Archive for February, 2007
Corporations Will Ship 2.4 Million High-Tech and Professional Jobs Overseas by 2015
We’ve noted often how trade policies, fiscal polices and other mismanagement by the Bush administration have led to an increase in family-supporting U.S. jobs being shipped overseas—and how those jobs more and more are hitting middle-class workers in the professional and technical sectors. (Check out a few recent posts here, here and here.)
A new report from the Brookings Institution puts some fresh numbers on the rate of corporate job exporting. According to today’s Bureau of National Affairs Daily Labor Report (subscription required):
Growth in the offshoring of information technology, business office, and other service-providing occupations will cause the loss of an estimated 2.4 million jobs in some 250 U.S. cities between 2004 and 2015, according to a report by the Brookings Institution.
AFL-CIO, UAW File Complaint Against U.S. for Graduate Workers’ Freedom to Form Union
The AFL-CIO and the UAW today filed a complaint against the U.S. government with the International Labor Organization, an agency of the United Nations, alleging that a 2004 decision by the Bush-dominated National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in the Brown University case violates workers’ rights to the freedom of association.
The complaint alleges that by denying teaching assistants and research assistants at private universities the right to join unions and engage in collective bargaining, the NLRB has violated workers’ rights under internationally recognized core labor standards.
Read more here.
Scholarship Program Asks Students to Think About Working Family Issues
Union history and labor unions’ place in today’s work world may be getting short shrift in the nation’s classrooms, but students who take the initiative to learn about the union movement past and present might be able to parlay that knowledge into a college scholarship. Todd Iverson, president of America in Solidarity, sent us this piece on the unique Ottilie Markholt Memorial Scholarship program. The program is open to residents of the United States planning to attend accredited colleges and universities in the United States.
America in Solidarity, a Tacoma, Wash.-based working families’ advocacy group, is offering a minimum of $4,000 in college scholarships for the third year as part of its Ottilie Markholt Memorial Scholarship program. Markholt passed away in 2004 but spent many of her 89 years fighting for unions as a labor activist, leader, writer and longtime member of the Pierce County (Wash.) Central Labor Council.
Here’s What Could Happen if Employee Free Choice Act Becomes Law
The Employee Free Choice Act would level the playing field for workers who want to join a union by among other things, allowing workers to choose a union if more than 50 percent of a worksite sign union authorization cards. Teresa Joyce and her co-workers at Cingular Wireless in Lebanon, Va., know that process works—they’ve seen it firsthand.
But it wasn’t always that way. When she started working at AT&T Wireless in 2003, she says she realized the employees had no voice and raises were determined by favoritism, not a reflection of work or ability.
Eye on Safety and Health on the Job
When Confined Space founder Jordan Barab shut down the workplace health and safety blog to go to work with the House Education and Labor Committee to help strengthen the nation’s job safety laws, he didn’t stop keeping an eye on the headlines for news the safety community might find informative.
Check out these recent links from Jordan—and for a sobering reminder of the dangers all workers face every day on the job, see the latest Weekly Toll.
In Shafted: How the Bush Administration Reversed Decades of Progress on Mine Safety, Ken Ward Jr. traces the rise in coal mine deaths, culminating in last years’ decade-high death toll of 47, through the years of the Bush administration’s hold on the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
Join the U.S./LEAP May Day Delegation to Colombia
You can find out firsthand how Colombian trade unionists are working to end the cycle of violence they face by joining the U.S./LEAP (U.S./Labor Education in the Americas Project) delegation to the May Day celebration in Colombia April 28–May 6.
Activities during the trip will include, but are not limited to:
- Meeting with a wide range of Colombian trade unionists and human rights groups working to end violence against workers.
- Learning about the effects of U.S. trade and aid policies, including Plan Colombia and the U.S.-Columbia free trade agreement.
- Voicing opposition to the U.S. and the Colombian governments about the violence and government indifference facing Colombian trade unionists.
Bargaining Digest Weekly
The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily, bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 800 subscribers. Union leaders can register for this service through our website, Bargaining@Work.
Agreement at Harley-Davidson: Some 2,800 Machinists (IAM) union members at the Harley-Davidson plant in York, Pa., approved a three-year deal Thursday that will end their strike. The contract provides for a 4 percent increase each year of the contract and stretches out some new hire progression rates. Harley and the IAM had reached a tentative accord Feb. 16. Shares of stock rose on news of the agreement with striking workers at its largest manufacturing plant in York.
Auto Industry: A top automotive economist says an auto strike is unlikely to occur in this contract year, despite the Center for Automotive Research declaring that in looming negotiations with the Big Three automakers, wage and benefit parity with their Asian competitors must be gained in order to survive.
Civil Rights Movement Hero Supports Changing Nation’s Labor Laws
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Rep. John Lewis says workers should not be afraid to join a union.
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Today, one of the true heroes of America’s struggle for equal rights came out strongly for legislation that would help make it easier for workers to have a free choice when deciding whether to form a union.
Speaking at an Atlanta news conference, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a major leader in the civil rights movement since the 1960s, said that in recent years labor law has been weakened so that workers have little legal recourse and are subject to firing or pay cuts when they participate in union activity.
“People living in a democracy should not have to work in an atmosphere of fear or oppression. They should not have to sacrifice their dignity or their safety to support their families,” Lewis said.
“Working Americans are already struggling with stagnant wages. They are jammed by the expenses of raising children and caring for elderly parents. President Bush and his administration have consistently pushed for less federal support for these families, while increasing their tax burden.”
People are working hard, struggling to make ends meet. The only chance they have to protect themselves in this ever-expanding, global workforce is to join together and bargain collectively to get decent working conditions and living wages so they can raise their families.
Coal Company Pleads Guilty to Fake Safety Inspection
Supervisors at a Massey Energy Co. subsidiary coal mine in West Virginia routinely failed to perform mandatory safety inspections with the knowledge of top mine management, according to recently unsealed federal court records reported by The Charleston Gazette.
Federal law requires a pre-shift safety inspection of the mine within three hours before a shift begins. The mine examiner, often a foreman known as a fire boss, must complete the inspection before the next shift of miners goes into the mine. The inspection checks on methane gas levels, air flow, roof support and other important safety factors.
In plea agreement Thursday in U.S. District Court in Charleston, W.Va., Larry Roop, president of the White Buck Coal Co., pleaded guilty on the company’s behalf to failing to perform the pre-shift safety inspection at its Grassy Creek Mine on June 27, 2002. Last week, foreman/fire boss William Wine pleaded guilty to a similar charge. White Buck is a Massey subsidiary.
U.S. Economy Setting Wrong Kinds of Highs
The expanding American economy is breaking records—including the wrong kinds. While the Bush administration touts the expanding job market and economic growth, the truth is that “millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the nation’s ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ continues to widen,” according to an analysis of 2005 U.S. Census Bureau figures by McClatchy Co.
Tony Pugh, the McClatchy reporter, says the percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high. Nearly 16 million people are living in severe poverty—making do on less than $9,903 a year for a family of four with two children or less than $5,080 for an individual.
