Archive for March, 2008
Chavez-Thompson Honored as Beloved Champion for All Workers
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Hundreds of people turned out last week in the nation’s capital to honor one of the union movement’s most beloved leaders, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Emerita Linda Chavez-Thompson. The dinner honoring Chavez-Thompson also served as a fund-raising event for the six AFL-CIO constituency groups.
Chavez-Thompson, who stepped down as AFL-CIO executive vice president last September to return home to San Antonio and be with her family, says the constituency groups are critically important to the union movement:
Together, we can create a community where we all are treated with dignity, regardless of their sex or skin color or orientation, regardless of whether their family came here on a slave ship or the Mayflower 400 years ago or through Ellis Island at the turn of the century or from Central America last year.
4,000 Nurses Walk Out in Bay Area for Better Patient Care
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Elected officials and union leaders joined some 4,000 striking registered nurses and their families over the weekend in San Francisco to rally for better patient care at 10 Bay Area hospitals operated by the Sutter Health chain. On Friday, the nurses, members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), began a 10-day strike against Sutter throughout the Bay Area. They are seeking safe staffing levels.
Jan Rodolfo, an RN at Sutter’s Alta Bates Summit hospital, says:
This is about when you’re a patient and you push your call light and you’re short of breath, will a nurse come to your bedside right away and give you what you need?
10,000 CNA/NNOC Nurses in California Reach Tentative Agreement
In California, 10,000 registered nurses represented by CNA/NNOC reach a tentative three-year contract and more from the “Bargaining Digest Weekly.” The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 900 subscribers. Union leaders can register for this service through our website, Bargaining@Work.
CNA/NNOC, University of California Medical Centers: Some 10,000 registered nurses at University of California medical centers, represented by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), reached a tentative three-year agreement. The contract provides across-the-board 6 percent wage increases this year with future increases to be negotiated in the fall of 2008 and 2009, respectively, and maintains current pension and retiree health care benefits.
Bear Stearns and Pfizer: A Tale of Two Corporate CEO Excesses
Even after all the headlines and horror stories during the past several years about CEOs and top execs getting huge bonuses, sweetheart stock deals and more goodies—while workers and real people get…well, we’ll call it shafted—new tales of greed can still tick you off.
Our friends at the Alliance for Retired Americans (ARA) point out two of the latest “here we go again” tales.
James E. Cayne, former CEO of financially battered Bear Stearns—battered by its own risky business decisions—will pocket about $13.4 million from the investment bank’s fire sale to J.P. Morgan Chase. With Bear Stearns about to go under because of its huge holdings in the collapsing subprime mortgage market, Morgan Chase agreed last weekend to buy Bear Stearns for just $2 a share, having fallen from $132 a share last year. Even just a week ago it was valued at $20 a share.
Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance Names New Director
Malcolm Amado Uno was named new executive director of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), an AFL-CIO constituency group. APALA’s board of directors last week selected Uno, who previously served as the group’s deputy executive director.
Luisa Blue, APALA first vice president, says Uno
…comes from a strong line of labor organizers but represents a new face and perspective to the labor movement. Equally important, [he] has effectively engaged our base and displayed a willingness to fight for the rights of all working people.
Uno helped develop APALA’s Every Vote Counts national political program and headed the APALA Organizing Institute, which identifies and recruits the next generation of Asian Pacific American organizers.
Indian Workers Say They’re Treated Like Slaves at Mississippi Shipyard
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The global union movement is calling on the U.S. and Indian governments to take legal action against Signal International, a marine construction company, and two of its recruiters. Nearly 100 Indian workers say they were enticed to come to work at the company’s shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., where they say they were held in modern-day slavery.
On March 18, these workers embarked on a “satyagrahah,” or truth action, in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi, traveling from New Orleans to Washington, D.C., to reveal the truth of the guest worker program–that the program is being used to sanction forced labor by migrants and to further disenfranchise the most vulnerable American workers. As part of their journey, workers will also meet with allies from the African American and labor rights communities in key sites in the civil rights struggle, including Jackson, Miss.; Selma, Ala.; Atlanta; and Greensboro, N.C.
Secretary-Treasurer Trumka: Here’s What Ails Corporate America
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Patrick O’Meara, corporate finance specialist in the AFL-CIO Office of Investment, highlights a CNBC discussion by AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka on the need for making it clear that excessive CEO pay plays a key role in our nation’s credit crisis.
In a recent appearance on CNBC, AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Rich Trumka explained how the issue of excessive executive pay must be front and center in any honest discussion of the causes of the credit crisis now threatening the health of our economy. If CEOs are rewarded for putting at risk our companies—and, as we now see, even our financial system—they will not hesitate to do it. Shareholders and government regulatory agencies need to be able to make sure that CEOs are not given the wrong incentives.
AFL-CIO Federations in Kentucky, Oklahoma, Idaho Roll Out Endorsements for Congress
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The fight for a pro-working family government doesn’t end with the race for the White House. Around the country, union members in key states, including Kentucky, Oklahoma and Idaho, are looking to elect new members of Congress who will help turn around America.
The Kentucky State AFL-CIO has announced endorsements in key races for U.S. Congress.
Bill Londrigan, president of the state federation, says these candidates, and the issues they’ll fight for, will help mobilize union members to win this fall.
Boeing Workers Rally to Stop Bad Tanker Deal
Thanks to Kathy Cummings of the Washington State Labor Council for this blog on a rally in Everett, Wash., to protest the U.S. Air Force’s decision to award one of our nation’s largest military contracts to a foreign company.
More than 300 Boeing workers joined with the Washington state congressional delegation, Gov. Christine Gregoire and other elected officials yesterday in Everett to call on the Air Force to get a reality check on its decision to send American jobs and national security and trade secrets to a foreign competitor in the form of the $40 billion refueling tanker contract.
Greed is Not Good
As we watch the Federal Reserve hand over billions of dollars to tanking Wall Street firms to stave off a nationwide Titanic, the words of author and activist Barbara Ehrenreich especially resonate:
The rich are a burden to the rest of us.
Ehrenreich, appropriately enough, was speaking at “Challenging the Second Gilded Age,” a session at this week’s Take Back America Conference, where she was joined by Bill Gates Sr., a working families’ activist in his own right.
Ehrenreich’s point is that the growing wealth gap in this country matters. It matters because when a lot of people are impoverished, it creates societal problems—like the poor’s inability to consume at a level our economy requires to stay in equilibrium.
