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LabourStart Sponsors Labor Video Contest |
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Have a video that depicts the plight of today’s workers? LabourStart, the global online labor news service, is sponsoring a Labor Video of the Year competition, open to trade unionists and film-makers from around the world.
The videos must be on the web and run less than 10 minutes. The films must focus on work, workers or workers’ issues. You do not have to be the owner or producer of a video to submit it for the contest.
The deadline for nominations is Feb. 15 at midnight GMT (Feb. 14 at 7:00 p.m. EST).
An international panel of judges will prepare a short list of finalists, and online voting will begin sometime in March. Winners will be announced after two weeks of online voting and the winning films will screened at the LabourStart conference, July 9-11, 2010, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
For more information or to nominate a video, click here.
LabourStart features daily labor news provided by a global network of more than 500 volunteer correspondents in more than 20 languages. Its news syndication service is used by some 700 trade union websites.
Judge to Pratt & Whitney: Keep Work in U.S. |
A federal court issued an injunction Feb. 4 against Pratt & Whitney, preventing the company from moving work and equipment out of their Cheshire and East Hartford, Conn., plants and keeping 1,000 hourly and salaried workers on the job. Machinists (IAM) District 26 had filed suit, saying the decision to move the work violated their contract.
The ruling stops the company’s immediate plans to move the work to Singapore, Japan and the state of Georgiia. The contract expires on Dec.10, 2010. IAM officials say the union is gearing up for a fight to preserve these jobs and expand opportunities in the next contract.
Jim Parent, assistant business rep for District 26, said:
We have a big job ahead of us now, securing these jobs in the next contract. We’re ready for a fight, if that’s what it takes. But we hope that after the dust settles, the company will recognize what we have said all along–these are the most highly skilled overhaul, repair and refurbishment workers in the world. Pratt may think that moving the work will save costs, but quality and reliability are crucial in aerospace operations. If they want the best performance possible for their demanding customers, Pratt should keep the work here.
‘Undercover Boss’: A Fairy Tale That Ignores Grim Reality |
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As kids, we all loved the sugar-coated fairy tales of handsome and brave princes rescuing beautiful princesses from despotic kings.
The new CBS “reality” show “Undercover Boss” that debuted last night after the Super Bowl is a 21st century sugar-coated fairy tale. But this time, the brave prince is actually a CEO who goes undercover as a regular worker near the bottom of the food chain. There he finds how hard and dirty the job is; how stifling and draconian the company’s workplace rules are; and how crappy the pay is.
Then after walking so many miles in an employee’s work boots, the boss sees the light and promotes workers, raises pay, eases rules and promises a new found respect for all workers.
(If your boss isn’t going undercover anytime soon, be sure to check out American Rights at Work’s new website, Fix Our Jobs, where you can vent about how lousy—and even how great—your job is and learn how to make it better. Click here to watch the video.)
Job Creation Key to Ending Economic Crisis |
As Congress considers whether to renew unemployment insurance (UI) for long-term jobless workers and extend COBRA to help unemployed workers maintain health care, they should take time to find out about the experiences of workers beyond the Washington, D.C., beltway.
Richard Duncan, who works for the Tennessee AFL-CIO technical assistance program, has met many unemployed workers. The assistance program helps union workers who have been laid off (see video above).
I’ve traveled the state of Tennessee and seen an enormous number of union brothers and sisters lose their jobs. Since 2006, I’ve seen the same people. They lose their job at one facility. Then they go to another facility, then there’s an additional layoff and they lose their job again.
The extensions for UI and COBRA expire Feb. 28. Click here to tell your lawmakers it’s time to act.
Labor On the Air Around the Nation and World |
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Looking for the latest in international labor news? Now it’s just a click away with the launch of RadioLabour.net and its Solidarity News program. The weekly podcast will focus on union and workers’ activities and issues from around the world with special emphasis on emerging market and developing countries.
A new report, hosted by labor educator Marc Belanger, debuts each Monday morning. RadioLabour reporters will provide regular weekly presentations, and the audio cast will feature reports from unionists on particular events.
For union activists interested in learning more about progressive podcasting, be sure to check out the Labour Podcasting group on UnionBook.
U.S. Jobless Rate Now 9.7%, but Millions Fear Losing Unemployment Insurance |
The U.S. unemployment rate fell from 10 percent to 9.7 percent in January, with 14.8 million workers now without jobs. Employment continued to decrease in construction and transportation and increase in retail, health care and temp work, according to U.S. Department of Labor data out this morning. Unemployment among black workers continued to worsen.
