Archive for February, 2006
AFL-CIO and Mine Workers Aren’t Waiting for Bush to Act
Steve Smith from the AFL-CIO Media Affairs Department sends us the following update on the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting in San Diego, where leaders of the nation’s union movement are convening for their annual winter session.
In the past 12 months, 42 American coal miners were killed at work. That’s 42 families who have lost a father, husband, brother or son. The Sago Mine disaster and other recent tragedies have forced Congress to take a closer look at the issue. And it’s clearer than ever that the government is failing our nation’s coal miners.
Sneak Preview: Previous AFL-CIO and NEA Partnerships Built Strength
Yesterday’s announcement by the AFL-CIO Executive Council approving an unprecedented new partnership between the AFL-CIO and the 2.8-million-member National Education Association (NEA) means “a solidarity we’ve not had before,” says Illinois AFL-CIO President Margaret Blackshere, who also is a former teacher.
She told the Chicago Tribune she plans to begin an immediate outreach to NEA groups in the state.
Blackshere is among union leaders across the nation who see the partnership as a significant move toward increasing the strength and growth of the union movement.
“We’ve built strong alliances with other unions, and it works,” says California Teachers Association/AFT President Barbara Kerr.
Who’s Getting the Money to Rebuild the Gulf Coast?
Federal contracting to rebuild the hurricane ravaged Gulf Coast has slipped big money to politically connected contractors and allowed gross worker abuse, including wage theft, according to comprehensive review of contracting practices by the Gulf Coast Commission on Reconstruction Equity, a group created by Interfaith Worker Justice and Good Jobs First.
The report gives the Bush administration failing grades for “overseeing an orgy of profiteering in the midst of immense human tragedy.”
Vive la Equal Pay
France’s Parliament has adopted equal pay legislation to wipe out pay inequality between men and women by 2010 through collective bargaining, according to BNA’s Daily Labor Report (subscription). The legislation also strengthens protections for women who take maternity leave. Last year, French President Jacques Chirac called gender-based pay inequality “unacceptable” and vowed to attack it. BNA reports.
The new equal opportunity law aims to close the gap between male and female pay through mandatory collective bargaining at the company or sectoral level over the coming three years.…The law leaves open the possibility that sanctions could be used against employers that fail to launch equal opportunity negotiations.
Court Tells Bush ‘Wrong!’ on Attack on Defense Workers
For the second time, a federal judge has taken a legal 2×4 upside the Bush administration’s plans to strip federal workers of their collective bargaining rights. Maybe this time the message will get through.
U.S. District Court Judge Emmett G. Sullivan ruled Feb. 27 that the Defense Department’s so-called National Security Personnel System (NSPS) fails to “ensure even minimal collective bargaining rights” for the department’s more than 700,000 workers. He blocked the department from imposing the new rules.
National Education Association Partners with AFL-CIO
The union movement received a fresh dose of solidarity today with the signing of a historic agreement with the 2.8 million National Education Association and the approval of new charters that bring two more unions into the AFL-CIO fold.
The AFL-CIO Executive Council, holding its winter meetings this week in San Diego, today unanimously approved an unprecedented new partnership with the National Education Association that will further strengthen and unify the labor movement and bolster its ability to meet the needs of working families.
Labor 2006: ‘Bring Back Power for Working People’
Steve Smith from the AFL-CIO Media Affairs Department is in San Diego where members of the AFL-CIO Executive Council are holding their spring meeting. He sends us this report.
If you’re a corporate CEO, things have been pretty darn good the past several years (unless, of course, your name is Ken Lay or Jeff Skilling). It’s been like an extended party, with a very exclusive guest list—the rich and the filthy rich. But, unfortunately for you, every party has to end.
The AFL-CIO today unveiled its plan to mobilize working families in 2006 as part of an unprecedented effort to engage working people in their workplaces, shop floors and neighborhoods. In other words: Get ready to turn off the lights corporate America because the party’s just about over.
Police State? Or Catholic University?
Georgetown University students have been assisting low-wage campus workers in their fight for a living wage. The janitors, with the support of students on the Georgetown Solidarity Committee, are asking Georgetown to stop blocking their effort to join a union through the majority sign-up process—the most democratic process for winning union representation—and to finally pay the $13 per hour compensation the university promised them last March after Georgetown students staged an eight-day hunger strike in support of the workers’ effort to win a living wage.
Now, the Metropolitan Washington (D.C.) Council reports that as the one-year anniversary of the hunger strike nears (March 14), 20 members of Congress are urging Georgetown’s President John DeGioia to use his influence to ensure that Georgetown contractors recognize the janitor’s union.
101 Drug Plans—How Many Is Too Many?
Ed Coyle is executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, a nationwide organization that represents the interests of retired workers. Coyle notes that critics of the Medicare prescription drug disaster include more than just cynics.
On the same day this week, Will Lester of the Associated Press and Robin Toner of The New York Times both wrote pieces about older Americans being extremely unhappy with the Medicare Part D drug program. They tied it to a possible windfall for Democrats in the November, 2006 elections.
Coincidence?
Liberal media conspiracy?
Or, is having 101 drug plans to choose from in one state (Ohio) a little complicated for even the most intelligent person of any age to have to navigate? The system in place sounds to me like a high price for the elderly to pay, just so that the insurance and pharmaceutical industries could make a lot of money from the increasingly ethically-challenged Bush administration.
Workers ‘Round the Nation Joining Unions
Making the Union Connection at Cingular…Following the lead of more than 16,000 of their co-workers, 465 former AT&T Wireless workers at Cingular Wireless locations from Hawaii to Virginia chose to form a union with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) recently. The new union members, who worked for AT&T before the merger with Cingular, have been able to exercise their free choice to join a union under a pact in which Cingular agreed to honor the workers’ freedom to form a union when a majority signs authorization cards. Find out more about the new CWA members.
The right of workers to join a union through majority sign-up is the key provision to the Employee Free Choice Act (H.R. 1696 and S. 842) that is gaining steam in Congress with 210 co-sponsors in the House and 42 in the Senate. Take a look closer at the Employee Free Choice Act and download fact sheets and
