stephen Colbert is doing, and be present  for a parent,” says Bravo. “Many men would be better fathers, sons and husbands  if they weren’t punished for it on the job.”

Read the full article here.

Work—and laughter—does connect us all and that couldn’t have been more true than Sunday night in Portland, Ore., when the comedians of Laughter Works Comedy tour took the stage before a full house at the Helium Club.

The show was part of a three-day event organized by the Oregon AFL-CIO and Laughing Liberally to showcase strategies for infusing activism with comedy. And the reviews are in—courtesy of Facebook:

• Fabulous all the way around. They made some great comments about big money and issues, not just easy-target Republicans. Unions are for everyone, work joins us all. A terrific (and terrifically funny) night.
  Shawn Sorenson.
• It couldn’t have been smarter or funnier. The best comedy show I have ever attended.
  Julane Grant.
• Thank you for hilarious show. I didn’t stop laughing for 2 hours. My experience was super-fantastic!!!!xoxo
  Biba Mustafic.

The national and local comedians also conducted workshops yesterday for union and community activists and organizers on blending humor into the fight for social justice. The workshops continue today.

Last night, area union members and others were at Jimmy Mak’s jazz club and other downtown businesses, where they handed out thank you cards for the stagehands, ticket takers, wait staff, hotel workers and others who make the Portland Jazz festival run smoothly.

This evening at rush hour, the comedians will join union members and area activists in a demonstration supporting Portland cab drivers, many of whom make less than minimum wage while pulling 10-12 hour shifts to make ends meet and receiving very limited services and benefits from cab companies. Learn more here.

“Immigration policy is work policy,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) conference in Los Angeles this morning.

The AFL-CIO stands “shoulder to shoulder” with immigrant workers, Trumka said,

to beat back the enforcement of anti-immigrant initiatives on the state and local level that are a threat to the rights of all workers.

NDLON and the AFL-CIO partnered in 2006 to work together to fix the nation’s broken immigration system and fight for workplace rights, health and safety and other job-related concerns.

We turned back some horrible legislation since then, and we’ve kept up the struggle together to make sure that workers’ rights—your rights and all of our rights—are recognized and respected.

In a message to conference attendees, NDLON Executive Director Pablo Alvarado says, “These are not easy times but we are indeed on the road to justice.”

Turning the tide is not just about a campaign against immigration enforcement but also about day laborers leading a movement for dignity and justice. When we open a worker center and extend our open hand to our neighbors, we are turning the tide. When our promotion efforts bring new employers to hire ready workers, we are turning the tide. When humble workers refuse to allow this country to take our labor without also recognizing our full humanity, the tide has already begun to turn.

Trumka told the NDLON activists that as AFL-CIO unions, state federations and central labor councils have worked together with NDLON,

More and more, we have all come to see that work connects us all.  You’re working with the Laborers’ (LIUNA) in New Jersey, Texas and California to build unions. Day labor centers in Washington State have joined the AFL-CIO and are bringing the best of our movements together—your creativity, courage and strength, our experience and political power.

He reiterated the labor movement’s strong support of the DREAM Act and a legalization program for immigrant workers. He also outlined how the AFL-CIO and NDLON worker centers and other groups have worked together to pass wage theft laws in several cities and states to “hold employers accountable and secure the wages that you work so hard for.”

The selective enforcement of immigration law along with the e-verify program in its current form that is “the latest version of the raid on the workplace,” Trumka said.

We know all too well what the selective enforcement of immigration laws does for workers who are trying to form unions. Just a few miles from here, at Pomona College, 17 workers who have been organizing to join UNITE HERE Local 11 food service and restaurant workers union were fired for not having proper work documents—this is a clear case—the National Labor Relations Board found that the college targeted and punished workers who wanted to form a union.

Last year, for first time, the labor movement joined hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers around the country in celebrating May Day as immigrant workers’ day. This year, Trumka said, “We will celebrate May Day as a day to recognize the rights of immigrants and the rights of workers.”

This year, we’ll stand together again, but I’m talking about more than a rally. The AFL-CIO is embracing the future of America’s labor movement. We’re joining together with you to transform this great nation. We’ll celebrate the brave men and women who come to this country, who struggle here for a better life, because America draws its strength from that struggle.

Trumka is on a two-day California trip to highlight and support the efforts of low-wage, immigrant workers in Los Angeles and Sacramento. He will meet later today with carwash workers in Los Angeles who recently won union contracts as part of the CLEAN Carwash Campaign. In Sacramento tomorrow, Trumka will join with domestic workers who are mobilizing to pass a Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights in the state legislature.