Attacks on NLRB Cut Into Heart of Middle Class
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The unprecedented Republican and corporate attacks on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) are a direct attack on workers’ rights and an effort to put the nation’s labor laws “into cold storage,” Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) said during a special AFL-CIO forum today examining the assault on the NLRB and workers’ rights.
This is the right wing on steroids….They went to work immediately after the 2010 elections—not on jobs—but on taking rights away from American workers.
Since January, said Kimberly Freeman Brown, executive director of American Rights at Work, congressional Republicans have made nearly 50 separate assaults on the NLRB, from bills to gut its power and funding to hearings and subpoenas.
In fact later today, the House will vote on a bill that would deny workers the right to fair union elections by blocking the modest changes proposed by the NLRB earlier this year in the way union elections are conducted. As AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler told the audience: Read the rest of this entry »
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.
Harkin/DeFazio Robin Hood Tax Would Generate $350 Billion
If Congress passed the Robin Hood/financial speculation tax, it would raise more than $350 billion between January 2013 and 2021, according to an analysis released Monday by the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.
The bill, formally known as the Wall Street Trading and Speculators Tax Act, was introduced last week by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.). Says Harkin:
It is hard to argue with this substantial revenue—derived from a tax of $3 on $10,000 of Wall Street trading. Our country needs every dollar possible to invest in infrastructure, job creation, the education of our children and reducing the debt among other priorities. This commonsense tax provides a viable solution.
It is estimated that the Robin Hood tax combined with the projected savings of the drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan would hit the budget deficit Super Committee goal of $1.3 trillion in savings.
‘Robin Hood’ Tax Bill Introduced in Congress
The day before participants at demonstrations in Washington, D.C., Cannes, France, Los Angeles and San Francisco will call on Congress and global leaders to adopt a small “Robin Hood” tax (financial speculation tax) to create jobs, bills were introduced in the U.S. House and Senate to adopt such a tax.
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) introduced the Wall Street Trading and Speculators Tax Act that would assess a financial speculation tax of .03 percent. The European Commission is proposing .10 percent, on trading in stocks and bonds. In a statement this afternoon, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who is in Cannes for the G-20 summit of the world’s top economies, says:
In order to maximize revenue and minimize opportunities for tax arbitrage, Congress should pass a U.S. financial speculation tax in line with what has been proposed in Europe.
Sen. Harkin and Rep. DeFazio are showing real leadership in introducing this important legislation that would help the 99 percent. America’s most urgent economic challenge is the jobs crisis and we must invest money today to create jobs and rebuild our broken economy. In the medium to long term, that money will have to be repaid, and it is only fair to ask Wall Street to pay for rebuilding the economy it helped destroy.
Harkin: Republicans Fail Job Crisis Test
The only thing congressional Republicans have done about the nation’s job crisis is to make it worse by standing in the way of job creation and pushing a budget proposal—which Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) equates to ”applying leeches to a patient who needs a transfusion.”
In a column in the Des Moines Register, Harkin writes:
The Republican mantra is “government can’t create jobs.” Nonsense. Smart government can create jobs—and short-sighted government can destroy jobs. The brief shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration this summer put 70,000 private-sector construction employees out of work. Draconian cuts proposed by House Republicans to the new transportation bill would destroy an estimated 490,000 highway construction jobs and nearly 100,000 transit-related jobs.
He says Republicans are in a “mindless march to austerity,” by focusing on the budget deficit rather than the deficit that most Americans say must be closed—the jobs deficit. The Republican budget, authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), would put the nation on “a course of radical disinvestment and decline.”
Top Lawmakers Say Proposed NLRB Election Rule Ensures ‘Greater Fairness’
Workers deserve a “fair, clear system for protecting their rights and making themselves heard in union elections,” four top Democratic lawmakers said in a letter to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) strongly supporting the board’s proposed changes in the way elections to form unions are conducted.
