American Rights at Work Honors Sweeney, Employee Free Choice Champions
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AFL-CIO President Emeritus John Sweeney received the top honor at last night’s 5th annual American Rights at Work Eleanor Roosevelt Awards for his long-term dedication on behalf of workers’ freedom to form unions.
Business Leaders for a Fair Economy and “West Wing” actor Richard Schiff also were recognized at last night’s event in Washington, D.C., where hundreds of labor activists and our allies gathered to celebrate their outstanding leadership.
Sweeney credited the union members, activists and advocacy groups who make up the coalition for making real progress on the Employee Free Choice Act:
You are the front-line fighters for social and economic justice, working towards a better future for America’s working families.
Speakers noted the tough fight ahead for passage of the bill but said we are closer than ever to passing the Employee Free Choice Act and making sure that the freedom to form a union and bargain for a better life is a reality.
Canada’s Experts Skewer Shoddy Study on Employee Free Choice
Opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act often claim the legislation would hurt employment. They base that falsehood on a study paid for by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its cronies, which purports to examine the effects of majority sign-up on the labor market in Canada.
Now, a devastating new critique shows the bought-and-paid-for “study,” by consultant Anne Layne-Farrar, is “misleading and poorly supported”—and that’s the nicest thing they could find to say. Just Labour, the Canadian labor-studies journal, features a series of articles on the Layne-Farrar piece by the experts who best know Canada’s labor market.
Among them, Noreen Pupo, director of the Center for Research on Work and Society at York University, says:
We refute efforts by business lobbyists opposing the [Employee Free Choice] Act to manipulate Canadian data and experience for purposes of defeating any strengthening of collective bargaining systems in the U.S. The vested interest of these business lobbyists in the continued erosion of collective bargaining in America has led them to misrepresent the Canadian experience.
Baseball Stars Knock It Out of the Park for Employee Free Choice
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Just in time for the World Series, 12 members of the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) have added their names to the broad coalition in support of the Employee Free Choice Act.
The players have signed a statement and appeared in print ads in Washington, D.C., papers yesterday. World Series participants Jimmy Rollins, Shane Victorino and Mark Teixeira took part. They were joined by Heath Bell, Dave Bush, LaTroy Hawkins, Torii Hunter, John Lannan, Andrew Miller, J.J. Putz, Justin Verlander and Adam Wainwright.
In a joint statement, these players say:
All Americans should have the same opportunity we’ve had—to be able to join a union without being fired and to negotiate with their employers without being penalized. Today, our country is facing some tough times. Health care costs are skyrocketing. Families are losing homes. Savings and retirement income are disappearing overnight.
Shuler in Oregon: The Sharks We Defeated Are Still Circling
At the Oregon AFL-CIO convention, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler, who got her start organizing in Oregon, spoke yesterday to hundreds of delegates from across the state and encouraged them to start now on educating and mobilizing union members. Shuler told delegates:
Last year, you helped transform our country. And everything you did in 2008, we must do from now to 2010—and here’s why. The sharks you defeated last November are still circling out there. They’ve never given up. They’re just as vicious now, and they want to destroy everything you won. Don’t let them do it.
You have a big job next year: electing a governor who’s pro-working family, pro-union, pro-us; making sure we re-elect the representatives who stand up for what’s right; and beating back the two initiatives that our right-wing pals have dreamed up for 2010….So it’s not too early to get ready.
Traub: Workers Need Employee Free Choice Now More Than Ever
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Amy Traub, research director at the Drum Major Institute, has a great piece on the economic crisis and why we need the Employee Free Choice Act.
Traub says the nation’s economic crisis is making workers feel powerless on the job—more willing to accept poor treatment, long hours and most crippling for the economy, cuts in wages and benefits.
What they need, she says, is the freedom to form a union and bargain so they no longer end up bearing all the pain from the economic crisis. Traub writes:
“Productivity is soaring as fewer workers get more work done. But working people are not seeing many of the benefits. And that’s bad news for the economy as a whole. Consumers aren’t likely to resume spending when wages are down, especially without the ability they once had to borrow against high home values. It’s a recipe for a vicious economic cycle.
