Archive for January, 2007
AFL-CIO Annual Survey on Key Proxy Votes: Encouraging Trends for 2007
Chris Huang from the AFL-CIO Office of Investment, which released its 2006 Key Votes Survey today, describes how the survey assists workers and their unions in seeking corporate accountability.
Today, the AFL-CIO Office of Investment released the 2006 Key Votes Survey. The AFL-CIO’s Key Votes Survey is an annual report on the proxy voting practices of investment managers and mutual funds. Pension fund trustees and individual investors use the survey to monitor how their shares are being voted at company annual shareholder meetings.
‘The Contract with America’s Workers Is Unraveling’
Today, a key congressional committee opened hearings to find out the real story behind the nation’s economy. And according to those who testified today: The rich are getting richer and the rest of us are running hard just to stay in place.
The hearing on the economy is the first in a series by the House Ways and Means Committee and included testimony by AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka. Says Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.):
Economic issues are vital to the security and prosperity of our great nation and Congress needs to know, to the fullest extent possible, how the economy is, or isn’t, working for every American.
The hearings will examine such topics as the current state of the economy, potential dangers to continued economic health, the cost of poverty on the American economy, the impact of globalization on workers and the economy, economic pressures on the middle class and whether all Americans have shared in the benefits of the economic recovery since the last recession.
William Spriggs, an economics professor at Howard University in Washington, D.C., told the committee the economic recovery, which began six years ago, has not benefited working families. Instead it has meant more money for the rich while working people and the poor have seen their standard of living stall or drop.
Unions Fighting for Railroad Safety
When trains run through your community, you expect government inspectors have made sure the trains are in good working order and that, for example, the brakes work. But if you live in San Antonio, Atlanta, New Orleans, St. Louis and hundreds of other communities in between, that may not be the case much longer.
Currently, employees of U.S. railroads inspect air brakes and other mechanisms in Laredo, Texas, after trains cross the border from Mexico. Federal agents examine their records and conduct spot checks.
Proud to Be Union: Actors Highlight SAG Membership in a Theater Near You
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| Tom Hanks holding his union card. | |
It was “The Defenders” for Martin Sheen. For Kim Cattrall, the moment came when she was in “Testimony for Two Men.” For Matthew Perry, it was “Charles in Charge,” and for Hilary Swank, “Growing Pains.”
Those performances are the pivotal moments when these actors got their union cards with the Screen Actors (SAG) union. For each, it was a moment they’ll never forget. They and 16 other actors talk about it in a fun, jazzy two-and-a-half-minute ad, “How I Got My SAG Card” now in 1,000 Regal Theaters around the country. It’s estimated that more than 13 million people will watch the ad, one of the most widely seen advertisements for a union in U.S. history. There’s a good chance you already saw it the last time you went to the movies.
State of the Union: A Nation Off Track
This is a crosspost from The Bonddad Blog. Click here for the full post.
So, we’re all eagerly awaiting President Bush’s State of the Union address to hear the honest facts about the nation’s economy, among other key issues.
OK, not.
Looks like we’ll have to dig up the real deal on our own by taking a gander at some of the recent data and what they portend for us working types.
AFGE’s ‘Inside Government’ Available Via iPod
Want to mix in a little bit of “insider” news on your iPod shuffle. After all, man and woman don’t live by dance, trance, country and jazz alone.
AFGE’s weekly, one-hour radio show, “Inside Government,” now is available as a podcast with Apple’s iTunes music software for some 70 million iPod users.
Noted Historian Hails Employee Free Choice Act as ‘Necessary First Step’
Sheldon Friedman, with the AFL-CIO Voice@Work campaign, offers highlights from a recent speech by historian Nelson Lichtenstein on the nation’s broken labor laws.
Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act by the 110th Congress is a “necessary first step in the reconstitution of freedom and dignity in the American workplace,” according to noted historian Nelson Lichtenstein. The University of California-Santa Barbara professor spoke recently at an AFL-CIO-sponsored breakfast during the 2007 Labor and Employment Relations Association conference in Chicago.
Groundhog Day, the U.S. Senate and the Minimum Wage
What does the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day and the congressional debate about raising the minimum wage have in common?
Just like Murray relived the same day over and over again, lawmakers who oppose raising the minimum wage unless they add on billions of dollars in tax breaks to business interests make the same tired discredited arguments over and over again: “We’ve got to give businesses tax breaks because they’ll suffer mightily if we give minimum wage workers a raise.” (In fact, that tired canard just ain’t so—read more here.)
Cooperation Is Key to Innovative Steelworkers’ Contract
They could have come to the bargaining table as adversaries but, instead, the United Steelworkers (USW) and Stora Enso North America worked together to try and find the best deal for everybody—workers and management. The result: an innovative new contract that not only guarantees employment security for the workforce but keeps the company competitive and gives workers a voice on one key management committee.
Stora Enso, based in Helsinki, Finland, produces publications and fine paper, packaging board and wood products. It employs some 46,000 employees in more than 40 countries on five continents. The contract covers Stora Enso’s four U.S. facilities, all in Wisconsin.
UMWA’s Roberts: Nation Must ‘Keep Its Promise’ to Vets
Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts says the nation has an “ethical and moral obligation to do better” for the nation’s veterans.
Roberts, a Vietnam vet, told the Commission on the Future for America’s Veterans:
These brave men and women answered their country’s call and in doing so have left parts and pieces of themselves on battlefields across the world. Our nation promised to take care of their health care in return for their fight for freedom and America must keep its promise to them.
The Jan. 16, Charleston, W.Va., town hall meeting was part of the group’s effort to determine the needs of veterans 20 years down the road and develop recommendations on how the federal government can meet those needs and obligations.
For more information, click here and read more about the meeting from The Charleston Gazette here.