Noting that the current election procedures are “outdated and contain unnecessary delays…that run anywhere from three and a half years to 13 years,” the lawmakers say:
The longer an election is delayed, the more likely it is that workers will face harassment and unlawful retaliation for exercising their rights….In today’s workplace one in five workers who exercise the right to organize is illegally fired. In that environment, workers stop trying to organize, leading to a country where tens of millions of Americans who want a union do not have one.
The four are Read the rest of this entry »
Paid Sick Leave Cuts Health Care Costs
If the nation’s workers had access to paid sick days—today, 44 million workers don’t—it would mean a dramatic drop in hospital emergency room visits and save about $1 billion a year in health care costs, according to a new study due to be released this week.
The report by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) says paid sick days are associated with better self-reported health, fewer delays in medical care and fewer emergency department visits for adults and their children. Says IWPR Research Director Robert Drago:
We have known for decades that individuals without health insurance are more likely to use costly emergency room services. This study establishes that, regardless of whether someone has health insurance, having the flexibility provided by paid sick days reduces use of emergency departments.
The report finds that workers with access to paid sick days have an easier time getting to a doctor during normal business hours to care for themselves or family members. Access to paid sick days can help to decrease the likelihood that a worker will put off needed care and increases rates of preventive care among workers and their children.
In other news on paid sick days, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler told a forum, sponsored by the National Partnership for Women and Families and the coalition Family Values @ Work, that the lack of paid sick leave disproportionately impacts low-income workers.
Proposed NLRB Rule Change Draws Wide Support
The National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB’s) modest, common-sense proposed rule to remove roadblocks for workers who want to vote on whether to form a union has drawn praise from working men and women, political leaders and activists around the country. Here’s a sample of the comments:
Electrical Workers (IBEW) President Edwin Hill:
By eliminating delays, the board is not only bringing some balance. It is also saving money for taxpayers who foot the bill because of unnecessary litigation.
Communications Workers of America (CWA) President Larry Cohen:
Workers at T-Mobile USA and nearly every other company know firsthand how U.S. corporations use delay to keep workers from making a fair choice about union representation. The changes proposed by the National Labor Relations Board are a first and modest step toward ending some of that delay.
Boeing Exec Says $3.7 Mil Not Enough
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Boeing Co. Executive Vice President and General Counsel Michael Luttig pulled in $3.7 million in compensation in 2009. That’s a whopping 34 percent increase from 2008—and it came during a major recession.
Meanwhile, as Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) pointed out during a hearing yesterday (see video) on the shrinking American middle class, Boeing’s workers have seen just a 3 percent increase in their average compensation over the past 20 years!
Harkin, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, wanted to know that if things were going so swimmingly for Boeing that Luttig could pocket a 34 percent pay hike,
Why shouldn’t employees have a share of that? I’m just asking about fairness for workers.
Luttig turned to the old let’s-duck-the-question-with-a-little-humor dodge. But his lame attempt at humor just showed how out of touch he is with the real-life, middle-class problem of stagnant wages.
Fair Pay Act Would Bring Equal Pay for Equal Work
Today, as equal rights advocates mark Equal Pay Day to remind the nation that women are paid just 80 cents for every dollar men earn, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) introduced the Fair Pay Act of 2011 that would ensure that employers provide equal pay for jobs that are equivalent in skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions.
Harkin says that discrimination accounts for much of the pay gap and there are too many loopholes and barriers to effective enforcement of existing laws. “We need to strengthen penalties and give women the tools they need to confront discrimination.”
At the same time, we must recognize that the problem of unequal pay goes beyond insidious discrimination. As a nation, we unjustly devalue jobs traditionally performed by women, even when they require comparable skills to jobs traditionally performed by men.
Millions of jobs dominated by women such as social workers, teachers, child care workers and nurses are equivalent in skills, effort, responsibility and working conditions to similar jobs dominated by men says Harkin:
But the female-dominated jobs pay significantly less. This is inexplicable. Why is a housekeeper worth less than a janitor? Why is a parking meter reader worth less than an electrical meter reader? Why is a social worker worth less than a probation officer? Read the rest of this entry »
