Archive for February, 2009
AFTRA to Honor Four Entertainment Giants
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| AFTRA will honor legendary Motown recording artist Smokey Robinson and others at its annual awards ceremony. |
For five decades, music lovers have sung, danced and rocked to the tunes of Smokey Robinson. The list of his songs reads like a history of rhythm and blues. He sang or wrote such hits as “Shop Around”—Motown’s first number one hit—and such favorites as “Who’s Loving You,” “My Guy,” “The Way You Do the Things You Do” and “My Girl.”
Now Robinson, the man Bob Dylan proclaimed as America’s “greatest living poet,” will be honored for his lifetime achievement by the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists’ (AFTRA’s) Foundation during its Media and Entertainment Excellence (AMEE) Awards ceremony on March 9.
Along with Robinson, AFTRA will honor broadcaster Vin Scully, actress Jeanne Cooper and the late Don LaFontaine, a voice-over artist. The AMEE awards recognize members of the union who have made a significant contribution to American culture.
AFTRA Foundation President Shelby Scott says:
The AFTRA Foundation is proud to honor AFTRA members Smokey Robinson, Vin Scully, Jeanne Cooper, and Don LaFontaine for their lifetime of achievements that have entertained and informed audiences around the world.
State Workers, Taxpayers Caught in a Fiscal Vise
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The badly needed economic recovery package included some substantial assistance for states that are facing growing budget shortfalls, possible layoffs and cuts in vital services. But despite critics’ noise about the amount of spending in the package, even with that helping hand, the fiscal outlook for states is still “dire” and likely will worsen, says the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP):
The state fiscal situation is dire. Revenues are declining, and the need for services such as Medicaid is rising as people lose income and jobs….If revenue declines persist as expected in many states, additional budget cuts are likely. Budget cuts often are more severe in the second year of a state fiscal crisis, after reserves have been largely depleted and thus are no longer an option for closing deficits.
EPI: Unions Don’t Hurt International Competitiveness
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A new snapshot study from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) debunks the myth that unions have a negative effect on a nation’s ability to compete in a global economy.
Check out the above graph, comparing current account deficit—a measure of international competitiveness—with rates of union membership in major industrialized nations. As we’ve noted, strong unions are compatible with a strong economy, and yet another measure shows it: many nations with higher levels of union membership than the United States, like Canada, Germany and Denmark, have very strong export sectors and a positive trade balance.
Biden’s Middle Class Task Force Hears Need for Good Green Jobs
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Green jobs can be a pathway to middle class for millions of Americans, but only if we ensure they come with good wages and benefits, union and environmental leaders told a White House panel.
Speaking to the first meeting of Vice President Biden’s Middle Class Task Force in Philadelphia today, United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard said any new green jobs also must be good jobs.
To rebuild our middle class, we must also be sure that the jobs created in this new, green economy are good jobs with family-supporting wages and benefits, that we maximize the number of jobs created in this economy, and that these jobs truly contribute to the protection of our environment for future generations of Americans.
Employee Free Choice Actions in Philly, Michigan, Wisconsin and More
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AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka paid a visit to Philadelphia yesterday to hold a live radio town hall about the Employee Free Choice Act, part of the ongoing national campaign to protect the freedom to form unions and bargain.
Speaking to Pennsylvania union members, Trumka detailed the abuses companies are free to commit against workers trying to form unions under our corporate-dominated, unbalanced laws.
Now, an anti-union employer has what amounts to an incentive to break the law and violate a worker’s right to have a union. And strengthening the law to protect those rights is exactly what the Employee Free Choice Act would do.
Trumka discussed the three provisions of the Employee Free Choice Act—the ability of workers rather than bosses to decide how to form a union, the guarantee of a contract for workers who do form a union, and real penalties against companies who harass, mistreat or fire workers for trying to form a union. He said that these three provisions would protect workers’ basic right to form a union and give them the power to bargain for a better life and a stake in the prosperity they create.
By guaranteeing workers the right to bargain for better wages—by enabling them to get more of a share of the wealth they created through their productivity—money that would otherwise be getting socked away in executive bank accounts or gambled on Wall Street, instead goes into worker paychecks.
Beware of the Big Lie Bill
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Opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act in Congress made their Big Lie into a bill Wednesday, when Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.) and Mike Enzi (Wyo.) introduced the so-called Secret Ballot Protection Act.
Before we go further, let’s clear up the bill’s false implication right now:
The Employee Free Choice Act would not—repeat after me—would not, take away the secret ballot National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election process if workers seeking to form a union wanted to use it. The Employee Free Choice would ensure workers made the decision of whether to select a union via majority sign-up (card-check) or via ballot process. Choice is good. That’s one reason why we called it Employee Free Choice—because it would enable employees, not management, to make the decision of how to form a union.
The alleged goal of S. 478 is to:
amend the National Labor Relations Act to ensure the right of employees to a secret-ballot election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board.
Bronfenbrenner: Employee Free Choice Is Key for Women
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Cornell University’s Kate Bronfenbrenner, a leading scholars in labor studies, discusses the Employee Free Choice Act and the future of the union movement in the latest issue of The American Prospect.
In a great interview, Bronfenbrenner, whose research has detailed the pattern of corporate interference and intimidation that prevents workers from freely choosing a union, says the Employee Free Choice Act is critical to giving workers bargaining power and restoring balance in an economy that has been undermined by corporate greed. Says Bronfenbrenner:
The public has seen that deregulation and letting employers do whatever they want has hurt a lot of people. Corporate capital does not work in the interest of the public good. Letting them act without any restraint puts us where we are today. The National Labor Relations Act as it is now enforced is a poor piece of legislation. The Employee Free Choice Act is nothing more than making the law do what it was supposed to have been doing all along.
NLRB Backs Utility Workers, Ruling Covanta Energy’s Work Rules Illegal
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The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has authorized a complaint charging Covanta Energy with violating federal labor law at more than 50 locations across the United States. The complaint is based on charges filed by Utility Workers (UWUA) Local 369, which challenged Covanta work rules as illegal, including rules that employees would be fired for providing any information about the company to government investigators, the news media or other “outside representatives.”
Gary Sullivan, president of Local 369, says:
The Board’s decision to issue a nationwide complaint against Covanta confirms our charge that this renegade company runs roughshod over workers’ rights. We intend to challenge Covanta’s illegal conduct at every turn.
Pension Benefit Guaranty Employees Join IFPTE
Employees at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) protect the pensions of nearly 44 million workers and retirees in America. Now their rights on the job will be protected after more than 500 of the staff overwhelmingly voted to join the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE).
Donna Pentek, who works as a paralegal at the agency, says “PBGC employees work hard to help protect the pensions of million of Americans.”
Now as members of IFPTE, we will work to make sure our employees are happy and our benefits are being taken care of.
Obama Unveils Budget for America’s Working Families
President Obama’s first budget proposal is a 180-degree turn from the past eight years. It’s aimed at rebuilding the middle class, reforming the nation’s health care system and helping working families educate their children, while asking the nation’s wealthiest to begin paying more of their fair share and ending tax breaks for corporations that ship U.S. jobs overseas.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says the fiscal year 2010 budget shows Obama is “serious” about repairing the economic damage of the past eight years and correcting the incredible imbalance between those very few at the top and the rest of us.
President Obama’s proposed budget takes us in the right direction toward creating an economy that works for everyone. The budget sets out ambitious—but achievable—proposals for bold new reforms in energy, health care, education and infrastructure, while also laying out a concrete plan to fund these programs over the next decade.
