Archive for April, 2007
New Interactive Website Engages Union Members in Presidential Process
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Union members and all working families now have a unique online center where they can get involved in selecting the next president. With so much at stake in the 2008 elections, union members are working to make sure working family issues are in the forefront of the political debate.
The new interactive Working Families Vote 2008 site offers the resources and opportunity for union members to make their voices heard in the AFL-CIO presidential endorsement process. The website examines presidential candidates’ positions on the key working family issues: the Employee Free Choice Act, good jobs, health care, trade and manufacturing, retirement security and education. It also features links to candidate videos, polls, blog roundups and everything working families need to know to be prepared for the 2008 elections. The site includes a Forum for discussion of key issues in the presidential race. The current thread-opening question asks, “What issues will get you to the polls in November 2008?”
Asian Pacific Americans to March for Fair Immigration System
Today and tomorrow, hundreds of Asian Pacific Americans are meeting in Washington, D.C., for “a historic mobilization for a just and humane immigration reform.” Activists from more than a dozen Asian Pacific American organizations will meet with members of Congress to lobby for a fair immigration system. The two-day meeting will culminate with a noon rally on Capitol Hill on May 1.
On April 9, President George W. Bush re-launched his efforts to reform immigration laws by pushing for increased border security, more forceful enforcement of immigration laws, a temporary workers’ program and draconian rules on the status of undocumented immigrants.
Union Families Meet with Presidential Candidate Dodd
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| Sen. Chris Dodd responds to a worker’s question during the first in a series of AFL-CIO presidential forums. |
Anastasia Ordonez, communications director of the California Labor Federation, sent this dispatch on yesterday’s town hall meeting in Sacramento with 2008 presidential candidate Sen. Chris Dodd.
Close to 100 union members came together yesterday at the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 17 union hall in West Sacramento, Calif., to meet with Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) during the first of the AFL-CIO’s Working Families Vote national town hall forums. Bill Camp, head of the Sacramento Central Labor Council, welcomed the union members and their families who came to hear this presidential candidate’s positions on key issues such as health care and retirement security.
Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation, introduced Dodd and commended the senator’s long-term efforts to protect U.S. jobs and advocate for health care reform. And this is where the formalities ended.
Dodd Highlights Health Care, Employee Free Choice Act
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| Christopher Dodd |
Yesterday afternoon, we launched the first in a series of presidential town hall forums in which union members get a chance to hear directly from 2008 candidates and have an opportunity for one-on-one questions. Sen. Christopher Dodd took part in this first AFL-CIO Working Families Vote forum in Sacramento, Calif., and Anastasia Ordonez, communications director for the California Labor Federation, give us highlights from the event.
More than 100 working people joined Dodd in Sacramento, where the Connecticut senator pledged to work for universal health care and passage of stronger laws to ensure employee freedom to form unions. Dodd made the point about health care this way:
Nobody in this country should be excluded from health care. I advocate expanding Medicare to cover 9 million uninsured children. That would make a huge difference.
New Commitment to Organizing Drives ATU
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| Employees at the Bend (Ore.) Area Transit system voted to join ATU Local 757 in January. |
Just four months ago, Charles Lester, the first-ever organizing director for the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), vowed to put the model for organizing presented at the 2006 AFL-CIO Organizing Summit to work in his union. Now that model has paid off for 400 transit drivers and office employees in three cities who now will be able to bargain for better wages. Hundreds more drivers are voting in the next few weeks on whether to better their lives by joining a union.
What makes these victories especially important, Lester says, is that this is the first experience many of the locals involved have had with successfully helping workers join a union.
Workers Around the World Remember Those Killed on the Job
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Around the world today, working men and women will remember the thousands killed and millions more injured or diseased because of their jobs. Today is Workers Memorial Day, a time to honor those who died at work and to act to make our workplaces safer.
Workers, elected officials, and religious and community leaders will participate in 12,000 activities in 118 countries to bring attention to the unfulfilled promise of safe and healthy workplaces. They also will stress the importance of strengthening workers’ rights to overcome barriers to health and safety across the world.
“If trade union rights are respected everywhere, the number of deaths and injuries related to work will certainly fall significantly,” says Guy Ryder, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, which represents 168 million workers in 153 countries and territories.
In the United States, health and safety advocates will focus on the Bush administration’s troubling workplace safety record, including cutting funds for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and reducing its enforcement of safety rules.
‘Political Will Needed to End Poverty’
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This is the second in a series of posts on the findings of a new report by the Center for American Progress on the nation’s poor, From Poverty to Prosperity: A National Strategy to Cut Poverty in Half.
With the economy growing at its slowest pace in four years, the number of Americans living in poverty is growing. It will take renewed political will to combat this growing poverty.
The Commerce Department reported today that economic growth slowed to a near crawl of 1.3 percent in the first three months of 2007, the worst performance in four years. Meanwhile, consumer prices jumped by a 3.4 percent annual rate in the first quarter, after falling in the last quarter of 2006.
Steelworkers Ratify New Contracts with Appalachian Healthcare, Bridgestone
Members of the United Steelworkers (USW) ratified new contracts this week with a regional health care company and a major tire manufacturer.
In one settlement, striking workers at Appalachian Regional Healthcare, which operates nine hospitals and 11 clinics in West Virginia and Kentucky, began returning to their jobs April 26 after union members ratified a three-year contract. The agreement will boost wages by more than 8 percent over the contract’s term, control increases in employee health care costs and continue defined-benefit pensions.
Meanwhile, members of six USW locals ratified a three-year master contract with Bridgestone Firestone covering about 4,000 workers at six of the company’s plants. USW members at two other plants in Warren County, Tenn., and Bloomington, Ill., ratified separate contracts covering another 1,100 employees.
Democratic Candidates Spar Over Iraq, Health Care
Last night, the Democratic primary field took the stage for the first debate of the 2008 campaign. The MSNBC-sponsored debate was held at South Carolina State University, and much of it focused on Iraq.
Yet several candidates—Sen. Hillary Clinton, former Sen. John Edwards, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Sen. Barack Obama and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson—were able to discuss how they might fix the nation’s broken health care system.
An Economy Unbalanced
This is a cross post from the Firedoglake blog.
The perversity of the nation’s seemingly strong economy is that it:
A. Enables Bush to brag about what a great job he’s done as president.
B. Hides what’s really going on.
And what’s really going on is that many of us every-day working people are running just to stay in place, while even more are falling behind. The statistics about the nation’s health care crisis are well-known—45 million Americans without health care coverage in 2005. Other data are less familiar, but are beginning to percolate to the surface of our collective consciousness, such as the growing income gap between like the extremely rich and the other 99 percent of the population.
