Archive for April, 2006
Coal Mine Deaths Make Workers Memorial Day April 28 Especially Timely
Across the nation and around the world, workers and job-safety activists are remembering their colleagues and the thousands of other workers who have been injured or killed on the job on the 17th observation of Workers Memorial Day April 28.
The worker death rate was up in 2004 for the first time in more than a decade, according to the just-released AFL-CIO report Death on the Job, The Toll of Neglect—and this year, the U.S. coal mine death toll is higher in the first four months than in all of 2005.
In Riviera Beach, Fla., union members will pay special honor to the coal miners killed on the job, including the 26 who have died so far this year. While in Clarksburg W.Va., the West Virginia AFL-CIO is staging a special event to raise funds for children whose parents have died or become disabled on the job.
Workers Earning $20,000–$40,000 Likely Don’t Have the Health Care They Need
Yesterday, union members in Wisconsin succeeded in introducing commonsense legislation that would ensure all state residents have access to quality, affordable health care.
But the rest of the nation isn’t so lucky.
Not only are uninsured rates among U.S. adults rising, but there has been a marked jump among people with modest incomes, says a new study by The Commonwealth Fund.
Three More Backers Needed for Bill to Protect Freedom to Form Unions
Three more co-sponsors. That’s all that’s needed to get a majority of House members to sign on to a bill that would level the playing field when workers try to form a union.
Republican Reps. Jim Gerlach (Pa.) and Christopher H. Smith (N.J.) added their names to the list of co-sponsors of the Employee Free Choice Act, bringing the number of co-sponsors to 215 in the U.S. House, three short of a majority. There are 42 co-sponsors in the U.S. Senate.
L.A. and the American Dream
For the past 30 years, Los Angeles has been a city in transition, from a dreamy Hollywood fantasy oasis to a community with the nation’s largest divide between the rich and poor. “The New Los Angeles”—premiering on PBS stations nationwide April 27—explores the dramatic and turbulent changes in the City of Angels.
Much of the change and the eventual empowerment of the city’s minority, working poor and immigrant community was boosted by the growing influence of the city’s labor movement.
Massachusetts House Overrides Romney Health Care Vetoes
The Massachusetts House yesterday voted to take back the giveaway to employers Gov. Mitt Romney (R) had wheedled into the state’s new health care law. Romney had vetoed a $295-a-year assessment per employee on employers that do not provide health coverage to workers. The House dumped Romney’s veto in a 136–20 vote, the Associated Press reports, and the Senate is expected to vote to override it as well.
As we reported previously, the Massachusetts law—patterned on a plan from ultraconservative former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich—is the most far-reaching scheme to shift the burden of health care costs to workers. Under the legislation, individuals who don’t qualify for the state Medicaid program or for insurance through their jobs would be forced to buy low-cost private plans. Romney’s move to exempt employers that don’t cover their workers was insult added to injury.
The House also voted to override Romney’s veto of a provision providing dental coverage for Medicaid recipients.
Transit Workers to Toussaint: We’re with You—to Jail and Beyond
Members of the Transport Workers (TWU) are making sure TWU Local 100 President Roger Toussaint knows they support him during his 10-day prison sentence in New York’s Tombs prison—and some plan to remain with him until he’s released.
Following a massive rally on Monday, with thousands of cheering supporters lining the way, local and state union members marched with Toussaint across the Brooklyn Bridge to The Tombs, where he began his sentence for leading his union on a strike in December.
Striking is illegal in New York State if you’re a public employee and Toussaint’s 33,000-member local represents subway and bus workers at the city’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).
Union members have set up tents outside The Tombs, and plan to stay around the clock, with members of different divisions, such as car equipment or track workers, scheduled to rally outside the Bernard B. Kerik Complex correctional center on White Street.
20 Years After Chernobyl
A timely reminder of the world’s worst nuclear disaster 20 years ago today at Chernobyl.
According to the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions (ICEM):
Today, some 4,000 workers employed in the contamination exclusion zone regularly face non-payment of wages, lack of funding for equipment, clothing and other essentials, and general disregard by Ukrainian government authorities.
The anniversary of the explosion of Chernobyl’s reactor No. 4 comes just two days before workers in the United States and around the world observe Workers Memorial Day on April 28.
Wal-Mart’s Everyday Low Standards. Look Who’s Subverting U.S. Port Security
A few weeks ago, we released a report that got the attention of all those who care about the nation’s port security.
UNCHECKED: How Wal-Mart Uses Its Might to Block Port Security documents how the corporate monolith and its Washington, D.C., lobbyist, the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), have systematically undermined America’s security by working to defeat or weaken new rules to make America’s seaports and supply chains safe from terrorist attacks.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney wrote “Wal-Mart’s Dirty Secret Is Out,” an op-ed published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and the RILA countered with an opinion piece stating it “would be irresponsible” to move forward with the AFL-CIO’s recommendations to increase security.
Death on the Job: Up for the First Time in 10 Years
With the number of deaths in the nation’s coal mines this year already exceeding last year’s entire toll, the AFL-CIO’s annual job safety report reveals even more troubling and deadly information about the nation’s workplaces. For the first time in a decade, the national job fatality rate was up from the previous year.
In 2004 (the latest year for which Bureau of Labor Statistics figures are available), 5,703 workers died from workplace injuries, compared to 5,575 the previous year, reports Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect.
The 15th edition of the AFL-CIO’s national and state-by-state profile of worker safety and health in the United States reveals that along with the increased number of workplace deaths in 2004, the rate of on-the-job fatalities (4.1 per 100,000 workers) was up by 2 percent from 2003. The last year the rate went up from the previous year was 1993.
Forget National Security. Bush’s Buddies Have an Election to Win
Forget national security. We got an election to win.
That’s pretty much President Bush’s so-called solution to screaming-high gas prices.
Bush today called for freezing the nation’s strategic oil reserves to halt escalating pump prices. He’s delaying this summer’s deposits to the reserve—an emergency stockpile of government-owned crude oil that the nation keeps on hand for disastrous events like, oh, terrorist attacks and the like.
Bush said he did not plan to raise taxes on fuel nor impose price caps to control gasoline prices. But he does plan to ask the Environmental Protection Agency to “temporarily” loosen clean air regulations to make it easier for refineries to meet demand more quickly, according to Americablog.
As Susan G writes on DailyKos:
Any bets on how long a “temporary suspension” will last?
And is anyone else detecting a pattern here?
In the wake of Katrina, Bush suspends prevailing wage laws.
But for working families who need to fill up the tank to get to their jobs—paying a good chunk of those earnings to get there—freezing the emergency reserve is a short-term band aid with huge potential risks.
What happens at the end of the summer when the oil reserves are resupplied and gas prices skyrocket again? If you’re just barely getting by, the $30, $40 or $50 you spend at the pump is a large portion of your weekly income. For instance, if you are paid the minimum wage—$5.15 an hour—$50 at the gas tank is one-fourth of your weekly salary.
