Jobs Don’t Live Here Anymore
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The unemployment data is due tomorrow, and it’s likely to be bad, with an expected 300,000 to 320,000 jobs lost in July, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and others. That’s a big problem. But unfortunately, when it comes to getting the nation back to work, tomorrow’s unemployment rate isn’t the biggest problem we face.
What’s really troubling is long-term unemployment.
EPI economists see the economic stimulus as alleviating the jobs crisis created under Bush. In fact, the economic recovery program already has saved or created some 750,000 jobs. Plus, says John Irons, EPI director of research and policy, the gross domestic product (GDP) report last week showing GDP shrunk far less in the second quarter of this year (-1 percent) than the first quarter (-6.4 percent). That means
we’re beginning to see the fingerprints of the economic recovery package.
How to Create American-Made Clean Energy
Rapid growth in green jobs, especially those that create clean and efficient energy, offers huge opportunities to revive American manufacturing and rebuild the nation’s economy. But there’s a hitch: Most of the components for clean energy are manufactured overseas. The United States ranks fifth among countries that manufacture solar components, even though the solar cell originated in America. The fact that other countries are prepared to deliver these products means that new legislation creating demand for renewable energy systems and energy efficiency services actually could create new jobs overseas, even though we have a robust manufacturing infrastructure.
The Apollo Alliance, a coalition of business, labor, environmental and community leaders working to create a clean energy revolution in America, has developed Make It In America: the Apollo Green Manufacturing Action Plan (GreenMAP), a series of policy recommendations aimed at revitalizing America’s manufacturing sector by investing significant federal funding in the domestic manufacture of clean energy components.
Solis Meets Workers of Future
Union workers will play a key role in rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure and revitalizing the economy. Last week, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis saw firsthand how unions are preparing workers to meet the needs of the country now and in the future.
After meeting with the AFL-CIO Executive Council in Miami, Solis toured the Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 349 training center where she met and talked with young workers who are learning the skills that will prepare them for better jobs with a decent wage and benefits. IBEW taped the visit for its news broadcast.
AFL-CIO Urges Stricter Bank Bailout Process, Hails NEA Affiliations
The AFL-CIO Executive Council wrapped up its winter meeting in Miami today, calling for stricter regulation and oversight of the financial industry, urging President Obama to ensure that taxpayers get “fair value” for any additional funds used to bail out the nation’s banks, authorizing continuation of discussions on unifying the labor movement and urging adoption of a global charter of rights for working women.
Also today, the AFL-CIO and the National Education Association (NEA) announced that three more NEA local chapters, with more than 3,000 members, have affiliated with the AFL-CIO under the Solidarity Partnership program. The program is supported by AFT, a long-time AFL-CIO affiliate.
Says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney:
These affiliations show that we are unified and committed to fighting for quality education in our nation’s classrooms.
Biden to AFL-CIO: Employee Free Choice Act Key to Rebuilding Middle Class
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Vice President Joe Biden told the AFL-CIO Executive Council today that returning our economy to health means restoring the basic right to join a union and bargain collectively. And the way to do that is by passing the Employee Free Choice Act.
He quoted President Obama saying: ‘”I don’t buy the argument that providing workers with collective bargaining rights somehow weakens the economy or worsens the business environment.”
If you’ve got workers who have a decent pay and benefits, they also are customers for your business. So let me add to that and say that I have a simple, basic belief, one that we’re going to work hard to put into action: If a union is what you want, a union you’re entitled to have.
Colombian Workers’ Rights Activist Nominated for Meany-Kirkland Award
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Seven years ago, Colombian union leader Jorge Dario Hoyos was assassinated. But his death did not silence his family’s search for justice. Today, his daughter, Yessika, is following in her father’s steps, risking her life in pursuit of workers’ rights and challenging the power of corporations and a government that does little to protect the rights and lives of workers.
Today, the AFL-CIO Executive Council, meeting in Miami, nominated Yessika Hoyos for the 2008 George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award. Click here to read the resolution.
Hoyos, a lawyer, has been fighting tirelessly to bring her father’s killers to justice and to end the cycle of violence in her native land. Even though the low-level trigger men responsible for her father’s death have been prosecuted, the masterminds who ordered Dario Hoyos’ death have not been found—an all-too-common scenario in the deadliest country in the world for union members.
