Archive for April, 2006
Reverse the Raid on Student Aid
Among the massive cuts to federal programs that benefit working people, Republican congressional leaders have muscled through $12.7 billion in cuts to student aid as part of the Bush administration’s budget blueprint.
Translation: Students who borrow up to $20,000 could end up paying an extra $6,000 over the life of the loan.
You Can’t Eat Prestige
Katrina Blomdahl, AFL-CIO Voice@Work communications specialist, has some news for parents with kids in college or headed there: You’re paying a lot of tuition money but not a lot of it is going to teaching salaries. Read Blomdahl’s report:
I take a simple view on organizing graduate employees and non-tenure track faculty in higher education. Nobody casually prepares to teach university-level courses, and nobody should be casually paid for it.
Bargaining Digest Weekly
The lockout continues against mail order clerks represented by the United Steel Workers (USW) at Medco Health Solution’s dispensing pharmacy in Las Vegas.
More than 6 million union family members use Medco’s service, about 25 percent of Medco's total business.
Click the following link to send an e-mail to Medco CEO David Snow telling him to end the lockout and negotiate a fair deal: david_snow@medco.com. Find out more by going to www.usw.org/rx.
May Day Celebrations to Highlight Immigrant Rights, Global Solidarity
In 1886, the first May Day celebration by mostly immigrant workers in Chicago was the catalyst that led to the eight-hour workday and changed the way work was done in the U.S. This May Day, workers plan massive demonstrations across the country to ensure that another group of immigrants gets justice.
In marches, rallies, demonstrations and ceremonies May 1, hundreds of thousands of workers from New York to Chicago to Los Angeles will deliver a simple message: Immigrants who work for a living and who contribute to their communities deserve a chance at the American Dream.
Wal-Mart Shows Anti-Union Stripes in U.K.
Wal-Mart, which destroys good U.S. jobs through its rabid anti-unionism, low wages and massive imports from China, now is extending those policies overseas. The Independent, a United Kingdom newspaper, reports the world’s largest retailer forced its British subsidiary, Asda, to renege on a deal to recognize a union.
Three-Card Monte Republican Tax Scam
When you’re on the streets of New York and see a crowd around a man standing behind a folding table, quickly shuffling about three cards and taking bets, you know it’s a con game.
Maybe its naïve, but we expect a little better out of Congress. But when it comes to tax breaks for the rich and powerful, we’ve found out for the past six years that congressional Republican leaders and the Bush White House have the fiscal ethics of a Three-Card Monte dealer.
Their latest con game revolves around circumventing Senate rules so a tax reconciliation package jammed with about $50 billion in capital gains and corporate dividend tax cuts can win approval with just a simple majority vote instead of 60 votes.
Union Solidarity 101: A Real-Life Course for NYU Grad Students
Graduate assistants at New York University (NYU) are teaching their own history lesson by refusing to allow school officials to take away their basic right to form a union. Yesterday they wrote another chapter in the struggle by meeting, marching, rallying and staging a sit-down protest to make the point that they will fight until they win recognition of their union.
During a convention of the Graduate Student Organizing Committee (GSOC)/UAW Local 2110 April 27, members demanded the university open negotiations for a second contract to replace a pact that lapsed last August.
Lack of Oxygen and Communication Killed Sago Miners—Families ‘Deserved Better’
"The first thing we did was activate our [oxygen] rescuers, as we had been trained. At least four of the rescuers did not function. I shared my rescuer with Jerry Groves, while Junior Toler, Jesse Jones and Tom Anderson sought help from others. There were not enough rescuers to go around."
That's how Randall McCloy, the lone survivor of the Jan. 2 explosion at the International Coal Group's Sago mine, described the first few minutes after the methane blast ripped through the West Virginia mine. McCloy's words are part of a letter he wrote to the survivors of the 12 miners who died. The Associated Press obtained the letter and reported it April 27.
Oil Profits Soar, Bush Rejects Windfall Profits Tax
Today, Chevron announced its first quarter profits are up 49 percent, hitting $4 billion. Yesterday, Exxon Mobil announced $8.4 billion in first-quarter profits. Members of Congress, fearing voter outrage over $3-a-gallon gas, are flailing to look like they're doing something about pain at the pump, proposing everything from tax crackdowns to taxpayer rebates.
CNN reports how our president, the former Texas oilman, responds:
President Bush on Friday rejected calls to tax oil companies' record profits fueled by high oil prices but said he expects those companies to re-invest those profits into alternative fuels and new energy technologies...."The temptation in Washington is to tax everything," Bush said while taking questions from White House reporters. "The answer is for there to be strong reinvestment to make this country more secure from an energy perspective."
Workers Memorial Day 2006
Each year, those of us in the AFL-CIO union movement, together with our allies across the country, set aside a day when we remember all the workers who have died on the job—some 5,764 in the United States in 2004. Workers Memorial Day, which began in 1989, marks April 28, 1970, when the Occupational Safety and Health Act went into effect.
The families of the 12 Sago miners who perished in January contributed their favorite photos of the men who died on the job. In their honor, and for all those who have perished at America's workplaces, we dedicate this day.
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