Archive for March, 2006
We’re All Broke
Surprise: Bankruptcy filings shot up a record 30 percent in 2005. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts reports 2,078,415 bankruptcy petitions (2,039,214 of which were “non-business,” or individual, filings) filed last year, compared with 1,597,462 in 2004. That’s more bankruptcy filings than ever before recorded in the history of our federal courts.
The surge in filings is being blamed on the misnamed “Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act,” which took effect on Oct. 17, 2005. The law makes it harder for people to clear their debts through bankruptcy, and the common assumption is that people rushed into bankruptcy court (like it’s a fun place to be) before the new law kicked in. But the sobering fact is that bankruptcy filings during October through December 2005 also hit an historic high for any quarter. Remember: Most people who file for bankruptcy are forced to do so by massive health care bills.
Square these facts with President Bush’s State of the Union declaration that “Our economy is healthy and vigorous.”
Bargaining Digest Weekly
Here are highlights from this week’s Collective Bargaining Digest News.
The obvious lead story is the deal reached by General Motors Corp., Delphi and the UAW for a severance package and “flow-back” option for Delphi employees to return to GM. The deal will potentially affect 13,000 U.S. employees of Delphi, including union workers from IUE-CWA, USW International Union and others. The UAW and Delphi are portraying it as an attrition program, which it is. Delphi will ask the bankruptcy court for approval of the plan on April 7. Its March 31 deadline for a new wage deal has not been lifted. The company says it may still ask the court for cancellation of its labor agreements by that date if no deal has been reached. Here’s how other major newspapers are reporting the story.
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The Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
- G.M. Will Offer Buyouts to All Its Union Workers, The New York Times
- GM, Delphi at Crossroads After Cost Cuts, Los Angeles Times
- Historic Union Deal Will Pare Down GM; Buyouts Offered to Tens of Thousands, The Washington Post
Anniversary of BP Texas Explosion: Another Reminder of Those Who Die at Work
The deaths of 21 coal miners this year has focused attention on coal mine safety and health, or the lack of it under the Bush administration’s workplace safety policies. But deaths and injuries on the job happen in all workplaces.
Sometimes it’s a large number like the 15 killed and 170 injured a year ago (March 23) when an explosion ripped through BP’s Texas City, Texas, refinery. The workers were members of PACE International Union, which recently merged with Steelworkers to become the USW International Union.
Much of the time, it’s one man or woman killed on the job, a worker whose death goes largely unnoticed except for a paragraph or two in the local paper. You can go to Confined Space, which offers news and commentary on workplace health and safety, for a look at the latest weekly toll of deaths on the job—tragedy, paragraph by paragraph.
Each year, the union movement and its allies honor those who have died or have been injured on the job on Workers Memorial Day, April 28. The AFL-CIO offers materials, reports and fact sheets to help union activists plan for Worker Memorial Day events and issues the annual Death on the Job report that provides a national and state-by-state profile of worker safety and health in the United States.
Get Workers Memorial Day materials here and here and visit the AFL-CIO’s Safety and Health at Work website to find out what you can do to help strengthen federal workplace safety and health laws and make workplace safety a priority.
Sirota: Workers on the Slag Heap of History
David Sirota has a great piece in the Philadelphia Daily News about corporate heists from workers coming on top of globalization’s job destruction. He focuses on a former Asarco lead smelter in East Elena, Mont., which was shut down after being bought by Grupo México, costing the town more than 200 jobs. (Workers there had been represented by USW International Union District 12.) The new owner then hiked health care premiums for retirees, delayed disability and tax payments and froze wages and reduced health and pension benefits for its workers in Arizona. In 2005, Sirota says, Grupo México had profits of more than $1 billion.
Troubled companies, Sirota says, “are using those problems as an excuse to bilk workers and enrich themselves—and our government is doing nothing to stop them….
“Unless our government starts outlawing these heists and forcing profitable multinationals to fulfill their promises to workers, East Helena’s story may soon be coming to a community near you.”
