Channel: Legislation & Politics
AFGE Backs Obama for President
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The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for president.
The union, which represents 600,000 federal and District of Columbia government employees, made the endorsement after extensive member polling and a meeting of its national Executive Council.
John Gage, president of AFGE, says Obama’s energetic campaign and support of working families will mobilize voters around the country and help pro-working family candidates up and down the ticket in the fall. Gage said Obama would tackle the challenges facing the federal workforce and all working families, including job privatization and underfunding and understaffing of Social Security and veterans’ programs.
Report Says Crandall Canyon Managers Should Face Charges
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The mine manager and other senior staff at the Crandall Canyon coal mine in Utah hid information from federal mining officials that could have prevented the disaster and should face criminal charges, a congressional committee said today. Last August, six miners and three rescue workers died after the mine collapsed.
In a report released today, the House Education and Labor Committee says the mining company’s plan to remove coal was flawed and should never have been submitted, and that the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) should never have approved it.
The committee referred its findings to the U.S. Department of Justice for possible criminal prosecutions. Click here to read a summary of the report by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the committee chairman.
McCain to 14-Year-Old Girl: ‘No Fair Pay for You’
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Sen. John McCain is used to getting softball questions from his fans in the media. At his town hall meeting yesterday in Michigan, however, he finally took a tough, smart question from an unexpected source.
When a 14-year-old girl attending the meeting got to ask a question of a presidential candidate, she took the opportunity to ask why he skipped out on voting on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
McCain said he agreed with the minority of senators who filibustered the bill, which would give targets of workplace discrimination the chance to fight for equal pay. He claimed it wouldn’t help women. Here’s what he had to say:
I don't believe that this would do anything to help the rights of women, except maybe help trial lawyers and others in that profession.
Pride At Work Helps Blow the Whistle on Special Counsel
The recent headlines about an FBI raid on the U.S. Office of the Special Counsel (OSC) finally validates the yearlong campaign by Pride At Work (P@W) to highlight the alleged mismanagement of the office that was created to enforce the civil rights rule and protect whistle-blowers in the federal workforce.
In March 2007, the AFL-CIO constituency group created a special campaign, “Blow the whistle on Bloch” aimed at letting the public know how agency chief Scott Bloch had weakened the office’s mission. Instead of protecting workers’ rights, the office had become a launching pad for partisan attacks on civil and workers' rights, says P@W Executive Director Jeremy Bishop.
In Michigan, Union Members Challenge McCain on Economy
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Brent Gillette, Labor 2008 director for Michigan, sends us a report on Sen. John McCain’s visit to Michigan.
When Sen. John McCain visited Rochester, Mich., this morning, he was met by a contingent of union members asking him for solutions to the crisis facing the economy.
Some 28 union members gathered in front of the hall where McCain was set to speak and distributed fliers on McCain’s anti-worker record on trade, health care and jobs.
Mark Gaffney, president of the Michigan State AFL-CIO, says McCain’s votes on trade and the economy are proof that he’s out of touch with working families.
John McCain will not likely have a government and an administration that does enough or cares enough about creating good-paying manufacturing jobs here in America.
Failure to Enforce U.S. Labor Laws Fuels Exploitation of Workers
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The failure to enforce even weak U.S. labor laws has created an incentive for many employers to hire undocumented immigrant workers, several experts told a House committee earlier this week.
Bill Beardell, director of the non-partisan Equal Justice Center, told the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee some unscrupulous employers actually prefer to hire undocumented workers. In the absence of effective federal enforcement of worker protections, they know they can easily exploit and silence such workers, he says. During the hearing, Beardell played a chilling audiotape of an employer’s phone message to an immigrant worker who simply wanted to be paid for the work he had done. (See video.)
During the hearing, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), committee chairman, said that with more than 7.6 million unemployed workers in this country, some employers insist they cannot find workers to fill unskilled jobs. Miller makes it clear that Congress needs to enact stronger labor protections to protect the rights of guest workers and U.S. workers. (See video.)
McCain Would Appoint Justices Like Anti-Worker Alito and Roberts
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Yesterday, Sen. John McCain gave a speech about his vision for the U.S. Supreme Court and the kind of nominees he’d choose if elected.
McCain said that when it comes to looking for a Supreme Court justice, extremist conservatives John Roberts and Samuel Alito meet his standards “in every way” and “would serve as the model” for his nominees if he were elected president.
When you look at the record, though, Roberts and Alito have failed to look out for the rights of workers. Check out some of the cases where Roberts and Alito have provided decisive votes:
- Alito was the author of the May 2007 opinion that ruled against Lilly Ledbetter’s right to challenge the pay discrimination she faced on the job. Roberts joined that opinion, which fundamentally changed the way workers could fight discrimination at work.
Battista Jumps NLRB Ship, Joins Union-Busting Firm
For the past seven years, Bush administration appointees have carried out a war on workers, pursuing a corporate agenda that favored the wealthy over working people.
Some of the most egregious actions came from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which is supposed to protect workers’ freedom to join unions and bargain for a better life. But the Republican-dominated NLRB in recent years took away the rights of millions of workers to be represented by unions, made it harder to form unions through majority sign-up, limited the ability of illegally fired workers to recover back pay and allowed employers to discriminate against union supporters in the hiring process.
Huffington on McCain: A Trojan Horse
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Somewhere along the road from the 2000 presidential campaign to this year's elections, Sen. John McCain transformed from a lawmaker willing to challenge extremist Republicans like George W. Bush to just another politician begging to kiss the ring of the Great Leader and win Bush's blessing as inheritor of the White House mantle.
This description of the McCain metamorphosis is not idle speculation from afar. It's based on the personal experience of political analyst Arianna Huffington, who supported McCain a few years ago to the point of throwing a fundraiser for him. Now, she devotes a large section of her new book to show how McCain has abandoned any modicum of moderation and has fully embraced the extremist agenda of Bush and his clones.
In Louisiana, Union-Endorsed Cazayoux Wins U.S. House Seat
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Don Cazayoux will be heading to Congress as the next representative from Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District (CD) following an upset win in Saturday’s special election.
Cazayoux, a Democrat and former state House member, won the endorsement of the Louisiana AFL-CIO and stressed working-family issues in his successful campaign for the U.S. House seat.
The 6th CD is a traditionally Republican district: In 2004, President Bush won it with a 59 percent showing, compared with 40 percent for John Kerry. Cazayoux, with the help of union members, defied expectations and defeated Republican Woody Jenkins 49 percent to 46 percent on Saturday.
