Archive for January, 2009
Focus on Working Families, Win a College Scholarship
High school and college students hoping to make the world a better place have an opportunity to advance their education and get the word out about the needs of working families this year through the annual Ottilie Markholt Memorial Scholarship essay contest.
America in Solidarity, a grassroots campaign educating on working family issues, is sponsoring the contest, with a focus on the Employee Free Choice Act and other vital political issues facing working families and our economy. Through the Ottilie Markholt Memorial Scholarship, America in Solidarity has awarded nearly $15,000 in scholarships since 2005.
The scholarship is open to high school seniors and current college students who are residents of the United States and planning to attend accredited colleges and universities in the United States.
Sweeney: Health Care Reform Critical to Economic Recovery
Reforming the nation’s health care system, including cost controls, is a critical part of any national economic fix, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said today, and he urged lawmakers and the White House to make it an urgent priority.
Speaking to the 21st Annual Conference on Social Insurance, Fiscal Responsibility, and Economic Growth in Washington, D.C., Sweeney said the union movement is ratcheting up its commitment to creating a national system of affordable health care:
This year, we’re adding a sword’s point to that commitment: We have no time left for dithering, we’re in a perilous economic ditch, and we will not dig our way out and fix our economy until we fix our health care system.
World Social Forum Kicks Off in Brazil
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| Brian Finnegan of the Solidarity Center, left, and Steelworkers member Patrick Young get ready to march in the rain at the World Social Forum. |
Brian Finnegan and Gladys Cisneros of the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center report from Belem, Brazil, where the World Social Forum began this week. The World Social Forum, launched in 2001 as an alternative to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, allows grassroots activists to debate and develop proposals to make the global economy work for everyone.
The World Social Forum opened Jan. 27 with thousands marching through relentlessly heavy rain in the Brazilian city of Belem. The downpour did not deter the drums and dancing of the crowd that advanced from the restored old Amazon waterfront docks to the Workers Square four miles away.
Members of the Brazilian national labor centers—CUT, Força Sindical and UGT—were joined by thousand of local and international labor, youth, environmental, indigenous, cultural and community activists of all ages. The Brazilian national labor centers are similar to labor federations like the AFL-CIO. U.S. labor participants included representatives of the Solidarity Center, United Steelworkers, Jobs with Justice, United Students Against Sweatshops and the United Electrical Workers.
Obama Reverses Bush Executive Orders, Creates Middle Class Task Force
President Barack Obama today reversed three Bush-era anti-worker executive orders and created a Cabinet-level task force to rebuild the nation’s middle class. In a White House ceremony this morning attended by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and other union leaders, Obama signed three executive orders that reverse a series of orders by then-President George W. Bush, which govern the way federal contractors deal with unionized workers.
The three new executive orders:
- Require federal service contractors to offer jobs to current workers when contracts change.
- Reverse a Bush order requiring federal contractors to post notice that workers can limit financial support of unions serving as their exclusive bargaining representatives.
- Prevent federal contractors from being reimbursed for expenses meant to influence workers deciding whether to form a union and engage in collective bargaining.
Senate Passes Bill Extending Health Coverage to Low-Income Children
Some 4 million more low-income kids are getting closer to receiving health care coverage, after the Senate last night approved (66-32) a four-and-a-half year extension of a state-based program that provides health insurance for low-income children. Some 7 million children are currently enrolled.
It’s not been an easy path for the children’s health care program. Bush twice vetoed similar bills in 2007. But President Barack Obama will sign the legislation. Says Sen. Max Baucus:
When President Obama signs this bill, the real victory will belong not to politicians, but to kids…[it] gets kids in low-income working families the doctor’s visits and medicines they need when they’re sick, and the checkups they need to stay well.
What Happens When Your TV Goes Blank?
Paul Almeida, president of the AFL-CIO Department for Professional Employees, points out that even though millions of people do not have the capacity to receive digital television, Congress blocked bills that would have delayed the switch from analog.
On Feb. 17, 2009, millions of America’s workers and their families, including rural, low-income and elderly citizens, will be left with blank TV screens. Don’t call the repairman. Contact your members of Congress.
Feb. 17 is the date that television stations stop using analog signals to broadcast and switch to digital. If you have an analog TV set and use an antenna or rabbit ears, you must buy a converter box, a digital TV or subscribe to cable or satellite service to receive programming—at a time when the public has fewer resources than ever to buy the necessary equipment.
Bailout Oversight Panel Recommends Eight Changes to Avoid Future Crises
The congressional oversight committee examining how the U.S. Treasury Department is spending taxpayer money in the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) to help bailout the financial system says the nation needs smart regulation to help prevent another financial crisis and protect our economic future.
The Congressional Oversight Panel (COP) released a report today, which discusses how regulation would have helped avert the financial crisis and how it can help avoid future troubles.
Recovery Bill ‘Good News for the Economy’
Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an economic recovery package to create and save up to 4 million jobs and stabilize the nation’s rapidly tumbling economy. The bill passed without a single Republican vote, despite President Barack Obama’s White House and Capitol Hill meetings with Republican lawmakers in an outreach effort to set a more bipartisan tone in Washington.
The Republicans offered their vision of a recovery plan—tax cuts, mostly for Big Business.
On the House floor during debate on the bill, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, described Republican opposition to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act this way:
I must say that I truly admire the courage of my friends on the other side of the aisle. In the middle of the worst economic downturn that any of us can remember, our parents told us about the Depression, an unprecedented and accelerating job loss all across the American economy in every sector, our friends on the other side of the aisle ask us just for one last time to do what they’ve been doing the last eight years; to just one more time give the tax cuts to the richest people in the country; to just one more time dive into the tank of fiscal irresponsibility.
Were Bailout Funds Used to Plot Against Employee Free Choice?
This week, we learned that shortly after the approval of billions in bailout funding for major banks, at least two bailout recipients were involved in a conference call for lobbyists and Big Business figures plotting to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act.
Now, a coalition of five major government-reform groups is asking Congress to fulfill its duty of overseeing the bailout funds and making sure they aren’t being used for political purposes like fighting the freedom to form unions.
In a letter sent to Congress today, leaders of Public Citizen, U.S. PIRG, Change Congress, Democracy Matters and Public Campaign asked for an investigation into whether taxpayer dollars are being spent on political influence-peddling.
This story may be the tip of the iceberg. That’s why we’re calling for Congress to investigate whether Bank of America, AIG, or other recipients of billions in bailout money used taxpayer dollars to send “large contributions” to any political organizations.
Engineers: Infrastructure Fails to Make the Grade
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With Congress debating President Obama’s plan to rebuild our infrastructure as a key part of an economic stimulus plan, civil engineers—the people who know our roads, bridges and dams best—give our infrastructure an overall grade of ”D” and say repairs and upgrades are desperately needed.
In a report issued this week, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) says the nation’s infrastructure is poorly maintained, unable to meet current and future demands and, in some cases, is simply unsafe.
ASCE’s new 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure assigns an overall grade of “D” to the nation as well as individual grades in 15 infrastructure categories. Since ASCE’s last assessment in 2005, there has been little change in the condition of America’s roads, bridges, drinking water systems and other public works.
