Archive for March, 2006
No More Immigration Raids in Disguise
While the immigration debate rages on Capitol Hill, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has quietly backed away from a most disgusting practice: impersonating safety and health officials to round up undocumented immigrants on the job.
BNA’s Daily Labor Report (subscription required) says in a March 17 letter to the American Industrial Hygiene Association, Marcy M. Forman, director of the agency’s inspection division, said:
“Effective immediately, the use of ruses involving health and safety programs administered by a private entity or a federal, state, or local government agency (such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration [OSHA]), for the purpose of immigration worksite enforcement, will be discontinued….”
Lots to Say…About Life Post-Hurricane Katrina
Let’s not forget Hurricane Katrina. That sums up many of the messages we’ve received this week at AFL-CIO Now.
If you have news or comments on Hurricane Katrina or on any other issues of interest to working families, send it to us at: blognews@aflcio.org.
Jim Young from the USW International Union alerts us to a new USW project, A Safe Way Back Home, an environmental neighborhood clean up initiative and community outreach campaign. Together with Dillard University’s Deep South Center for Environmental Justice (DSCEJ), the USW is helping address contamination in New Orleans’ neighborhoods following Hurricane Katrina—and the lack of effective Bush administration response.
Data Bonanza
How many Missourians have been added to the ranks of the uninsured since President Bush took office? How much has the child poverty rate increased nationwide? How do median household incomes in Alabama and Wyoming compare? Across the country, how many schools need repairs and what would that cost? How many manufacturing jobs has your state lost since 2001?
You’ve got questions? We’ve got answers. We’ve just launched Facts & Stats, a bonanza of the most current data available on working family issues. All these beautiful data (and as data junkies know, that word is plural) are listed in spreadsheets for each state (including Washington, D.C.) and for all states with U.S. totals. They’re updated as soon as new data are released (mostly from official federal government sources)—and spreadsheets can be downloaded so you can crunch those numbers to your heart’s content. Topics covered are bankruptcy, education (school repair needs), health care, housing, infrastructure, jobs, pensions, poverty, workplace safety and health, trade, unemployment and wages and income.
Facts & Stats is a great resource for activists, journalists, policy folks and the just plain curious.
Dig in!
Union Investments Rebuild the Gulf Coast in Face of Bush Mismanagement
While President George W. Bush takes photo-op trips to New Orleans and promises aid that is delivered too late, if at all, the AFL-CIO and affiliated unions are rolling up their sleeves and opening their wallets to make sure the Gulf Coast is rebuilt.
The AFL-CIO’s Housing Investment Trust (HIT ) and Building Investment Trust (BIT), through the Gulf Coast Revitalization Program, plan to invest nearly $500 million into building affordable housing for survivors of Hurricane Katrina—the biggest need for the hundreds of thousands of people who are still displaced or being forced to live in instant trailer parks. This investment could help create at least 5,000 rental units as well as for-sale housing and revitalize the region’s hospitality industry.
Low-Wage Michigan Workers Get a Big Boost
Thanks to the campaign by Michigan’s unions and community allies, the state’s low-wage workers will be better able to support themselves and their families.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) signed legislation March 28 that will boost the current state minimum wage of $5.15 an hour to $6.95 an hour in October, followed by a July 2007 raise to $7.15 and $7.40 a year later.
Earlier this year, minimum wage backers mobilized to put an initiative to raise the wage on the November ballot. The drive proved so popular—polls showed 80 percent of Michigan voters backed it—that Republican lawmakers got off the stick after years of opposing a raise and passed the minimum wage legislation.
Why the sudden change of heart in favor of low-wage workers? Fear of a huge Democratic turnout in November, political observers say.
Health Care Tops U.S. Concerns
Being able to find and afford health care is the top concern of Americans today, according to survey results released Tuesday by Gallup (subscription required). Editor & Publisher reports: “A total of 68 percent said they worried about this a ‘great deal.’ Coming in second is the Social Security system at 51 percent. Following close behind that were ‘availability and affordability of energy,’ drug use, crime and violence–and only then ‘the possibility of terrorist attacks in the U.S.’ (at 45 percent).” Gallup says health care is the top-ranking concern among Democrats, Republicans and Independents—although Democrats tend to be more worried overall.
Other research reports also point to concerns about the economy. In a March 2006 poll from Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg, three choices were tied when respondents were asked about the biggest economic problem for the country—”jobs leaving the U.S.,” oil and energy prices and the Iraq war.
Parents: Beware of the ‘65% Solution’
Today in Florida, the state’s Senate Education Committee is voting on a joint resolution
that essentially would repeal the state’s amendment limiting class size and replace it with the so-called 65% Solution. By mandating that 65 percent of a school district’s education is spent on “classroom” expenditures, the amendment would lead to mass layoffs for school support service personnel such as bus drivers, food service workers and security officers while eliminating $15 billion in constitutionally guaranteed revenues, according to the Florida AFL-CIO.
Florida isn’t the only state where extremists are shopping what the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department (TTD) calls a “public-school smear campaign.” The poll-tested proposal sounds like a sure bet—Georgia has passed it, with many other states proposing similar bills.
Students SLAPping Injustice All Week
They could be partying on the Florida beaches.
Instead, thousands of students are spending their spring break taking part in National Student Labor Week of Action (better known as SLAP Week). From March 27–April 4, they will march, rally and protest against “the Corporatization of Education.”
The week of action is organized annually by the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP), a project of Jobs with Justice—a nationwide network of community-labor coalitions—and the United States Student Association—the largest organization representing students on Capitol Hill.
Bush Will Hit Seniors with ‘Prescription Drug Tax’ if They Don’t Meet Deadline
Last week we told you that several U.S. Senate votes concerning some serious flaws in the Medicare Part D prescription drug program didn’t really do much—except give lawmakers some convenient cover.
If lawmakers don’t take action soon, starting May 15, seniors who have not signed up for the complicated and confusing program that offers hundreds of plans with a wide range of premiums and covered drugs will be forced to pay a penalty.
France Is on Strike
French transit workers, teachers and others are on strike and in the streets today protesting a new labor law pushed through by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin that makes it easier for bosses to fire young workers during their first two years on the job.
In this country every day, employers fire at-will workers who don’t have the protection of union contracts—young, old and in between.
Reuters reports 250,000 people supporting students and unions took to the streets in Marseille, 60,000 in Grenoble and 40,000 in Pau in the southwest. Ongoing protests over the law have disrupted “classes at 69 of France’s 84 universities, as well as at nearly a quarter of the country’s 4,300 high schools,” according to The New York Times.
