Archive for August, 2006
Katrina One Year Later: ‘The George Bush Dog-and-Pony Show’
Today, we launch the first in a series of profiles highlighting the experiences of Hurricane Katrina survivors—and exposing the gap between Bush administration spin and on-the-ground reality for the tens of thousands of survivors whose lives are still torn apart one year after the storm.
As the one-year anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina disaster approaches, some in the media have focused on New Orleans resident Rocky Vaccarella, who this week told President Bush he should have four more years in office.
States Left on Their Own to Plan for Flu Pandemic
If a flu pandemic such as avian flu, better known as bird flu, were to strike the United States, government response—including who should receive vaccinations, surveillance, detection and containment measures—varies widely state by state because of “weak” federal guidance and direction, according to a survey and analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
You Called It: Medicare Drug Plan a Big Bust
In Tuesday’s AFL-CIO Now quick poll, we asked about the new Medicare drug plan—and your experiences with it personally, or through someone you know.
CEOs Try to Defend Their Excessive Pay. They Could Use Better Apologists
Overpaid CEOs and the insiders who enable them sense their pay-for-failure era is ending. But the recent backlash in support of overpaid CEOs is being spearheaded by CEO pay apologists who have histories as conflicted insiders increasingly under fire for putting their own interests above shareholders, the company’s owners.
DC-Based Anti-Worker Group Attacks Montana Public Employees
There are the classic “cold hard facts.” Some of us may remember Dragnet’s Sgt. Joe Friday’s mantra “Just the facts.”
Then there are the so-called “Union Facts” peddled by Richard Berman.
Point of View: Time for a New Approach to Economy
With Labor Day less than two weeks away—where has the summer gone?—pundits will soon take their annual look at the state of America’s workers. President George W. Bush and his cronies in the corporate world already have been beating the drums on what they describe as the stellar state of the economy.
But the real truth is that America’s workers are working harder yet making less. And we know it because we feel it every day.
You Voted: Medicare Drug Plan a Bust
Based on our quick poll yesterday, Bush’s Medicare drug plan gets a failing grade.
Farmworkers, Pesticides and What Big Consumers Like McDonald’s Can Do
Marc Rodrigues and Sean Sellers, members of the Student/Farmworker Alliance, send us this crosspost from MySpace, which they wrote in response to a recent editorial in the Palm Beach Post. Earlier this year, Rodrigues and Sellers took part in the week of action by the Student Labor Action Project, participating in the first-ever McDonald’s Truth Tour.
Led by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the Truth Tour joined a caravan of farmworkers traveling from Immokalee, Fla., to Chicago—home of McDonald’s—to educate consumers about labor conditions in McDonald’s tomato supply chain and to demand real rights for farmworkers.
Election Year in California: Minimum Wage Workers Finally Get Boost
Following several years of strong advocacy by California’s union movement to increase the state’s $6.75 an hour minimum wage, the state’s minimum wage workers will see their pay jump to $8 an hour by 2008. The pay hike will be included in a bill similar to one previously passed by the state Legislature that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) has agreed to sign.
‘Destinies of All Workers Are Linked’
You could feel it in Philadelphia and Detroit last week and in San Antonio two weeks ago as delegates to conventions of Postal Workers (APWU) and AFL-CIO constituency groups renewed their determination to fight for workers at the bargaining table and through organizing and political mobilization.
