Labor Union Blog

Economic Report:

September 11, 2001 is still taking tolls on the workers and emergency responders who participated in the rescue or clean up. An investigation by the World Trade Center Responder Fatality Investigation Program has revealed that 360 of the laborers or emergency professionals who were associated with operations have died. Of those, 80 perished from deaths related to cancer. The majority of those who died were between the ages of 20 and 50.

By Doug Cunningham

Hundreds of workers are expected in Cleveland, North Carolina today at a rally demanding reinstatement of five UAW local bargaining committee members fired by Freightliner. Allen Bradley is one of the workers fired over a year ago after staging a strike against concessions.

[Bradley]: “The workers are tired of being ran over. And we're tired of corporate unionism."

Freightliner is shutting down it’s operation today. Bradley says he's not sure if it's connected to the rally.

As the Democratic Presidential race slogs on into the mining state of West Virginia, a new report suggests that the 2007 mining disaster in Utah could have been prevented. Jesse Russell reports:

The New York Times reported on Thursday that according to details of a Congressional investigation into the Crandall Mine disaster in August of 2007 the mine’s general manager Laine Adair hid information from federal mining officials and issued false statements. The report says that Adair possibly withheld the information in conspiracy with other senior staff at the mining company. The general manager failed to report a previous mine collapse five months prior to the collapse which took nine lives.

By Doug Cunningham

SEIU is fighting for thousands of Boston hospital workers who want a union to improve their working conditions, advocate for patients and secure good health care and retirement benefits. Mike Fadel is a Vice-President with 1199SEIU in Boston.

[Fadel]: “They're coming together to change that, to make life better for themselves, for their families, for their patients, and ultimately for the entire city. There's just a growing civic consensus among elected officials and community leaders that there's no reason for the hospitals to interfere with these caregivers' right to freely exercise their choice to form a union."

By Doug Cunningham

SEIU is fighting for thousands of Boston hospital workers who want a union to improve their working conditions, advocate for patients and secure good health care and retirement benefits. Mike Fadel is a Vice-President with 1199SEIU in Boston.

[Fadel]: “They're coming together to change that, to make life better for themselves, for their families, for their patients and ultimately for the entire city. There's just a growing civic consensus among elected officials and community leaders that there's no reason for the hospitals to interfere with these caregivers' right to freely exercise their choice to for ma union."

The mine manager and other senior staff at the Crandall Canyon coal mine in Utah hid information from federal mining officials that could have prevented the disaster and should face criminal charges, a congressional committee said today. Last August, six miners and three rescue workers died after the mine collapsed.

In a report released today, the House Education and Labor Committee says the mining company’s plan to remove coal was flawed and should never have been submitted, and that the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) should never have approved it.

The committee referred its findings to the U.S. Department of Justice for possible criminal prosecutions. Click here to read a summary of the report by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the committee chairman.

Sen. John McCain is used to getting softball questions from his fans in the media. At his town hall meeting yesterday in Michigan, however, he finally took a tough, smart question from an unexpected source.

When a 14-year-old girl attending the meeting got to ask a question of a presidential candidate, she took the opportunity to ask why he skipped out on voting on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

McCain said he agreed with the minority of senators who filibustered the bill, which would give targets of workplace discrimination the chance to fight for equal pay. He claimed it wouldn’t help women. Here’s what he had to say:

I don't believe that this would do anything to help the rights of women, except maybe help trial lawyers and others in that profession.

A few items have been piling up in my inbox that need to be shared. Workers who pick tomatoes have been seeking a penny a pound increase in wages to help address their egregiously low wages. Yum! Brands, which owns Taco Bell and other chains, has agreed to do so. But Burger King Corp. refuses. Now, it turns out Burger King hired a private security firm to spy on the Student/Farmworker Alliance, one of several groups seeking to improve the lives of migrants in Florida. At a recent Senate hearing, witnesses described how the workers sometimes are held against their will, beaten and forced to work for little or no pay—21st century slavery. (Click here to sign the petition to eliminate modern-day servitude in America’s produce fields.) If Burger King thinks slave-like working conditions are OK, guess spying is, too.

With the busy summer travel season fast approaching, the nation’s air traffic controllers are alerting the public that a combination of short-staffing, fatigue and faulty equipment in control towers is a "recipe for disaster."

Just this week, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) issued warnings about several near misses at two of the country’s major airports—Atlanta and Cincinnati. In Atlanta, the world’s busiest airport, the number of incidents when planes have gotten too close has already exceeded last year’s total—and the situation is getting worse. In Cincinnati, three such serious incidents have occurred in the past six weeks.

Jeremy Bishop, executive director of Pride At Work, describes how we can assist laid-off flight attendants at Aloha and ATA airlines.

Recently, thousands of flight attendants at Aloha Airlines and ATA Airlines have been laid off after their respective companies went out of business. As any working person can attest, this is a terrible time to be unemployed.

Once covered by contracts negotiated by the Flight Attendants-CWA, these flight attendants were forced to leave stable wages, health care benefits and a path to retirement behind for the unemployment line.