When both unemployed and underemployed workers are counted, there still are 25.5 million people without jobs or full-time work.
As AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says:
We welcome the news that unemployment dropped to 9.7%, but we shed another 20,000 jobs last month, following a revised 150,000 loss in December. These numbers underscore what we have been saying all along. Working families need bigger and bolder actions—in the short, medium and long term—to create jobs in the immediate future—or we risk permanent scarring of our economy and our workforce.
Among the worst aspects of the nation’s unacceptably high unemployment rate—and there are many—the growing numbers of long-term jobless workers is something that can, and must, be addressed immediately. Long-term U.S. unemployment (those without a job for 27 weeks or longer), with more than 6 million unemployed workers out of a job for more than six months. In January, the number of long-term unemployed workers worsened, to 6.3 million workers.
But the unemployment insurance (UI) extension for millions of workers expires Feb. 28, unless Congress—specifically, the Senate—takes action.
New Union Plus Book Club Announces First Selection |
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Our friends at Union Plus have just launched the Union Plus Book Club that will delve into the latest publications by leading experts on vital working family and workplace issues. The books will be available at the AFL-CIO’s The Union Shop OnlineTM and chosen every two months by union leaders based on their interest and expertise in a subject.
The club’s first selection, from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, is Up From Wall Street: The Responsible Investment Alternative, by Thomas Croft.
In the forward to the book, Trumka writes that Croft ”uses real life stories” to show how
responsibly investing savings assets, pensions, insurance funds and other trusts can generate positive social, economic and environmental benefits, while bringing solid financial returns.
Up From Wall Street, lays out high-road alternatives to the reckless loans and dicey short-term bets that have savaged the economy and ravaged working people’s savings and pension funds.
The book makes a strong case that there are strategic and union-friendly investment paths that have the capacity to rebuild our economy and infrastructure, reinvigorate our cities, and finance a clean energy economy that creates and retains good jobs.
The Union Plus Book Club’s goal is to “create labor movement dialogue about current issues and to inspire thought-provoking conversations within our union community.”
Jobless Construction Workers to Delaware Lawmakers: ‘Walk in Our Shoes’ |
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Staging a symbolic soup and bread line and carrying shoes to encourage state legislators to walk a mile in a jobless worker’s shoes, some 500 Delaware Building and Construction Trades Council (BCTC) workers rallied for jobs legislation in Dover last week.
The rally at the steps of the state Capitol spotlighted the tremendous loss in construction jobs throughout the recession. Although state unemployment stands at 9 percent, construction unemployment is more than twice that and more than 2,100 construction and trades jobs vanished in 2009.
Delaware BCTC President Harry Gravel says the state legislature needs to move on jobs legislation, such as a stalled bill to allow casinos that some estimate could create thousands of jobs.
I support jobs period. If it’s a casino, good. I don’t care if it’s Jack in the Box, a Wendy’s, a school or an outhouse, we want to build it. We’re out of work, we need to go work, we’ll build it, period.
Danger: Falling Middle Class |
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Jack Cafferty at CNN this week asked viewers one of his seemingly routine questions. But the responses to: “How has definition of ‘middle-class American’ changed?” reveal a cataclysmic shift in our nation’s economic identity.
Gary from El Centro, Calif., summed up the vast majority of the nearly 200 responses when he replied:
You should ask this question of the three or four people in the country still remaining in the middle class.
The comments reflect more than the run-of-the-mill griping about taxes or middle-aged discontent. They demonstrate a visceral understanding of the deep forces underlying the dramatic change that in recent decades has eroded the solid financial footing of America’s working families—America’s middle class.
In short, the American public knows what most lawmakers in Washington and policymakers around the country have yet to figure out: The nation is losing its middle-class backbone and bifurcating into a have/have not country.
Senate Confirms Smith as the Nation’s ‘Workers’ Lawyer’ |
By a 60-37 vote, the U.S. Senate this afternoon confirmed M. Patricia Smith as the solicitor of labor. The solicitor of labor oversees enforcement of the nation’s most important labor laws and sets enforcement priorities that have a major impact on workers and their lives.
The late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) described the solicitor general’s job as “the workers’ lawyer.” During her confirmation hearing last year, Smith said she would bring to the job a “philosophy of proactive enforcement.” Says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:
At a time when working families are bearing the brunt of the economic recession and violations of workplace rights are rampant, Ms. Smith’s commitment to strong, fair and effective enforcement of our workplace laws is crucial.
The vote follows some nine months of Republican obstruction in an attempt to block Smith from the U.S. Department of Labor post as the nation’s top labor lawyer.
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