Unions Take Up White House $4 Billion ‘Better Buildings Challenge’
At a White House event today featuring President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton, AFT President Randi Weingarten represented labor leaders in joining university presidents and corporate executives in support of the presidential Better Buildings Challenge initiative.
President Obama announced that nearly $4 billion of investments have been committed already, including $2 billion by workers’ pension funds, CEOs, mayors and university presidents for energy-saving upgrades. The labor movement committed to work to invest $150 million in energy-efficient retrofit projects in the coming months.
The goal of the initiative, which builds on work begun by the AFL-CIO earlier this year with the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), is to spur job creation by harnessing private sector investment in energy upgrades in commercial and industrial buildings.
Working with the AFT, a broad coalition of public-sector unions, and the Read the rest of this entry »
Union/Toys for Tots Partnership Kicks off Annual Drive
The Helmets to Hardhats program, the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD) and the AFL-CIO today launched the fourth year of their partnership with the Toys for Tots program sponsored by the United States Marine Corps Reserves.
In 2010, this partnership generated more than $25,000 in contributions to the Toys for Tots program, and it is now listed on the national Toys for Tots Foundation website as an official One Star Partner.
The drive runs through Dec. 15 and donation boxes have been placed in the lobby of the AFL-CIO and BCTD in the Washington, D.C. area.
Monetary donations can be made via checks made out to: DC Toys for Tots. Checks can be mailed to: Helmets to Hardhats; 815 16th Street, NW, 6th Floor, Attn: Lisa Ford. The program is also accepting monetary donations via PayPal on the Helmets to Hardhats website here.
Study Finds Project Labor Agreements Open Doors to Middle Class Jobs
Project labor agreements offer a pathway to the middle class by providing job opportunities to low-income communities, minorities, veterans and others, according to a new study by Cornell University’s Industrial and Labor Relations School (ILR).
The study, Community Workforce Provisions in Project Labor Agreements: A Tool for Building Middle-Class Careers, examined 185 project labor agreements around the country. It found that 97 percent contained community workforce provisions that are designed to open job opportunity doors and career training for residents in the communities where the construction projects take place.
Project labor agreements are pre-hire agreements between labor and management that require Read the rest of this entry »
Republicans Use ‘Extortion Tactics’ to Shut Down FAA
The Republican shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has thrown 4,000 FAA employees out of work, and some 70,000 construction workers employed on airport improvement projects can’t go to work because Republicans have blocked funding for the agency and the projects.
In a letter to House and Senate Republican leaders, Mark Ayers, president of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD), says he is outraged by the “extortion tactics” and “political brinkmanship” that are creating even more “hardship for building and construction trades families” in an industry already suffering high unemployment.
Our members expect their elected leaders to resolve their differences without resorting to ultimatums. Once again, our members are frustrated that an extreme minority has succeeded temporarily by using extortion tactics to undermine the jobs of my members.
Trumka: Building ‘Real’ Things—Not Financial Fantasies—Creates Jobs
America’s working families “need an economy that’s based on building—not bubbles,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told the 3,000 union activists and leaders at the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department’s (BCTD‘s) legislative conference this morning.
Trumka, speaking as the conference wrapped up its third and final day in Washington, D.C., said that while President Obama’s economic recovery program has created or saved 2 million jobs and put a dent in the nation’s hole in our labor market, “It’s not enough.”
As the economy tanked during the recession that started in 2007 under George W. Bush’s watch, construction work on power plants, office buildings and factories stopped and are still stalled. Trumka said the fingerprints of Wall Street’s greed are all over the economic crime scene.
For eight years or more, people on Wall Street who couldn’t or wouldn’t tell you what they did all day if their lives depended on it made their livings destroying other people’s lives and livelihoods. They gambled our money on phony financial instruments like subprime mortgages and derivatives and choked off the credit the construction industry depended on.
Biden: Growing Construction Jobs Grows the Middle Class
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Pointing to an unemployment rate—nearly 25 percent—for construction workers that is “unacceptably high,” Vice President Joe Biden yesterday told some 3,000 delegates to the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD) legislative conference:
We are waging a way to get you back where you belong, not just for your sake but for the sake of the middle class, because if you do not grow, the middle class will not grow, and without a growing middle class our ability to lead to the 21st century is diminished.
BCTD President Mark Ayers opened the three-day Washington, D.C., conference for union activists and leaders saying, “Putting our members back to work is our number one priority.” He also slammed
the poisonous and reprehensible behaviors of Wall Street and eight years of an administration that had hopes of eradicating unions. Together they have torn a gaping hole in the financial fabric of our nation and our very existence as the stalwarts of the middle class.
Fast-Acting IUPAT Member Rescues Five from IRS Plane Crash Attack
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Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) member Robin De Haven is being hailed as hero for his role in rescuing five people from the blazing Austin, Texas, building where a man with a vendetta against the Internal Revenue Service crashed his fuel-laden plane Thursday.
De Haven was on his way to work when he saw the single-engine plane, which witnesses say was at full throttle, heading toward the building. The IUPAT Local 1778 member told Fox News that when he looked again and saw black smoke pouring from the second story:
I immediately drove my truck over there, got the ladder off, went up to the side of the building and I saw people up on the second floor with their heads out the window for air because the room was filled with smoke.
The 26-year-old Iraq war veteran positioned the 17-foot ladder to reach as far as it could to the second floor. But when the people in the building were unable to secure the ladder so they could safely descend, De Haven scrambled up to them.
I climbed inside the broken-out window into the building with them. My ladder slipped a little bit actually.
Create Jobs, Rebuild Infrastructure with National Infrastructure Bank
A broad coalition of union, business, government and academic leaders has called for creation of a National Infrastructure Bank (NIB) that not only would propel the rebuilding of the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, but also would be a major job-creating engine.
At a Capitol Hill press conference this week, Mark Ayers, president of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD), told reporters:
History has shown that when our nation invests in its core infrastructure needs, economic progress inevitably follows. This is important to remember as we grapple to address the twin problems of economic growth and job creation.
Building Trades Backs Local Hire Drive for Tennessee VW Plant
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Volkswagen is building a $1 billion auto plant near Chattanooga, Tenn., after being lured there with a $565 million incentive package of taxpayer money. But, according to grassroots group “Volunteers for Local Hire,” many of the jobs building the facility are going to out-of-state and even out-of-country workers.
Last weekend, the group, along with members of unions from the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD), held protests at 35 VW dealerships in 19 states, in support of the Tennessee group’s drive to win a “local hire” agreement with VW to ensure state contractors and workers have a fair share of the new work.
BCTD President Mark H. Ayers says protests are “not a union vs. non-union issue,” but that the broad support for the Tennessee workers shows people are “getting fed up with seeing their own tax dollars squandered on corporate welfare that doesn’t benefit them.”
Project Labor Agreements Work for Workers and Communities
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For more than 70 years, project labor agreements (PLAs) benefited communities, employers and workers by ensuring fair wages and benefits and on-time completion of local, state and federal construction projects. PLAs, also known as Community Workforce Agreements, generally set wages and establish work rules and methods of settling grievances on large multi-contractor construction projects
But in one of his first acts as president, George W. Bush issued an executive order in 2001 banning the use of PLAs on federal projects.
This past February, President Barack Obama reversed the Bush order and restored the use of PLAs. His action sent anti-worker construction groups and companies into a tizzy, with the latest battle centering on a $30 million Job Corps Center in Manchester, N.H.
