N.H. Workers Buoyed by Today’s Victory
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AFL-CIO communications staffer Nora Frederickson sends us this report.
Workers and union leaders in New Hampshire were ecstatic that months of hard work in New Hampshire paid off today when the state House failed to override Gov. John Lynch’s (D) veto of a so-called right to work bill. Nearly 100 teachers, firefighters, postal workers and others showed up to ask their legislators to support the veto during the high-stakes session day and urged lawmakers to withstand pressure from Republican presidential candidates Jon Huntsman and Rick Perry as well as a rowdy group of Americans for Prosperity volunteers bused into New Hampshire for the day.
“I was confident that the reps on our side would be there, but it was still really nerve-wracking in the House,” said Felicia Augevich, a Fairpoint employee and member of Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 1400 who helped monitor the session at the Legislature today.
I’m really proud of how everyone came together—Democrats and Republicans, private-sector and public-sector workers. We’re hoping that the victory today will send a positive message to the public, to the middle class, and to all of New Hampshire that collective bargaining really is what guarantees good wages and benefits for Americans. We’ve had one victory, but we still have a lot ahead of us.
America the Vulnerable
The following is by John August, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions. Read the full version of his column is at L&M Partnership.
The U.S. Census Bureau released new measures of poverty in November. According to the New York Times, “All told 100 million people – one in three Americans – either live in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it.”
Or put another way:
“They drive cars, but seldom new ones. They earn paychecks, but not big ones. Many own homes. Most pay taxes. Half are married, and nearly half live in the suburbs. None are poor, but many describe themselves as just scrapping by.” (New York Times, November 19, 2011).
The new approach taken by the U.S. Census Bureau gives us a much more Read the rest of this entry »
New Census Data Show Many in Middle Class Are ‘Near Poor’
When the U.S. Census Bureau retooled its formula for determining the number of poor people living in the United States, the number the bureau estimated to be living in poverty shot up from 46.1 million to 49.1 million. Now that reformulation is shining a light on the vast numbers of people who appear to be middle class but who actually fall into a category called the “near poor.”
The new numbers reveal a grim portrait of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, often without access to health care, many behind the middle-class exterior of a suburban home. According to the new data, some 51 million Americans receive incomes that are just 50 percent higher than the official poverty line—a figure that is 76 percent higher than the previous measure, according to The New York Times, which reports:
House Resolution Honors Unions’ Role in Building Middle Class
The nation’s labor unions play a vital role in “ensuring a strong middle class,” says a resolution honoring the labor movement, introduced in the House this week by Rep. Donald Payne (D-N.J.).
The resolution recognizes the importance of unions in building and maintaining a middle class:
by advocating for more equitable wages, humane work conditions, improved benefits…[and] unions make the middle class strong by ensuring workers have a voice in both the market and in the nation’s democracy.
Payne, who held several unionized jobs before being elected to Congress in 1988, says:
Thousands of Ohioans Mobilize to Urge ‘NO’ Vote on Issue 2
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AFL-CIO Field Communications Coordinator Andrew Richards sends us the latest from Ohio.
Thousands of Ohio working families went door to door canvassing across the state over the weekend to get out the vote against Issue 2/S.B. 5. With a little more than two weeks left until Election Day, Nov. 8, Ohioans are working furiously to talk with as many Ohioans about how Issue 2/S.B. 5 is unsafe, unfair and has hurt our communities because it takes away the ability of public employees to collectively bargain for a middle-class life. In Cincinnati, Ohio Federation of Teachers/AFT President Sue Taylor joined workers and community members to kick off a get-out-the-vote event before working families fanned out across the area to knock on doors.
(If you’re in Ohio, pledge to vote “NO” on Issue 2 and vote early. Click here.)
‘Union Apprenticeship Set Me on the Right Path’
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Cory McCray, an IBEW Local 24 member and founder of the Metro Baltimore Council AFL-CIO Young Trade Unionists, describes how his IBEW apprenticeship helped ensure he entered adulthood with a firm footing in the middle class. In the video here (on the left), McCray elaborates on his experience.
As I anticipate my 29th birthday, I realize how one decade can drastically change a person’s life. I find it impossible not to give thanks to God for providing me with a family, community and, most of all, the Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 24, for placing direction in my path.
As I reminisce about my trials and tribulations as a young adult, I pay homage to those who helped me overcome the self-inflicting wounds that we call experience. Those experiences are what play a big part in my decision making skills today, and the IBEW Local 24 was able to give me a clear foundation and structure to move in the right direction.
The IBEW offered a five-year apprenticeship program. My class went to school one day Read the rest of this entry »
Ohio Firefighters, Working Families Rally to Vote ‘NO’ on Issue 2
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Deborah Dion with the Ohio AFL-CIO field program sends us this.
More than 250 firefighters and working families rallied for an early vote in Mansfield, Ohio, to defeat Issue 2. Voting “NO” on Issue 2 would repeal S.B. 5, passed earlier this year, that gutted collective bargaining rights for public employees. Working families gathered at the historic Mansfield Fire Museum, which celebrates firefighter history, heritage and the first responders that keep the community safe. Immediately following the rally, a caravan of a dozen jeeps carried 85 firefighters to the Richland County Board of Elections where they cast their vote against Issue 2/S.B. 5.
Click here for more photos from the event.
Speaking at the rally, Dan Crow, president of Fire Fighters (IAFF) Local 266 and an active firefighter with the City of Mansfield, said: Read the rest of this entry »
Long Island Working Families Battle Attack on Middle Class
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The attacks on the middle class and the ability of public employees to bargain collectively are spreading from Wisconsin and Ohio to Long Island’s Nassau County, where a proposed bill would gives the county executive the right to unilaterally open contracts and decide what provisions the executive wants to retain, change or eliminate.
Jerry Laricchiuta, president of the Civil and State Employees Association (CSEA) Local 830 in Nassau County, puts the issue bluntly in the video here.
We’re not only defending our rights here in Nassau County, we’re defending the sanctity of the cotnract which has ripple effects across the country.
Or as Suzanne Tirino, president of the Crossing Guard Unit, CSEA Local 830, says:
To open our contracts is unfair, it’s unconstitutional. If our contracts are opened, what do we believe in after that?
Cornell Study Shows Partnerships Between Employers, Labor and Community Groups Work
A new study suggests one path to helping people struggling in today’s economy find their way into the middle class, via Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) for large-scale construction projects. Among the most successful PLAs, the Cornell University study found, are those that incorporate Community Workforce Agreements born of partnerships between community organizations, unions and employers. Community workforce provisions require the hiring of local residents on construction projects, and often target specific populations, including low-income people, women and veterans.
The best of these programs, according to the report, incorporate paid apprenticeships for those who have never worked before in the building trades, which add the longer-term bonus of helping to create a skilled workforce in a given community.
Among the report’s key findings, according to a summary from American Rights at Work:
As Go Unions, So Goes the Middle Class
This is a cross-post from the Campaign for American Progress. David Madland and Nick Bunker parse the latest figures to show states with weak unions also share another trait—a weak middle class.
New state income data released yesterday by the U.S. Census Bureau shows the importance of unions to boosting incomes for all middle-class households—union and nonunion alike. The 2010 income data makes it clear that strong unions are a critical factor in creating a middle-class society. Restoring the strength of unions would go a long way toward rebuilding the middle class.
The states with the lowest percentage of workers in unions—North Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Oklahoma and Texas—all have relatively weak middle classes. In each of these states, the share of income going to the middle class (the middle 60 percent of the population by income) is below the national average, according to Census Bureau figures.
