Archive for June, 2006
N.Y. Home Child Care Providers Close to Winning Right to Form Unions
More than 50,000 New York home child care providers are close to winning the right to join unions. The state Senate voted June 21 to override Gov. George Pataki’s (R) veto of a bill granting the workers the right to organize into unions.
The 57–4 vote in the Republican-controlled Senate paves the way for the House, which has a Democratic majority, to follow suit. The regular legislative session is over, but the House may return for the override vote.
Gas Pains No Joke. Drivers Steer Their Anger to Bush and Corporate Cronies
Tired of being gouged at the gas pump, angry drivers in the Washington, D.C., area tomorrow will pump up noise over outrageous gas prices and the Bush administration’s failure to act on $3-plus a gallon gasoline.
Armed with empty gas cans, the drivers will bang out their message at noon in Lafayette Park, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. The cacophonic chorus will protest the Bush administration’s cozy relationship with Big Oil and its out-of-touch disconnect with the pain of working families forced to shell out $50, $75 or more to fill up at Exxon, Chevron, Texaco and other petroleum profiteers.
U.S., Jordan Trade Pact Worthless as Worker Abuse Escalates in Jordan
Last month, news reports described the brutal working conditions of foreign workers in Jordan’s textile factories—forced to work 15- to 20-hour days with no pay, physically abused and even jailed when they ask for their wages. An article in The New York Times, based on a report by the National Labor Committee (NLC), cited examples of a plant where workers received no wages for six months despite being forced to work 109 hours a week.
Bangladeshis working in Jordan told the NLC they paid $1,000 to $3,000 to work in Jordan, but when they arrived, their passports were confiscated, restricting their ability to leave the country and tying them to jobs that often pay far less than promised and far less than the country’s minimum wage.
The bitter irony is that the U.S.-Jordan Free Trade Agreement was the first and only U.S. trade agreement to include enforceable workers’ rights.
What went wrong?
American Workers’ Freedom to Form Unions Threatened Under Bush NLRB
A few nights ago, a group of New Jersey nurses in contract negotiations with Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital held a candlelight vigil. The nurses are seeking contract language that will protect them from an expected anti-worker decision by the Bush-packed National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB is set to rule on three cases collectively known as “Kentucky River”—and the ruling literally could take away bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of employees.
And not just nurses. If the NLRB agrees to alter the definition of “supervisor,” building trades workers, newspaper and television employees, port workers and many others could be prohibited from forming unions.
Union Movement Moves to Put Minimum Wage on Ballot in Arizona
Nearly 210,000 Arizonans say it’s time to put a minimum wage increase on the November ballot—signing petitions to put the wage hike initiative before voters. The Arizona Minimum Wage Coalition submitted the petitions to state officials this week.
Coalition volunteers collected 90,000 more signatures than needed for the initiative to qualify for the ballot. If approved, the measure will increase the state’s minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.75 in 2007 and protect against inflation with annual adjustments pegged to the cost of living.
The AFL-CIO America Needs a Raise campaign is leading the drive to raise the minimum wage in the states through legislation or ballot initiatives like the one in Arizona―while Republican leaders in Congress continue to roadblock efforts to raise it on the federal level.
Another Bush Attack on America’s Poor
The Bush administration issued new rules that could make it harder for states to serve people struggling to move from welfare to work. All but two states have met the 1996 federal welfare rules requiring states to move at least half of welfare recipients into work or training programs by Oct. 1. But the new Bush rules set stringent requirements on what constitutes “work” and “training,” and may stifle the state innovation that has reduced the number of welfare recipients from 12.2 million to 4.4 million today.
Meanwhile, Bush’s fiscal year 2007 budget….
Emergency Alert: Act Now to Stop Oman Free Trade Agreement
This just in: Oman vote set for Thursday!
Yesterday, we told you about the Oman Free Trade Agreement (OFTA) and how it is bad news both for workers in Oman and in the United States. Now the Bush administration and Republican leaders in the Senate are trying to pull a fast one on the American public. They announced last night that they will hold a Finance Committee markup and then have the full Senate vote on the treaty Thursday.
Take action and call both your senators immediately through the Capitol switchboard (202-224-3121) and tell them to vote “No” on the Oman Free Trade Agreement.
‘Wounded Healer’ Wins First of Five Weekly Working America Bad Boss Contests
The votes are in at Working America’s My Bad Boss Contest for the first winner in the competition for America’s worst boss.
And if anyone can top this bad boss, we don’t want to know.
Although the competition was stiff—bosses who denied workers time off to attend funerals or the honcho who made workers write training manuals for their overseas replacements—some 1,526 voters cast their ballots in favor of “Wounded Healer.”
New York Teachers Fight Politicians’ Plan to Bust Unions
Edwize is covering a union-busting scheme afoot in New York schools, gratis Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Republican Gov. George Pataki.
The United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the New York City teachers’ union, believes charter schools can work if regulated for quality—and has started two charters in New York City to prove the union contract doesn’t inhibit the success of charter schools.
But Pataki, Bloomberg and others are trying to make it nearly impossible for the union to sign up members at charter schools. During the fall, a group of union-busting law firms held a conference specifically to keep unions out of charters.
Now, a teacher has been fired at a charter high school in Brooklyn—and UFT believes it’s because she supported joining a union.
Read more at Edwize.
Bush Ignores American Public, Pledges to Privatize Social Security
Even though polls show the public strongly opposes privatizing Social Security, which would force huge benefit cuts and turn Social Security’s guarantee into a gamble, President George W. Bush and his Republican allies in Congress plan to dredge up the plan again. Joshua Micah Marshall on Talking Points Memo highlighted a speech Bush delivered yesterday to the far-right wing Manhattan Institute in which Bush again places privatization of Social Security on the front burner for the remainder of his administration.
Here’s part of what Bush said about privatizing Social Security:
Now is the time for the Congress and the President to work together to reform Medicare and reform Social Security so we can leave behind a solvent balance sheet for our next generation of Americans.
If we can’t get it done this year, I’m going to try next year. And if we can’t get it done next year, I’m going to try the year after that, because it is the right thing to do.
