Overall Union Membership Notches Up from 2010 to 2011
Overall union membership increased by 49,000 from 2010 to 2011, including 15,000 new 16- to 24-year-old members, according to new U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data out this morning. An increase of 110,000 in the private sector was partially offset by a decline of 61,000 in the public sector, making the rate of union membership essentially unchanged at 11.8 percent, with some 14.8 million U.S. workers union members.
Public-sector density increased from 36.2 percent to 37 percent though November 2011. Private-sector union membership remains at 6.9 percent. The largest increases in union membership were in construction, health care services, retail trade, primary metals and fabricated metal products, hospitals, transportation and warehousing.
Bottom line, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:
Despite an unprecedented volley of partisan political attacks on workers’ rights and the continuing insecurity of our economic crisis, union membership increased slightly last year. Working men and women want to come together and to improve their lives.
Transportation Infrastructure Bill Boosts Jobs and Planet, Says BlueGreen Alliance
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The BlueGreen Alliance says that reauthorizing the fully funded Surface Transportation bill that President Obama today urged Congress to extend is “an incredibly important step in achieving our number one national priority: putting America to work.”
BlueGreen Alliance Executive Director David Foster says the bill will not only create badly needed jobs, but it also will have a major positive environmental impact.
Currently, the U.S. spends approximately $1 billion a day on foreign oil, while transportation accounts for nearly one-third of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. Investing in American-made cleaner vehicles, roads, bridges, tunnels, rail, transit, and better biking and walking can create millions of jobs in infrastructure, manufacturing, and operations.
A cleaner, safer, more efficient 21st century transportation system will reduce pollution and our dependence on foreign oil, create new jobs and opportunity for workers across the nation, and ensure America remains competitive in the global economy.
But House Republicans want to cut transportation and transit infrastructure funding so deeply that it would cost half a million jobs next year alone and send the nation’s highways, bridges and transit systems into even deeper disrepair.
House Republican Transportation Bill Kills Half a Million Jobs
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In an astounding display of economic shortsightedness, House Republicans want to cut transportation and transit infrastructure funding so deeply that it would cost half a million jobs next year alone and send the nation’s highways, bridges and transit systems into even deeper disrepair.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says the proposed six-year transportation reauthorization bill from Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) is “unconscionable… at a time when 14 million Americans who want to work cannot find jobs and our nation suffers a $2.2 trillion infrastructure deficit.”
It defies imagination that the Republican leadership and chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee would turn their backs on the needs of our country and pretend it is good government.
Mica’s proposal would cut transportation funding to a level that is 20 percent less than the last reauthorization bill signed by President Bush in 2005.
BlueGreen Alliance, Apollo Alliance Merge To Strengthen Push for Green Jobs
The BlueGreen Alliance and Apollo Alliance today announced a merger to strengthen and unify the movement to build a clean energy, good jobs economy to fuel U.S. job creation. The newly unified organization will call on Washington to focus anew on creating good jobs, securing America’s energy future and preserving the environment for future generations.
Beginning July 1, the two organizations will combine to become the BlueGreen Alliance, which will be home to the Apollo Alliance project. United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard and Sierra Club Chair Carl Pope will continue as co-chairs, and David Foster will continue as executive director.
Earlier this year, the BlueGreen Alliance launched Jobs21!, a nine-state grassroots campaign calling for a national jobs plan to put America back to work building the industries of the 21st century here in the United States. This initiative will be strengthened through coordination with the Apollo Alliance’s strong network of state and local affiliates–now dubbed BlueGreen Apollo Alliances. It will also be enhanced by Apollo’s recently-launched Clean Transportation Manufacturing Action Plan (TMAP) project that calls for federal investment in clean transportation that will create 3.7 million direct and indirect jobs over six years and will save Americans up to $5,000 per family each year in commuting costs.
U.S. Infrastructure Crumbling, Nation Falling Behind Developing Countries
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When it comes to maintaining and improving its roads, bridges and other transportation facilities, the United States is falling behind even developing nations and Congress is showing no will to address the crisis, according to a report released this week by the Urban Land Institute. Further:
Despite the nation’s unemployment woes, the vast job-creation potential of infrastructure projects is being sidetracked by concerns about government spending appetites and potential cost overruns.
In contrast with its global competition, the report notes, after more than 30 years of conspicuously underfunding infrastructure,
the United States is lurching along a problematic course—potentially losing additional ground.
