Archive for February, 2007
China Currency Bill Goes Beyond Empty Bush Promises
Last year, the Republican-led Congress followed the lead of the Bush administration and did little to fight back against China’s economic repression of its workers and its unfair trade practices. But this year, that could change. A new Congress led by Democrats, who made trade a key issue in the 2006 elections, is taking a closer look at trade policies and is poised to act to level the global economic playing field.
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka says one of the first steps Congress should take in getting the nation’s policy on China moving in the right direction is to pass the Fair Currency Act (H.R. 782), which Reps. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) and Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) recently re-introduced along with more than 60 co-sponsors.
Retirees Want Results, Not Rhetoric, from Bush
George J. Kourpias is the president of the Alliance for Retired Americans, a 3 million-member grassroots advocacy organization for current and future retirees. Kourpias is a former president of the Machinists.
President Bush has been talking a lot lately about how he wants to find bipartisan solutions to the nation’s problems. Retirement security would be a good place to start. Yet the president’s stances on prescription drug prices actually will hurt—not help—bipartisan efforts to help current and future retirees.
Charging Vacation Days for Jury Duty is ‘Contemptuous’
Corporations love to portray themselves as good community partners and corporate citizens that encourage employees to be good citizens, too.
Sometimes that’s true, and sometimes, as we all know, it’s just good PR (or maybe you prefer a different two-letter acronym). But one Oklahoma company didn’t even bother to fake its civic duty concerns. It docked a worker 15 vacation days for serving on a jury. And did that tick off a federal judge.
Miller Workers Sing to CEO, ‘Don’t Freeze Our Pensions’
They may not be the Supremes or the Ronettes, but a group of Miller Brewing Co. workers, members of Office and Professional Employees (OPEIU) Local 35 in Milwaukee, have loosely adapted the minor 60s pop tune “Norman” to tell SABMiller Americas CEO Norman Adami, “Don’t freeze our pensions.”
With contract talks under way and with their pensions threatened, the eight-member OPEIU chorus tells “Norman” and the hundreds of folks who’ve viewed the singing message on YouTube:
Norman,
We’re not the Miller girls now.
Norman,
The Miller girls are women now.
House Committee Says Yes to Employee Free Choice Act
The House Education and Labor Committee beat back attempts to weaken or kill the Employee Free Choice Act, then voted late Wednesday to send the bill to the full House for a vote in the coming months.
The committee vote was 26-19 in favor of advancing the legislation (H.R. 800), which was introduced Feb. 5 and has the bipartisan support of 233 co-sponsors.
Act Now to Stop Verizon’s Attack on Virginia Consumers
If you live in Virginia, Verizon workers and consumers need your help today. Tomorrow, both houses of the state legislature will vote on a bill being pushed by Verizon that would keep state regulators from having any say on rates, quality of service, high-speed network rollout or jobs if the company sells or merges its operations.
The Communications Workers of America has been running radio ads in Richmond, where lawmakers are slated to vote on the legislation Feb. 15, alerting the public to the legislation’s dangers. Verizon plans to sell off operations in Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire.
Reject Fast Track to Lift U.S. and World Economies
Apparently, President Bush has not gotten the message that voters want to change our trade policies so they reflect the best of America by including workers’ freedom to join unions and environmental protection. Instead, the Bush White House last week began its push to renew Fast Track trade promotion authority.
Fast Track authority, which expires June 30, allows the president to negotiate trade deals but prevents Congress from improving or rejecting harmful provisions by allowing only “yes” or “no” votes on such agreements. Fast Track would enable the Bush administration to pass more bad trade deals, such as the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), that are skewed in favor of the interests of Big Business, not workers.
Cheney and NAM Want to Protect Workers? Yeah, Right!
Who knew Vice President Dick Cheney and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) held the cause of workers’ rights so closely to their hearts? They are so dedicated to workers’ rights that both the Bush administration and NAM vow to do everything in their power to squash the Employee Free Choice Act.
With friends like these…
Cheney promised NAM today that President Bush would veto the Employee Free Choice Act if it passes the House and Senate and gets to his desk.
Well, that’s no surprise. After all, the Bush administration and NAM share their extreme anti-union views and agenda. But Cheney’s reasoning, which echoes the business group’s public relations campaign against the bill, is priceless:
Our administration rejects any attempt to short-circuit the rights of workers.
Miner John Cox: ‘It’s Not Right What Peabody Has Done’
When the company says you’ve got to work seven days a week, 12 hours a day, that’s what you got to work.
That’s especially true if you don’t have a union, says John Cox. He and some 3,400 coal miners at Peabody Energy Co. don’t have a union, yet. But they are fighting to overcome Peabody’s aggressive and strident campaign to keep the miners from joining the Mine Workers (UMWA) so they can bargain for better wages, better and safer working conditions and a better life.
Click on the video to hear Cox and other Peabody miners talk about their struggle.
Meeting with Rutgers Staff, Sen. Menendez Says He Would Sign a Union Card
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Sen. Bob Menendez and Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey met with Rutgers staff Feb. 12 to support their efforts to join a union.
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Kevin Byrne of the AFL-CIO Voice@Work campaign sends us this report on a meeting spearheaded by New Jersey congressional leaders with workers at Rutgers University, where the lawmakers supported employees in their efforts to form a union with AFT.
Two weeks ago, we told you that some 3,000 administrative, professional and supervisory staff at Rutgers University in New Jersey signed an agreement, with the support of Gov. Jon Corzine (D), U.S. senators and key state legislators, pledging that the school will not interfere with the workers’ effort to gain a voice on the job.
Corzine helped convince Rutgers President Richard McCormick to sign the neutrality agreement in which Rutgers agreed not to interfere with the workers’decision to form a union. The governor also met with workers at Rutgers to support their efforts to form the Union of Rutgers Administrators/AFT.
Just yesterday, days after the introduction of the Employee Free Choice Act in the U.S. House of Representatives, Sen. Bob Menendez (D) and Reps. Chris Smith (R) and Frank Pallone (D) also went to Rutgers to meet with the workers and show their support.