“The way out should include additional public stimulus, but it must also involve shifting more power to employees—enough to push back and stop making America’s working families the single easiest target for every negative economic development.”
Big Corporate Dollars Fund Shoddy Studies
With the insurance industry releasing a “study” today that uses dubious numbers to fight health care reform, it’s useful to remember that the tactic of relying on fake numbers is nothing new to corporate lobbies.
Case in point: a study by Anne Layne-Farrar, paid for by business interests that use it as a cudgel against the Employee Free Choice Act. Layne-Farrar’s study contended that passing the Employee Free Choice Act would cost the U.S. economy hundreds of thousands of jobs—a figure without factual grounding but useful to those interested in preventing workers from forming a union and bargaining for a better life.
At In These Times, Art Levine takes a close look at Layne-Farrar and other scholars whose work do not reflect reality, but instead pushes the anti-worker agenda of groups—like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—who paid for the study. These groups are fighting to protect the status quo for CEOs, not jobs for workers.
Trumka to UMWA: Keep Fighting
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka traveled to West Virginia yesterday to celebrate a new term for Mine Workers (UMWA) President Cecil Roberts and Secretary-Treasurer Daniel Kane and to recognize the contributions of the union where he got his start.
Trumka talked about the crippling effects of the economic crisis and the need for a strong, energetic union movement to turn it around not just for individual workers and their families, but for the whole country.
Reaching back through the long history of the UMWA and the union movement, Trumka said the power of workers, uniting together, helped pull the country out of the 1930s Depression. With unemployment at a 26-year high and housing and health care increasingly hard for families to afford, we need that spirit now, Trumka said:
There’s only one way working people have ever won in the past; and only one way we ever will win in the future. And, sisters and brothers, it’s not by begging for it. It’s not by pleading for it. And it’s not even by praying for it. It’s by standing up and fighting for it.
Why We Fight for Employee Free Choice
Union members across the country are fighting to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, to restore workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life. We know how union membership has improved our lives and communities—and we want to help other workers have the same options. Check out the videos here in which two union members describe how their experiences having a union at work inspired them to get involved in the Employee Free Choice Act campaign.
Justin Nickels, a member of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 204 in Arkansas, talks about what having a union has meant to him in workplace safety and dignity on the job:
Read the rest of this entry »
Acuff: We Can’t Wait for Change—We Have to Make It Happen
America is ready for change—but the interests that benefit from the status quo are fighting with all of their ample resources to prevent the change we demanded, fought for and voted for in 2008. The closer we get to the policies working families need, the more these interests are threatened—and the harder we need to fight.
At Huffington Post, the AFL-CIO’s Stewart Acuff looks at the opportunities and challenges of this unique moment, and why we need to step up and be “warriors for justice”:
Those who’ve prosecuted and benefited from the 30-year financial assault on America’s working families refuse to let go, to give up what they’ve come to see as theirs—the insurance companies, the union busters, the ABC, the Comcasts, the Wal-Marts, Wall St., and manipulators of our finances, the Radical Rightwing, including Cheney and Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove and Dick Armey and the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute.
Union-Busting Hotel Ordered to Rehire Fired Workers, Return to Bargaining
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Last week in Hawaii, a federal judge ordered the Pacific Beach Hotel to rehire at least seven workers fired during contract negotiations. The illegal firings were part of 15 findings of unfair labor practices by the hotel. Hotel management’s behavior here is another sign that we need to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, to restore the freedom to bargain to all workers.
Pacific Beach workers voted more than four years ago to form a union with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 142, but hotel management used the all-too-common tactics of delay and worker intimidation, in the process denying employees the freedom to bargain for a contract. The findings of abuses by hotel management by the federal court include interrogation of employees about union support, threats of job loss or punishments for union support and targeting of contract negotiators for firing.
