Archive for April, 2006
Who’s Endangering Worker Health and Safety Near You?
On Workers’ Memorial Day, do you know whether employers near you are endangering workers’ safety and health?
It’s easy to find out: Visit Working America’s Job Tracker, type in your zip code, click search and find employers within a 100-mile radius that violated safety and health regulations, had workplace fatalities or catastrophic incidents or amassed high workplace illness or injury rates since 2000.
Click once more and find out what happened to the workers-hands caught in machines, eyes damaged by chemicals, workers crushed-and the paltry amounts of fines levied on the employers by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Thousands Tell Wal-Mart: Your Health Care Claims Are a Sham
Union members, workers and community activists in 35 cities rallied and marched today to let Wal-Mart know it must pay decent wages and provide affordable health insurance to its workers. Despite the giant retailer’s claim it has improved its health care plan, 57 percent of the company’s employees—some 775,000 people—are without health care.
This is totally unacceptable for a company that took in $315 billion last year, workers say, especially since Wal-Mart shifted $1.37 billion in health care costs to plans paid for with our taxes.
Rally Shines Light on Pfizer CEO’s Greed
If you bought $100 in Pfizer stock in 2000, your investment today would be worth $55.70. While the company’s stock is tanking, CEO Henry McKinnell has the biggest guaranteed pension in the United States—worth $6.52 million a year or a lottery-winning-sized lump sum payment of $83 million—according to the AFL-CIO’s 2006 Executive PayWatch. The information is based on Pfizer’s 2006 proxy statement.
Carrying signs saying “Give It Back Hank!”, hundreds of union members rallied outside Pfizer’s annual meeting April 27 in Lincoln, Neb., to tell company stockholders McKinnell not only has cost the company big bucks in stock devaluation but that he is a leader in the fight to deny pensions to others. McKinnell chairs the Business Roundtable, a major backer of efforts to privatize Social Security.
Death on the Job: Worse than Reported as Latino Job Death Soars
On Tuesday we reported the troubling and tragic new figures on workplace deaths documented in the annual AFL-CIO Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect report, which shows for the first time in 10 years the number of workers killed on the job is climbing. Today, we learned the death toll is even worse.
More workers died in 2004 and the number of Latino workers killed on the job is now the highest since 1992.
Wealthy Families Fight Estate Tax—for 71.6 Billion Good Reasons
Eighteen extremely wealthy families have been quietly financing the campaign to repeal the federal estate tax, says Think Progress, citing a new report by Public Citizen and United for a Fair Economy.
With good reason: The families—including, of course, the clan behind Wal-Mart—stand to save $71.6 billion if the tax is repealed.
Exxon Announces Mega Profits. Consumers Go Broke at Pump
We’ve all stood there by the gas pump, silently, and sometimes not so silently, fuming as the numbers on the dollar counter roll by faster and faster—$5–$10–$20–$60. But the gallon counter only pokes along. If you’re lucky, your 60 bucks bought you 20 gallons of regular. Next week, who knows?
While working families are scrambling for ways to pay at the pump, the head honchos at Exxon Mobil don’t have a money care in the world. In fact, with conglomerate’s just-announced profit for the first quarter of 2003, the company could buy 2.8 billion gallons (at $3 a gallon) of their own product. The petroleum giant’s $8.4 billion quarterly profit follows it’s record-breaking $10.7 billion profit from 2005’s last quarter—the biggest corporate quarterly profit recorded by any corporation in U.S. history.
Oh, one more thing. In 2005, the company made $36.1 billion. That’s profit…what’s left over after expenses…taxes (more on that later)…lobbying…and CEO pay and perks.
Rags to Riches? Not Here
In America, poor children can pull themselves up by the bootstraps and morph into wealth, right?
Wrong.
A child born poor here has just a 1 percent chance of ever making it to the top 5 percent of the economic ladder, Reuters reports, citing Understanding Mobility in America, a study by economist Tom Hertz from American University.
Race remains a major factor in the ability to move from poverty. Sixty-three percent of poor African American families stay poor, compared with 32 percent of poor white families. Only 3 percent of African Americans in the bottom quarter of the income scale make it to the top quarter, compared with 14 percent of whites. Racial disparities hold even when factors such as family background are removed from the equation.
The study, sponsored by the Center for American Progress, uses data that track income changes for more than 4,000 people who were children in 1968. It concludes that children are much more likely to grow up into their parents’ income bracket in the United States than in other wealthy countries, except for the United Kingdom. Access to quality education and higher ed is the most important factor in enabling people to move up the income scale.
Union-Backed Shareholder Vote Tells DuPont to End Toxic Poison
In a move strongly supported by workers, shareholders at E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. sent a resounding message that the company is not moving quickly enough to end the use of a toxic chemical that is found in hundreds of commonly used products.
Some 27.3 percent of investors voted at the company’s annual meeting April 26 in Wilmington, Del., to ask management to report on options to accelerate the company’s phaseout of the use of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). The chemical is used in production of Teflon® cookware and grease and stain repellent coatings for carpets, textiles and fast-food wrappers. It lingers in the environment and is linked to potential health effects such as cancer, liver damage and birth defects.
Port Security Worker ID Checks Need to Protect Workers, Too
Nearly five years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration is finally getting around to checking the backgrounds of the people who work at our nation’s ports (although ignoring other ways to make our ports secure). And the unions that represent port workers want to make sure the checks are fair.
Under a plan announced April 25 by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, the names of about 400,000 employees who work in the nation’s ports will be matched against government terror watch lists and immigration databases. Screened port workers, along with truckers and rail employees, will have unrestricted access to ports and will be required to carry tamper-resistant identification cards by next year.
While the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), which represents West Coast port workers, supports efforts to make our ports more secure, the union is concerned the security plan has not been completely thought through, says ILWU Communications Director Steve Stallone.
Lots to Say
Here’s more great input from you at AFL-CIO Now.
Remember, if you have news or comments, send it to us at: blognews@aflcio.org.
Early this month, auto parts maker Delphi, which filed for bankruptcy last December, asked the bankruptcy court to allow it to cancel its contract agreements with its employees. The company also announced a restructuring plan to sell or close 25 of 33 U.S. plants, affecting 23,000 workers. Some 21 of 29 unionized plants are included, covering 10,000 workers in Michigan.
Delphi Corp.’s bankruptcy filing raises troubling questions. First, Delphi proposed rewarding executives who oversaw the company’s financial failures with lavish pay increases and bonuses. Now Delphi is exploiting the current law by excluding profitable overseas operations and investments from consideration in the bankruptcy process.