Last year, 1,500 union workers at Asarco copper mining, smelting and concentrating facilities in Arizona and Texas were forced into a four-month strike for a fair contract. The company had declared bankruptcy despite record copper prices.
Reading Between the Lines: Union Bid for Papers Is a Good Deal
McClatchy Co. announced a bid to buy 32 Knight Ridder daily newspapers March 13, saying it would spin off 12 of the papers in an immediate resale. Prior to the McClatchy deal, The Newspaper Guild division of the Communications Workers of America announced a partnership with Yucaipa Cos. to bid for nine of the Knight Ridder papers. At first, the company said it would only accept bids for the entire chain but now supports the Guild’s bid for all 12 papers.
Lots to Say…
Here are some of the latest comments we’ve received at AFL-CIO Now.
Got news? Send it to us at: blognews@aflcio.org.
Good news in Kansas where Brother Stuart Elliot reports the Disposable Worker Bill, which passed the Kansas Legislature, was vetoed by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius on Tuesday.
Pushed by the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, the bill sought to cut workers’ compensation settlements based on the percentage of their injury that a doctor believes resulted from a pre-existing condition. It would have allowed a doctor to determine whether a disability caused by an on-the-job injury might be due in part to a health condition, which could be used to reduce the compensation settlement.
Sago Fined for Safety Violations. So What?
Recent reports from the Associated Press and The New York Times, among others, highlight the government’s failure to collect fines from corporations involved in serious wrongdoing and the Bush administration’s track record of reducing or simply assessing nominal fines for coal mine safety violations.
The Mine Safety and Health Administration’s (MSHA’s) recent announcement that it had assessed another round of fines for safety violations in 2005 at International Coal Group’s Sago Mine in Upshur County, W.Va., where 12 coal miners died Jan. 2, raises a couple of questions:
1. Will the money ever be collected?
2. Is the Bush administration just covering its behind against the growing backlash about its workplace safety enforcement record?
The Really Big Payout for Medicare Part D
Over the next 10 years, President George W. Bush’s Medicare Part D prescription drug program—which is confusing, angering and letting down seniors all over the country—will cost taxpayers and beneficiaries $800 billion more than it should, according to a series of reports from Americans United.
Hundreds of billions of dollars could have been saved if the legislation creating the drug benefit required the government to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices—as the Veterans Affairs does—Americans United says. Instead, the legislation actually prevents Medicare from using its massive bargaining power to negotiate for lower drug prices.
The group lays blame on concessions to drug and health companies, which have funneled more than $80 million in campaign contributions to federal candidates since 2000. (We told you recently about the Senate voting not to “require” the government to do anything meaningful but agreeing to “allow” improvements—in which the Bush administration is not interested.)
Americans United has detailed each state’s share of Medicare Part D’s excess costs—and they’re whoppers: $57 billion for Florida, $33.1 billion for Ohio, $32 billion for Illinois and $79.7 billion for California, for example. Check out the reports.
When Workers Are Injured or Die on the Job, Corporations Pay Few Penalties
Corporations with unsafe and even deadly working conditions get penalized, right?
Like the $3 million fine against a pipeline company for a spill and explosion that killed two10-year-old boys and a teenage boy in Washington State. Or the $2.5 million penalty against nuclear labs around the country for exposing workers to radiation. And the $1.3 million in fines against coal companies for deaths and injuries to miners.
Sure sounds like fitting penalties.
Yet nearly all of that $6.8 million is a part of the more than $35 billion in fines and other payment penalties against corporations and individuals in civil and criminal cases that has gone uncollected in the past 10 years, according to a study by the Associated Press (AP).
Working Families Celebrate Victory in New Hampshire
Longtime observers of the New Hampshire Legislature say that so-called right to work (RTW) legislation has surfaced about 30 times. Just once did it every make any headway. It got a slight majority in a House vote many years ago.
On March 22, after a working families’ mobilization plan that showed lawmakers just how deeply right to work laws go against the grain of New Hampshire voters, the latest RTW proposal again failed. The bill was put out its misery by a 255–85 vote in the state House of Representatives, which has just 150 Democratic lawmakers.
