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2007: The AFL-CIO Now Blog’s Year in Review (Part 1) |
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From a brand new Congress taking the reins on Capitol Hill in January to the AFL-CIO’s first-ever global organizing conference in December, working families have seen some significant victories, unfortunate setbacks and a lot of unfinished business this year. We take a look back at 2007 in a series of posts starting today with a quick glance at top items from January through March.
January
* As the battle to win congressional passage of the Employee Free Chance Act heated up, a new study showed one in five union organizers or activists are illegally fired for trying to bring a union into the workplace.
* Safety experts pointed to the Bush administration’s Mine Safety and Health Administration’s (MSHA’s) lax oversight of coal mine safety for 2006’s 47 coal miner deaths, the most since 1996. The deaths continued in 2007 with the first two coal miners killed in a roof fall at a Cucumber, W.Va., mine.
* The Institute for Women’s Policy Research reported that despite women’s educational and professional gain, it will take another 50 years before women achieve equal pay with men.
* Virginia Sen. Jim Webb (D) joined with progressive economists to launch the Agenda for Shared Prosperity, a network backed by the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute (EPI), to address the growing economic gap and provide comprehensive solutions in time for the 2008 elections.
Check out these other headlines from January:
- If You Can Work an Espresso Machine, You’re a Manager
- King’s Dream Still a Long Way Away
- Celebrate the First Woman Speaker—And Then Ask Why It’s Taken So Long
- Arnold’s Health Care Plan—‘A Plan Wal-Mart Can Love’
- Agenda for Shared Prosperity Launches Today
- Workers Try to Keep Korea Deal off the Fast Track
- Workers from Colorado to Guam Sign Up with AFL-CIO Unions
- ‘The Contract with America’s Workers Is Unraveling‘
- AFT Report Debunks Myth of Liberal Bias in Academia
- CEOs Take Big Contracts, Deny Workers Same Chance
February
* The fight to win the Employee Free Choice Act kicked up in February as a bipartisan coalition of House members introduced the landmark labor legislation to give workers greater freedom to make their own choices about joining unions. In hearings on the Employee Free Choice Act, Rep. Robert Andrews (D-N.J.) asserted:
The basic underpinnings of middle class life—decent wages and benefits—have been eroded by coercive employers determined to obstruct any effort to allow workers to organize.
* Throughout the month, workers told their stories online, including Nikkia Parish, Mahelio Rico and Bill Lawhorn.
* With Bush seeking extended Fast Track trade promotion authority, a broad coalition of groups, including unions, met in Washington, D.C., to map plans and strategies to turn around Bush administration trade policies that ship U.S. jobs overseas and ignore worker, human and environmental rights.
* In one of the first major events of the 2008 presidential race, eight of the nine major Democratic candidates took part in a candidates’ forum before 800 AFSCME members in Carson City, Nev. The forum was the first of many in 2007 by individual unions and the AFL-CIO to give workers the opportunity to listen and quiz the candidates about important working family issues.
* U.S. corporations have shipped millions of manufacturing jobs overseas in search of the cheapest possible labor. That same race to the bottom now threatens high-technology jobs. The Brookings Institute estimates 2.4 million professional and high-tech jobs will be offshored to low-wage countries by 2015.
Here are other headlines from February:
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Globalization Barreling Down the Road to America’s Middle Class
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Healthy Families Act Would Ensure Workers Get Paid Sick Leave
March
* After hours of debate and a failed move by House Republicans to kill the Employee Free Choice Act, the House voted 241–185 to level the playing field and allow workers the freedom to form unions without management intimidation, threats and harassment. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said when working families have the right to form unions, it “means a better future for them, and for all us. It means a future that is economically and socially just, a future where the workplace is safe, a future where our retirement is secure.”
* Bush decided busting unions is more important than fighting terrorism and reiterated his veto threat to an anti-terrorism bill passed by the House in January that give 56,000 Transportation Security Administration airport screeners bargaining rights. Bush took away those rights from workers in 2002. The Senate passed the bill anyway.
* The Fire Fighters (IAFF), Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD) gave their members a chance to hear from the presidential candidates. The AFL-CIO Executive Council announced plans to get union members more involved than ever in selecting a candidate to endorse.
* A Washington Post series reveled the substandard and deteriorating living conditions wounded military members have endured at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Army leaders linked the Bush administration drive to privatize services at the center as a key reason for the deplorable conditions. The privatization move displaced what an Army memo described as 350 “highly skilled and experienced personnel.” Those workers were federal employees and AFGE members.
* Working America, the AFL-CIO community affiliate, launched the “In the Heart of the Health Care Hustle,” where workers can share their stories about the broken health care system, from insurance company gouging to outrageous hospital bills to soaring prescription drug costs.
* The bipartisan RESPECT Act was introduced in the House and Senate. The bill, which was not passed before the end of the year, would counter a 2006 National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruling that could cost as many as 8 million workers their freedom to join a union by redefining the term “supervisor.” Supervisors are ineligible to join unions.
Here some other March headlines.
- MSHA Moves Too Slowly on Mine Safety, Another Sago Possible
- Bush Leaves Lots of PR, No Funding on Trip to New Orleans
- At Least Marie Antoinette Offered Cake, More than Senate Republicans
- Senate Committee Looks at Health Care Crisis Facing Ground Zero Workers
- Can’t Discount Corporate Greed, Circuit City Axes, 3,400 workers
Don’t forget to check back tomorrow when we look at news from April through June.
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