The Colombian government has not vigorously investigated or prosecuted the killing of trade union members. At the current pace of investigations and trials, it would take 37 years to prosecute the backlog of cases. And the caseload is growing—the rate of killings, which had fallen for a few years, jumped sharply last year by 25 percent, says José Luciano Sanin, director of Escuela Nacional Sindical (National Union School), a leading Colombian think tank.
Performers Call for Fairness in Radio
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Frank Sinatra couldn’t get them. Dionne Warwick hasn’t gotten them in nearly 50 years, and Sheryl Crow and Herbie Hancock still can’t get them. For more than four decades, musicians and singers have been trying to get royalties, also known as performance rights, for music their fans listen to every day on the radio.
Here’s the deal. If music you perform is played on satellite radio, streamed on the Internet or piped in through cable TV music channels, you get paid a royalty. But due to a loophole in copyright law, if the music is played on FM or AM radio, only the composer gets a royalty and the performer gets nothing. The United States is one of only a few countries that do not provide fair performance rights on radio. The others include Qatar, Iraq, Iran, North Korea and China.
Actually, U.S. performers get stiffed from royalties twice. Because U.S. radio stations do not pay a performance royalty for foreign artists either, American artists are not compensated when their music is played on stations around the world.
Yesterday, more than 90 members of the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada (AFM) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) from across the country met with members of Congress from their home states to call for full performance rights in sound recordings broadcast over AM/FM radio. They asked lawmakers to support the Performance Rights Act (H.R. 848 and S.379), which if enacted would bring the United States in line with almost every other nation in the world.
In One Out of Four Union Campaigns, a Worker Will Be Illegally Fired
Every time workers try to exercise their freedom to form a union, there’s a better than one-in-four chance that a worker will be illegally fired as a result. That’s the finding of a new study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), and it’s a strong argument for passing the Employee Free Choice Act and restoring the freedom to form unions and bargain.
As part of the AFL-CIO Executive Council, which is meeting in Miami this week, one of the study’s authors, economist John Schmitt, is holding a conference call to discuss the findings in the report and the critical need for labor laws that protect workers. Schmitt is being joined by workers who have been fired for trying to form a union.
In a strong statement delivered via video last night, Obama thanked the AFL-CIO for advocating on behalf of working people and included the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act among his priorities.
AFL-CIO Executive Council: Economic Recovery Package Good First Step
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| IBEW President Ed Hill, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and AFL-CIO President John Sweeney meet with workers at an IBEW training facility in Miami. | |
In the AFL-CIO Executive Council’s first full day of meetings in Miami, union leaders today addressed vital aspects of reviving the nation’s economy for working families, including growing good jobs, reforming health care, strengthening Social Security and revising the nation’s trade practices, especially with China.
The economic recovery package is a good start to turning around America and putting workers back on the job, say union leaders, who emphasized that rebuilding the nation’s major economic engine—manufacturing—will require strong compliance with the Buy American provisions in the package.
The council also called for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act to help boost the economy by restoring workers freedom to form unions and bargain for better wages and benefits.
Meeting at the union hall of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 349, the Executive Council began the day with a video address from President Obama. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis—who on Monday night joined the council and 700 community members in a forum—spoke with the council during the morning session today.
Solis Meets with Workers in First Public Appearance
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In her first public appearance after being confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis vowed to fully enforce the laws that protect workers–unlike her predecessor who declared war on working people for eight years. Solis, who was one of the first supporters in Congress for the Employee Free Choice Act, also said she would work to pass and then enforce the legislation if it becomes law. Solis, whose parents both belonged to unions, spoke at a community forum at a local church in Miami’s inner city last night on the eve of the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting.
Saying “there’s a new sheriff in town,” Solis told 700 union and community activists in the audience that one of the Obama administration’s top priorities is to provide protection for workers in the workplace. Solis added that she would work with employers to help workers get family-supporting jobs.
If you take care of an employee, that employee will produce. Productivity by our workforce, especially union members, has increased. But we don’t see the same value in terms of their wages going up. So there has to be some morality placed there.
