Richard Trumka Live on PayWatch
The 2010 AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch highlights six Wall Street corporations using taxpayer money for big bonuses and lobbying and updates info on CEO pay data. We’re tweeting AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka live as he discusses the PayWatch info and talks about the union movement’s campaign to hold Wall Street accountable.
Thousands Tell Big Insurance: Blocking Health Care Reform Is a Crime
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| AFSCME members declaring the Ritz-Carlton a crime scene. |
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| AFSCME President Gerald McEntee to Congress: “You better take our side before we arrest you!” |
Thousands of union members, community activists, religious leaders and others turned out in Washington, D.C., today to confront Big Insurance and demand insurance companies stop plotting to kill health care reform even as Congress debates bills to reform the nation’s broken health care system.
The boisterous, energetic, diverse crowd marched from the AFL-CIO and AFSCME buildings and DuPont Circle to the sound of beating drums and shouted slogans like, “Blocking health care is a crime” and “Health care can’t wait.” The crowd was so large, it completely encircled the block-long Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington, D.C., where the front group for the nation’s biggest insurance companies, the America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) is meeting. Health Care for America NOW (HCAN) sponsored the rally and march. We live-tweeted the event here.
Nicole Varma from Arlington, Va., who has no health care insurance because she is unemployed was among those taking part in the rally.
I am unable to get my medications because I can’t afford them. We need to send a message to the insurance companies that they definitely need to listen to the people. We don’t want insurance abuses. We want real health care reform.
Record Profits Don’t Stop Health Insurer’s Record Rate Hikes
There’s a theory that trends happen first in California before spreading to the rest of the nation. If that’s true in health insurance, we’re all in deep trouble.
Last week, Anthem Blue Cross–whose parent company WellPoint posted a record $4.7 billion profit in 2009–announced it was gouging even more money from its 800,000 California customers by raising premiums as much as 39 percent.
Deborah Burger, RN, and co-president of the National Nurse United (NNU), says Anthem Blue Cross’s “disgraceful behavior may be particularly offensive,”
but it is not out of character for an industry engages systemically in price gouging and denial of care.
Trumka: Obama Absolutely Right to Make Jobs Top Priority
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Obama’s call tonight to make jobs his No. 1 priority in his State of the Union message is the right message, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. As Obama said tonight:
Jobs must be our number one focus in 2010, and that is why I am calling for a new jobs bill tonight.
Obama called for small business tax breaks to encourage hiring and infrastructure spending. He urged passage of tax incentives for larger business to keep and create jobs in the United States, and an end to tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. He also proposed taking $30 billion of the money Wall Street banks have repaid and use it to help community banks give small businesses the credit they need to stay afloat—a proposal similar to one in our AFL-CIO jobs initiative.
As Trumka said:
We must act on a scale that will be meaningful: We need more than 10 million jobs just to get out of the hole we’re in. We want health care fixed. We want our leaders to break the stranglehold of Wall Street and the big banks and make them pay to repair the economic damage they created.
Fix Health Care Right—Don’t Tax Benefits
We’re continuing our campaign for real health care reform with a new AFL-CIO TV ad that sends a clear message: “Pass Health Care. Don’t Tax Health Benefits.” The ad, which started running in key markets around the country over the weekend, emphasizes that taxing benefits will lead companies to cut benefits and will shift cost burdens to families that can’t afford it. It urges Congress to pass health care reform all Americans can afford.
The Senate’s health care bill would set a tax on health plans worth more than $8,500 per year for individuals and $23,000 per year for families. For workers in high-risk occupations, for retirees 55 or older and for residents in the 17 highest-cost states, the bill would tax plans worth more than $9,850 for individuals and $26,000 for families.
This would amount to an enormous tax on workers’ health care benefits, one that would grow rapidly, as insurers increase premiums by an equivalent amount. It would shift health care costs onto the backs of workers—including many of the most vulnerable workers—without bringing down the cost of health care.
Screeners Closer to Long Overdue Bargaining Rights
Some 43,000 airport screeners at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) yesterday moved another step closer to winning “long overdue” collective bargaining rights and other workplace protections.
By a 19-10 party-line vote, the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee approved legislation (H.R. 1881) restoring the workers’ rights that the Bush administration stripped away in 2003. In addition, the bill grants the screeners—also known as Transportation Security Officers (TSOs)—and other TSA workers “whistle-blower” rights and the same civil service protections enjoyed by other federal workers.
Committee chairman Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) says the restoration of collective bargaining rights is “long overdue” and will help the agency
deal with the high attrition, low morale and severe workplace injury rates that have plagued the agency since its creation in 2001.
Pride At Work: We’ve Come a Long Way, We Still Have Further to Go
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As union members get ready for the 2009 AFL-CIO Convention, Pride At Work (PAW), an AFL-CIO constituency group, is among several union-related organizations meeting in Pittsburgh to plan for the future.
It’s the 10th anniversary for PAW as an official constituency group of the AFL-CIO. PAW focuses on the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) workers. Co-president Nancy Wohlforth said this morning that she’d never have believed how far the organization would come and how much they’d be able to accomplish—but that there are still many challenges ahead.
Wohlforth, who will step down this year as co-president, said PAW members have proven themselves a valuable asset in working family campaigns across the union movement and, in turn, they’ve been able to make great strides in educating and assisting unions about LGBT issues. Thanks to the efforts of PAW, unions across the country are making sure that contracts offer nondiscrimination provisions, as well as health and pension benefits for domestic partners. Unions also are stepping up to fight for equality not just in the workplace, but in state policy.
The Secret’s Over and Out: Bush Chemical Exposure Rule Killed
It’s no secret now. The Bush administration’s clandestine move to loosen the rules on how much toxin or dangerous chemicals to which workers can be exposed—and to make it more difficult to issue new worker protection rules—is now officially dead.
The U.S. Department of Labor announced this week that the proposed rule was unnecessary and withdrew it. The rule came to be known as the secret rule because of the Bush administration’s attempt to keep it off the public’s and media’s radar screen last year.
In January, as one of its first official acts, the Obama administration ordered work halted on the chemical exposure rule and other last-minute regulatory changes the Bush administration tried to ram through before leaving office.
Ground Zero Workers Still Suffer from Lung Problems
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A new study finds nearly one-quarter of a sample of firefighters and other first responders and construction workers exposed to the toxic mix of chemicals and debris at Ground Zero during 9/11 rescue and recovery operations continue to suffer from persistent lung problems.
The continuing study by the Mount Sinai Medical Center’s medical monitoring program examined the workers between 2004 and 2007, repeating exams conducted between the middle of 2002 and 2004. Slightly more than 24 percent had abnormal lung function and limited lung capacity, compared with 28 percent in the first study.
New Ad Refutes the Myths About Employee Free Choice
Today, American Rights at Work, the national workers’ advocacy group, launches a new ad campaign to cut through the dishonest spin about the Employee Free Choice Act, a vital bill to restore the freedom to form unions and bargain and make the economy work for everyone.
The broadcast and print ads, set to launch Sunday, will push back on a massive and misleading corporate campaign, in which anti-worker front groups are blanketing politicians, journalists and the public with falsehoods about the Employee Free Choice Act.
Noting the connection between corporate greed, the stagnation of workers’ benefits and wages and the economic crisis, the new ad exposes the corporate disinformation campaign for what it is: a desperate attempt to maintain control and prevent workers from having the freedom to bargain.
