Archive for April, 2006
Black Farmers: Seven Years Too Long to Wait for Justice
For seven years, two administrations have denied justice to black farmers who were refused federal loans and subsidies and who lost their land unjustly because they could not get loans similar to those white farmers received.
The black farmers won a historic settlement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1999, under which USDA agreed to pay $50,000 and cancel the debts of each farmer who established his or her case of discrimination.
However, the large majority of the farmers—81,000 out of 94,000 in the lawsuit—have gotten zilch from the Bush administration, which is always trumpeting its support of the family farm and small business.
What a Concept: Affordable, Quality Health Care. Wisconsin Is Getting Close
Affordable, quality health care for all.
Sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it?
In Wisconsin, a coalition, including the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO and other labor, business and government organizations, took a big step toward that goal.
The Wisconsin Health Care Partnership Plan, introduced today in the state Legislature, requires employers to pay a fair share of health care costs for their employees, who would share health care costs through co-payments and deductibles.
In short: The plan reduces health care costs for workers, their families and employers.
Albuquerque’s Low-Wage Workers Get a Break
Restaurant workers, cashiers, laborers and others in Albuquerque, N.M., finally will get a boost in wages now that the City Council approved legislation raising the city’s minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $6.75 an hour effective Jan. 1, 2007.
With the federal minimum wage frozen at $5.15 an hour since 1997, union activists and community allies in cities such as Albuquerque and states around the nation are working to raise the local and state wage levels.
Already, some 17 states have higher minimum wages than the federal minimum wage. Republicans in Congress and the Bush administration have refused efforts by Democrats to raise the minimum wage—which comes out to $206 a week, before taxes. With today’s gasoline prices, a family of four easily could spend one quarter of their monthly income just to fuel their car.
Join the Next Generation of Organizers
The AFL-CIO Organizing Institute (OI) is building the next generation of union organizers one person at a time. Since its founding in 1989, the OI has trained thousands of union members and others committed to building power for working people across the nation.
“I didn’t really know what a union was before I became involved as a student with a living wage campaign in Knoxville, Tenn. I met some veteran trade-union activists who told me about a way that I could actually get paid and still be a part of building a movement,” says a 2001 OI graduate who is now a lead organizer with the Georgia AFT. “I went to an OI training and I have been a union organizer since that time.”
The OI training has evolved into a highly selective, hands-on program that adapts to the needs of the student and the union movement through classroom training, field training and job placement.
Union Leader Marches to Jail with Thousands of Supporters
With thousands of cheering supporters lining the way April 24, Roger Toussaint, president of Transport Workers (TWU) Local 100, and local and state union leaders and activists marched from Brooklyn across the famed Brooklyn Bridge to the infamous Tombs, New York City’s ancient jail in lower Manhattan.
There, Toussaint turned himself in to begin serving a 10-day jail sentence.
His crime? Leading his union on 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).
On Equal Pay Day, Women Are Seeing Red
Women are seeing red because their paychecks still lag far behind those of men—almost four months behind. Today is Equal Pay Day—on average, a woman has to work until April 25 to get the same pay men averaged the previous year. Last year, women workers were paid only 77 cents for every dollar a man received, up a penny from 2004. The wage gap costs the average American woman working full-time between $700,000 and $2 million over the course of her lifetime, according to Brandeis University economist Evelyn Murphy.
To commemorate Equal Pay Day, the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), an AFL-CIO constituency group, encouraged its members to wear red today to symbolize how far women and people of color are “in the red” because of unequal pay. Today, women’s groups, including CLUW, the National Committee on Pay Equity and Business and Professional Women/USA, launched the WAGE Project (Women Are Getting Even). Across the country, women are forming WAGE Clubs to raise the issue of pay equity and mobilize for paycheck fairness.
Black Evacuees Disenfranchised in New Orleans Vote
Large numbers of black voters who were evacuated from New Orleans were unable to vote in the Big Easy’s mayoral election April 22 because of an array of administrative blunders and political actions to discourage their votes, according to observers on the ground.
“There was a severe racial impact,” says Barbara Arnwine, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, who was in New Orleans Saturday. “Our best count shows that 44 percent voted in predominantly white precincts and only 24 percent in predominantly black precincts,” she says. “That’s a drop of about 25,000–30,000 black votes from the 2002 election, while the number of white votes remained virtually the same as four years ago.”
Inspector Who Tried to Shut Mine Before Fatal Fire Was Overruled
Just days before a Jan. 19 fire killed two coal miners at the Alma No. 1 Mine operated by Aracoma Mining Co. in West Virginia, a federal inspector tried to close down a portion of the mine because of a fire risk along the conveyer where the blaze began, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported April 23. But, the paper reports, he was overruled by supervisors.
Also, late last week, two more coal miners were killed on the job. Rich McKnight, 45, of Cumberland, Ky., was crushed April 21 by a machine he was working on in a Harlan County mine. David Chad Bolen, 28, of Harold, Ky., was killed April 20 in a roof fall at a Pike County mine. (Go to Confined Space for more information on the latest deaths.)
The deaths boosted this year’s toll in the nation’s coal mines to 26 fatalities. During the same period last year, three coal miners had been killed. There were 22 coal mine fatalities in all of 2005.
AFL-CIO Union Movement and Farm Workers Fight Modern Day Slavery
For every 32 pounds of tomatoes they pick, farm workers in Immokalee, Fla., are paid 45 cents—nearly the same amount they earned 30 years ago. Yet McDonald’s, which rang up profits of $2.28 billion last year, refuses to pay another 1 cent per pound to improve their wages.
In recent weeks, the AFL-CIO and several affiliated unions have joined the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which represents some 3,500 farm workers, in calling for McDonald’s and Chipotle Mexican Grill to pay the farm workers a living wage.
McDonald’s response? The fast food giant is urging its suppliers to resist improved wages.
Former UAW Member in Tough Primary Fight in Ohio District 6
Charlie Wilson must be doing something right in his write-in race for Ohio’s Democratic nomination to Congress from the 6th District. He’s faced an almost $200,000 barrage of negative ads as the May 2 primary approaches.
That’s quite a smear campaign for a primary race. But you know what’s really strange? It’s not being mounted by his opponents—it’s being financed and run by the National Republican Congressional Committee to the tune of $194,000 as of early April, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.
The former UAW member and current state senator, Wilson appears to have struck real fear into the hearts of the GOP smear-monsters.