So far, Hurricane Katrina and the New Orleans levee breach have not been a big enough wakeup call; neither was the 2007 Minneapolis bridge collapse, according to Infrastructure 2011: A Strategic Priority. Meanwhile, China is moving closer to completing the world’s largest high-speed train network, a 10,000-mile honeycomb linking major cities across an expanse similar in size to the United States. But the high-speed train is only a small part of a Read the rest of this entry »
America Fast Forward Boosts Jobs, Rebuilds Infrastructure
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says that a new transportation and jobs infrastructure plan “will help revive manufacturing. It means jobs.”
The America Fast Forward initiative has bipartisan and labor/management support. At the Capitol Hill press conference announcing the new initiative today, Trumka joined U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Mayor Scott Smith of Mesa, Ariz.
America Fast Forward will improve the way transportation projects are financed so that cities and states can access and disseminate funds directly to projects, creating a faster and more efficient system. The plan could create nearly 1 million jobs, produce $158 billion in economic output and generate $51 billion in worker income.
The plan is a national extension of Villaraigosa’s 30/10 initiative for transportation in Los Angeles County. He told the Los Angeles Times:
We’ve also won the support of 105 mayors—20 percent of them Republicans—because they understand the prospect of getting federal assistance through the traditional channels is now remote….This is a program that puts people to work now at little cost, since 98 percent of the federal dollars would be repaid from local sources. This is more than a step we’re proposing; it’s a leap forward.
This Price Isn’t Right: Walker Willing to Lose $50 Million to Silence Workers
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) claims he has to eliminate the right of public workers like nurses, teachers and EMTs to bargain for good jobs in order to fix the state’s budget. He claims it’s fiscally prudent.
How fiscally prudent is it to toss away almost $50 million of Wisconsin taxpayer money that could be used to create jobs? But that’s exactly what Walker will do if his so-called “budget repair” bill passes. Wisconsin would forfeit $46.6 million in federal transportation funds because, under federal labor law, states lose that funding if they eliminate collective bargaining rights that were on the books at the time the federal money was authorized.
While that provision of the law may not be well known, as Sam Stein in The Huffington Post points out, Walker knew about the loss of funds well before he launched his attack on public-service workers. A memo from the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau warned Walker of the forfeiture.
It looks like Walker is willing to put a $50 million price tag on his attack on middle-class workers.
Trumka, Chamber’s Donohue Will Call for Transportation Jobs Bill at Senate Hearing
Check this out. Next week, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue will make a rare joint appearance to promote jobs legislation. They will appear Feb. 16 before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee at 10 a.m. to speak out on the need for quick action on a new jobs-creating transportation bill.
Following President Obama’s State of the Union address, Trumka and Donohue issued a joint statement endorsing Obama’s call “to create jobs and grow our economy through investment in our nation’s infrastructure.”
Republican Transportation Cuts Are Job Killers
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This is cross-post from the National Journal’s Transportation blog by AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department (TTD) President Edward C. Wytkind.
It is ironic that the Republican Study Committee’s (RSC’s) proposal to slash vital transportation investments was unveiled on the very day that we learned that Americans spend as many as 70 hours—or nearly three solid days—a year stuck in traffic. The Texas Transportation Institute’s national study also revealed that congestion wastes 3.9 billion gallons of fuel and costs $115 billion nationwide on an annual basis. If passed, the RSC’s proposals will add to the woes of commuters and travelers and destroy good jobs.
Their proposal to slash investment and eliminate jobs was also offered on the day that a national poll reminded us that the public’s clear priorities are the economy and jobs. The Pew Research Center poll reveals a public that wants answers to its unemployment problem. Despite the fact that this new Congress that was sent to Washington to fix the economy and create jobs, this opening salvo would only make these problems worse.
Hundreds of thousands of jobs would be eliminated by the proposed cuts to transportation programs alone—at a time when nationwide unemployment struggles to stay below 10 percent. These proposed cuts—to mass transit development, Amtrak, high-speed rail, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, the Essential Air Service program and more—would deal a major blow to millions of Americans who want more transportation choices, not fewer.
Transportation Dept. Launches Buy American Website
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When the Apollo Alliance released its Clean Transportation Manufacturing Action Plan (TMAP) in October (click here for detailed coverage) one of its key job-creating recommendations was ensuring that American manufacturers and U.S. workers supply the rail cars, tracks and other mass transit equipment to modernize the nation’s mass transportation system.
But since 2005, U.S. companies and governments have spent more than $10 billion to purchase mass transit equipment overseas, even though the United States is home to five public transit bus manufacturers, a dozen railcar builders and a wide range of other transportation equipment makers.
Now the U.S. Department of Transportation, following a TMAP recommendation, has launched a new website that will post all Buy American waiver requests in one central location so that any American company can see easily if they can fill a particular need.
