Special Forum Nov. 30 Examines Attacks on NLRB, Workers’ Rights
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The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)—the key agency in ensuring workers’ rights—is facing an unprecedented assault from partisan politicians and the 1 percent.
On Wednesday from 9:30 a.m. to 11 a.m, panelists at a special forum at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., will look at how workers can challenge the attacks and highlight how this ongoing assault against the NLRB fits into the larger corporate-backed political agenda to degrade workers’ rights on the job, attack collective bargaining and gut middle-class jobs.
Even in Hard Times, Boosting Minimum Wage Makes Sense
A handful of states this year have introduced bills to raise their minimum wage. That’s generated the usual cries from business groups and the regular gang of lawmakers who fight darn near every piece of pro-worker legislation that comes along.
OMG! Raising the minimum wage in the middle of an economic crisis with more than 9 percent unemployment will kill jobs. Disaster!
Well, as usual they are wrong. Raising the minimum wage not only won’t cause job loss, but it’s good for the economy, say David Madland and Nick Bunker at the American Worker Project. The federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour but states can and do establish higher rates.
Rebuilding Economy Requires New Policies, Focus on Manufacturing
The United States can lead the global economy of the future but it will require a combination of government policies that level the playing field and encourage manufacturing and innovation and corporations willing to make changes in the way they do business, three experts said today.
By moving our manufacturing overseas in search of short-term profits, we are losing our edge in innovation, Ron Bloom, assistant to President Obama for manufacturing policy, said today. A strong manufacturing base is essential to test and improve those new ideas, he said.
Chandra Brown, president of United Streetcar, the nation’s only streetcar manufacturer, agreed with Bloom, saying her company makes sure the engineers and designers work closely with the workers on the floor to get new ideas perfected quickly. But you can’t do that, she said, when the production floor is overseas and the designers are here.
Republican ‘Pledge’ Would Make Life Worse for People of Color
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If people of color needed a reason to vote in the November election, the Republican Party gave them a handful in its “Pledge to America.”
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka points out that the America the Republicans envision doesn’t look like the real America, with barely 2 percent of the images in the “Pledge to America” document depicting people of color. In the real America, the Census Bureau reported people of color made up 34 percent of the population last year. Says Trumka:
I haven’t seen such a false image of who America really is since 1950s-era television, back when the Beaver seemed to live on a planet with no people of color whatsoever.
Trumka: Unions Key to Creating New Middle Class
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As the nation works to recover from recession and move into the decades to come, will we simply re-create the old economy or we will build a healthy new economy for the 21st century? And what role will the union movement have in answering that question? These issues were the subjects of a conversation with AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka this morning.
In an address sponsored by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Trumka discussed health care, the Employee Free Choice Act, economic recovery and the future of unions. (You can read Trumka’s speech here.)
We’re not going to get ahead by mimicking the mistakes of the past and re-creating the cycles of debt bubbles and busts, Trumka said, but by giving workers the chance to earn their way into the middle class.
Report: Higher Union Membership = Higher Wages = Better Economy
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Workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain will be critical to rebuilding a strong economy, says a new report released today that examines the effect of unions on wages and state economies.
Unions Are Good for the American Economy, written by researchers Karla Walter and David Madland for the Center for American Progress Action Fund, says that increasing union rates would put more money in workers’ pockets, reversing the sharp growth in income inequality that has undermined our economy. In fact, if union membership was as high as it was in 1983, Walter and Madland suggest, employees would earn an estimated $49 billion more in wages and salaries.
The report also provides a state-by-state analysis of increased union membership on wages. An increase in the rate of union membership of just 5 percent would increase total wages by $176 million in Nebraska, $503 million in Wisconsin and $852 million in Pennsylvania.
These wages would be spread across the entire labor market.
