Archive for June, 2006
Senate Democrats: Kill Congress’ Pay Hike if It Doesn’t Raise the Minimum Wage
If Republican congressional leaders don’t get off the dime and pass a real increase in the $5.15-an-hour federal minimum wage, Senate Democrats vowed yesterday to kill a congressional pay raise set for Jan. 1
Meanwhile, a new study of the difference between CEO pay and minimum wage earnings shows CEO pay continues to soar out of this world, while minimum wage workers are stuck on the same 1997 $5.15-an-hour launching pad.
U.S. House and Senate lawmakers earn nowhere near what CEOs do—but $165,200 a year is nothing to sneeze at—and they’re set to get their ninth pay raise since 1997 with a $3,300 increase due at the first of the year. That’s more than a $35,000-a-year increase since the last time the minimum wage was raised.
Court Ruling Second in a Week Against Bush’s ‘Illegal’ Attack Against Workers
The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia tossing out Bush administration workplace rules for 160,000 Department of Homeland Security workers is the second blow in a week against the Bush administration’s attack on the workplace rights of federal workers.
Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to ban the Department of Defense from implementing similar workplace rules that gut collective bargaining and civil service rights for more than 700,000 workers.
(Yesterday, a three-judge federal appeals panel said the new personnel system “does not even give the illusion of collective bargaining,” and that parts of it “are simply bizarre.”)
Paying the Ultimate Price at Work
Falls, murders, vehicle accidents, trench collapses. Too many U.S. workers are paying for their jobs with their lives—and the Bush administration, to put it mildly, is not helping. No one documents the toll of work better than Jordan at Confined Space. Check out his Weekly Toll: Death in the American Workplace. It’s devastating.
Bush Attack on Homeland Security Personnel System Illegal
The Bush administration’s attempt to upend personnel rules of the Department of Homeland Security—part of a broader attack on the personnel system that dictates pay and working conditions for federal workers—illegally interferes with workers’ collective bargaining rights, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that allowing the department to unilaterally break negotiated contracts is “plainly unlawful,” The Washington Post reports.
…the DHS plan, by limiting collective bargaining to employee-specific personnel matters, leaves most decisions on working conditions up to management only.
“In no sense can such a limited scope of bargaining be viewed as consistent with the Act’s mandate that DHS ‘ensure’ collective bargaining rights for its employees,” the court said.
We’ll have more soon on this huge victory for federal workers.
Thousands of AFSCME Members Rally for Pension Boost in New Jersey
In Trenton, N.J., some 6,000 members of AFSCME, a nationwide union that represents public employees at the local and federal levels, recently rallied in support of a state budget plan that would put $1.3 billion into the state’s public employee pension fund. The AFSCME Public Employee Xtra reports the state has neglected its pension obligation “for nearly a decade.”
Even as private-sector workers battle corporate attacks on their pensions, public employees also have faced severe pension underfunding while engaging in struggles similar to their private-sector counterparts: Staving off employer attempts to turn guaranteed, defined-pension benefits into risky 401(k)s.
Read more about AFSCME’s action here.
Bush Sends Oman Trade Deal to Congress. Coalition Tells Bush to Bag It
Like previous free trade agreements, the Bush administration-negotiated Oman Free Trade Agreement (OFTA) lacks strong and enforceable labor and environmental standards and likely will cost jobs in the United States and lower living standards for workers in Oman, according to a coalition that includes the AFL-CIO and more than 350 labor, religious, consumer, farm and environmental groups.
The Bush administration sent the trade agreement to the House, where a vote is expected later this summer.
Report from the Field: USW International Union Members Take on Capitol Hill
This in from Phil Hughes in Philadelphia, who reports on a USW International Union action in Washington, D.C., where USW members rallied on Capitol Hill and met with their members of Congress.
Got news? Send it to blognews@aflcio.org.
On Wednesday, June 21, 2006, more than 800 United Steelworkers (USW) took over Washington D.C. Steelworkers President Leo Gerard presented Sen. Edward Kennedy and Rep. John Conyers with the Sen. Paul Wellstone Award as Steelworkers members rallied for workers’ rights, fair trade and universal health care.
A Toast to the National Labor College Class of 2006
Kurt Staudter, a member of the Electrical Workers in Vermont and one of 122 students who graduated from the National Labor College (NLC) last weekend, describes how completing his degree deepens and expands his commitment to fighting for an American way of life that includes justice and fairness for all workers.
The 2006 graduates include members of 33 unions who received 106 Bachelor of Arts degrees and 16 master’s degrees through the NLC’s partnership programs with the University of Baltimore and the American University.
You knew right off that this wasn’t going to be one of those same old cookie-cutter graduations that are played out each year all over the country. Sure the same festive air was about the place, but these were no young adults giddy with the excitement of getting the undivided attention of their friends and family for a day. The graduates at the National Labor College are deeply committed professional unionists on the front lines fighting a war to preserve the very existence of the middle class in this country. While most colleges march their twenty-somethings into graduation in sandals and shorts with brightly decorated mortarboards to the tune “Pomp and Circumstance,” these serious adult learners marched to the powerfully haunting sound of a bagpipe and a chorus of “Hold the Fort.” Overwhelming was the feeling that this wasn’t an ending, but the eve of a major confrontation. These were warriors taking a break between battles and not just kids wondering how they are going to pay off their students loans with an entry-level wage.
The Labor Department’s Anti-Worker Agenda
Now that the ties between the Bush administration’s Department of Labor and the anti-worker Center for Union Facts have been established, let’s take a look at the Labor Department’s original mission and compare it with its current operations.
On Thursday, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) posted 108 pages of documents it received through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that showed the Labor Department’s “supportive” ties with Berman.
U.S. employers never liked the nation’s Department of Labor. And they liked it a lot less when it reached cabinet-level status in 1913, which indicated to Big Business that workers for the first time had a voice in government.
And after all, that was the point. Employers had all the money and means to dictate at the workplace. Shouldn’t workers have an advocate as well?
Advice to the New Treasury Secretary: Situation Is Bad. Do Something
As Henry Paulson Jr. gets set to take over John Snow’s job as U.S. Treasury Secretary, The New York Times columnist Ben Stein has some cogent advice for the former head of global financial investment and securities goliath Goldman Sachs.
Writing June 25, Stein sends Paulson a “memo” warning him of the nation’s impending financial disasters and highlighting these disturbing facts.
