Archive for May, 2007
It’s the Two Economies, Silly
The business sections of the major media are looking a bit grim these days—with the exception of the stock market, which has soared to record highs.
Beyond the Dow Jones listings, the subprime mortgage disaster—and the related massive number of foreclosures—is making a lot of headlines. As is the news about endlessly soaring cost of gas and tanking home prices.
It’s hard to put a rosy glow on much of the economic news, but if any media outlet is up to the task, it’s The Wall Street Journal.
More Local Governments Back Employee Free Choice Act
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Yesterday, we posted the words of Mine Workers Vice President Ed Yankovich urging working family activists to take the battle for the Employee Free Choice Act to the local level. Today, we have four new victories to announce.
The four resolutions passed by city lawmakers in Miami and North Bay Village, Fla., Malden, Mass., and Reading, Pa., call on Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice. That brings to 40 the number of city, county and state legislative bodies saying it’s time to put the choice of joining a union in the hands of workers, not employers.
After 60 Years, Missouri Public Employees Get Seat at Bargaining Table
After a 60-year fight, public employees in Missouri finally regained the right to bargain collectively with their employers. In a historic decision, the state Supreme Court on Tuesday voted to throw out a 1947 ruling that granted collective bargaining only to workers in the private sector. The justices also overturned a 1982 decision that allowed public employers, such as school districts and police departments, to ignore written agreements with employees.
Herb Johnson, secretary-treasurer of the Missouri AFL-CIO, says workers are “absolutely delighted,” with the decision.
This decision rights a wrong that was created in 1947, just two years after the state constitution was ratified. This more or less frees the slaves and gives public employees equal status with their brothers and sisters in the private sector. It’s good for Missouri. It was good in 1945 when it was put in the state Constitution and things have finally been set right. We couldn’t be happier.
Romney’s ‘Business Experience’: Firing Workers, Hiring Them Back at Lower Wages
Republican candidate Mitt Romney says he doesn’t need the $400,000-a-year presidential paycheck. If he wins, he says he’ll donate the money to charity. After all, with an estimated $250 million nest egg from his corporate career—which included buying and selling companies as head of an investment firm—400 grand is sort of like the loose change most of us toss into the coin jar on the dresser.
But when he made that announcement Tuesday, it rattled a skeleton that had been hanging in the back of Romney’s closet since his 1994 failed U.S. Senate race against Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.). The skeleton has the video, too: One that shows workers who desperately needed their paychecks. But they were laid off when a company bought by Romney’s investment firm, Bain Capital, then purchased the workers’ Indiana office supply company—and laid off all the workers.
Pennsylvania Retired Americans Oppose Bush Cuts to Older Americans Act
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The Older Americans Act (OAA), the landmark legislation that is the funding vehicle driving senior care programs such as Meals on Wheels and other social and human services since 1961, faces a $109 million budget cut under President Bush’s proposed 2008 budget. The Pennsylvania Alliance for Retired Americans says cutting the program is the wrong way to go.
Instead, says Pennsylvania Alliance President Jean Friday:
A significant increase in funding can enhance the ability of older Americans to live with maximum health, independence and dignity.
Supreme Court Says Workers Have Only 180 Days to Challenge Discrimination
Yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling limiting the ability of workers to sue companies for pay discrimination will make it harder for workers to recover wages unfairly denied them, experts say.
The 5–to–4 decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito, dismissed a suit by Lilly Ledbetter, an employee for 19 years at a tire plant in Gadsden, Ala., who says she was paid less than her male counterparts. The High Court said she did not file her lawsuit against Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. within 180 days after the discrimination occurred as required by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A jury originally awarded Ledbetter more than $3.5 million because it found that gender discrimination led her to being paid less. An appeals court reversed the ruling saying the law requires that a suit be filed within 180 days.
Employee Free Choice Act: Keeps the Secret Ballot, Adds Another Option
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Some people just don’t get it. Sen. Norm Coleman (R) from Minnesota is one of those who don’t get—or purposely misrepresent—the Employee Free Choice Act. The measure, which passed the House in March and now is in the Senate (S. 1041), would strengthen workers’ freedom to form and join unions.
Earlier this month, we shared how union members met up with Coleman as he headed for a speaking engagement at the University of Minnesota campus. When workers asked him to support the Employee Free Choice Act, the senator said he could not back the proposed law. We just got the video from the event.
Minnesota Rally Highlights Dire State of U.S. Health Care
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Yesterday, shareholders of UnitedHealth Group Inc. heard from company executives that the firm was in tip-top-health. In 2006, United Health saw a 37 percent increase in earnings, a 54 percent increase in revenue and a 60 percent jump in cash flow.
If the stockholders and top execs had poked their heads outside of their Minneapolis Convention Center annual meeting, they would have heard a far less rosy diagnosis about the nation’s health care system from members of the community/union activist coalition Universal Health Care Action Network-Minnesota (UHCAN-MN) who rallied outside the meeting.
Pointing to the massive profits of insurers such as United Health and to the nearly 50 million Americans without health coverage, plus the millions more who are paying increasingly higher costs for less care, participants, including Minnesota AFL-CIO union members, called for quality, affordable health care.
Local Resolutions ‘Essential’ to Passing Employee Free Choice Act
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The U.S. Senate is set to take up the Employee Free Choice Act next month—and across the country, local elected officials in such locales as Miami-Dade County and Baltimore are adding their voices in support for the legislation.
Ed Yankovich, vice president of the Mine Workers, explains that it is “essential” for local legislative bodies to pass resolutions in favor of the act to help build a groundswell of support that will convince the Senate to pass the bill and President Bush to sign it (see video):
We’re going to face a fierce lobby by manufacturing associations and different trade groups representing employers who understand that if workers have a say, they can’t do whatever they want to do.
The U.S. House passed the landmark law in March. The bill is now in the Senate (S. 1041) and already has the backing of 36 state and local legislative bodies. Nearly 40 more resolutions of support are pending in such cities as Los Angeles and Buffalo, N.Y.
UAW Brings Together Unions from Eight Nations to Plan Joint Organizing Strategies
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The UAW spearheaded an unprecedented meeting of auto unions from eight nations to meet the challenges of globalization by developing shared strategies for moving toward the future and Amy Masciola from the AFL-CIO Organizing Department sends us this report.
Last week, representatives of auto unions from eight countries agreed to form an ad hoc global auto sector organizing working group to gather and share information, develop strategic organizing targets and coordinate solidarity among participants.
The UAW convened the meeting at its headquarters in Detroit. Participants included trade unionists from Argentina, Brazil, France, Thailand, South Korea, Sweden and the United Kingdom, as well as representatives of the International Metalworkers’ Federation, the AFL-CIO Organizing Department and the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center.
In welcoming participants, UAW Vice President and National Organizing Director Terry Thurman summarized the goals of the meeting:
We understand that in order to maintain the high standards we have fought long and hard for in the United States, we must work together to raise labor standards around the world. We must have a global strategy to unite workers in a struggle against the ill effects of the global economy.
