Archive for December, 2007
N.Y.C. ‘Underground’ Construction Economy Costs Workers and Taxpayers
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In New York City’s booming construction industry, at least 50,000 workers are misclassified by employers as independent contractors or are working off the books—costing workers lost wages and benefits and local, state and federal governments nearly $500 million in 2005. A new report says that without tougher enforcement of employment and wage laws, the cost could jump to as much as $557 million next year.
Building up New York, Tearing Down Job Quality, released this week by the Fiscal Policy Institute (FPI), estimates nearly a quarter of the city’s 200,000 construction workers are part of the growing “underground economy.”
Cool Tools Serves Up Holiday Treats
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The holiday season is a great time to do some reading, web surfing and listen to good music. And the items in the latest AFL-CIO Cool Tools really fit the bill.
With the 2008 campaign in full swing, Bruce Barry reminds us in Speechless: The Erosion of Free Expression in the American Workplace that the First Amendment does not fully protect your free speech on the job.
Amazingly, it’s legal for nearly any U.S. worker to be fired just for expressing an opinion. For example, Barry, a professor of management and sociology at Vanderbilt University, tells us about a factory worker who was fired because her boss disagrees with the political bumper sticker on her car.
Congress Ensures Flight Attendants’ Seniority Rights, Fatigue Study
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Before leaving town for the holiday, Congress delivered two presents to the nation’s flight attendants. The omnibus appropriations bill passed Tuesday contained two important provisions sought by the Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA). One ensured seniority protections for aviation employees, and the second funds a fatigue study.
AFA-CWA President Patricia Friend says the vote is:
a victory not only for the 55,000 AFA-CWA flight attendants, but for flight attendants across the country. Thanks to our friends on the Hill, we now can prevent any flight attendant group from being forced to the bottom of a combined seniority list in the event their airline merges with another.
Home Foreclosures Worsen; Bush Confident in Economy
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A quick glance through the nation’s headlines shows The Washington Post is one of the few print or electronic media today to highlight President Bush’s assertion at a press conference yesterday that he’s “confident in the economy.” It’s good to see a sense of reality still exists outside the beltway, where coverage of Jamie Spears’s pregnancy, unlike Bush’s soundbite, at least offers news that’s not based in fiction.
Bush has repeated “the fundamentals of the economy are strong” for so long, no one is listening. Once again, he mouthed this phrase on a day when more bad economic news poured cold water on his glib assertions: U.S. home foreclosures rose 68 percent from November 2006 to last month. That’s 202,000 foreclosure filings, compared with around 120,000 in November of last year.
Bush Forces Cuts in Workplace Safety and Health Budgets
After a handful of Republicans held up renewal of badly needed trade adjustment assistance for workers who lost their jobs to trade, the Bush administration has forced cuts in the workplace health and safety budget as well.
Peg Seminario, the AFL-CIO’s safety and health director, notes that in the recently passed omnibus budget bill, Congress cut the budget of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Overall funding for fiscal 2008 is $486 million, about $1 million less than last year. Even though the budget was cut, funding for federal enforcement was increased.
Health and Safety in Factories Top List of Labor Standards Violations
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Already this holiday season, we’ve learned how sweatshop labor has gone into creating holiday ornaments sold by Wal-Mart and crucifixes made for U.S. churches.
Now, a year-end report by the Fair Labor Association (FLA) found 2,511 violations of the organization’s labor standards in factories around the globe, and nearly half (46 percent) were health and safety-related.
The Fair Labor Association: 2007 Annual Report provides information on unannounced factory inspections conducted in 2006 by independent auditors on the labor compliance programs of 38 companies affiliated with the association, and covers 147 factories and more than 110,000 workers. The FLA also found that 17 percent of violations pertained to wage and benefit standards.
Grinch of the Year: Smithfield Chairman
The votes are in. And the winner, if you want to call him that, is Joseph Luter III, chairman of Smithfield Foods Inc.
With more than 10,000 votes cast, Luter grabbed 28 percent of the vote. But it was not a runaway. He barely beat out American Airlines CEO Gerard Arpey (27 percent) for the (un)coveted title Grinch of the Year.
The seventh annual Grinch of the Year contest, sponsored by Jobs with Justice, gives us all the opportunity to cast a vote for the national figure who does the most harm to working families.
Leading Labor Law Scholars Say Bush NLRB Undermining U.S. Labor Laws
It’s not just workers and unions that say the Bush National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is deliberately undermining workers’ freedom to form unions. Some of the nation’s leading legal scholars say the Bush NLRB
has mounted an aggressive campaign to curtail workers’ rights under the statute.
In a letter submitted to the joint House-Senate hearing last week that examined the NLRB’s war on workers, James Brudney of the Ohio State University Moritz School of Law and Cynthia Estlund of the New York University School of Law were joined by 56 additional labor law professors from our nation’s most prestigious schools.
Workers Tell Their Stories Through UAW Campaign
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Yolanda Crosby addresses toy safety and fair trade standards (see video). Daphne Rice discusses the UAW’s efforts to support charitable causes. Andrew Linko looks at workplace safety and retiree James Fairchild talks about the need for higher workplace standards in the global economy.
Crosby, Rice, Linko or Fairchild, all UAW members, are featured in a new UAW-sponsored Internet and TV advertising campaign.
The ad campaign, launched in mid-December, highlights the union’s new interactive website, IAmtheUAW.org, which encourages UAW members, family, friends and supporters (including friends in other unions) to tell their stories and submit photos, podcasts and videos to the site.
Workers Lose Jobs to Trade—and Now Republican Trio Blocks Their Benefits
Three Republican senators led by Jon Kyl of Arizona ruined the holidays of tens of thousands of working people whose jobs were shipped overseas because of the flawed U.S. trade policies that encourage employers to move offshore. The senators blocked a unanimous consent agreement to extend the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program for three months.
TAA provides financial assistance and training to workers who lost their job due to imports or offshoring. The program is set to expire Dec. 31. Even though the House approved an extension last week, the Senate failed to do so yesterday before adjourning for the year.
