California Nurses, Catholic Healthcare West Set Benchmark for Containing Pandemics
A new agreement between the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) and Catholic Healthcare West sets a national benchmark for containing the spread of pandemics such as H1N1 (swine flu) and protecting patients and workers. Says CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro:
With this historic agreement, we are charting a new course for limiting the spread of not only swine flu but all other dangerous pandemics that are yet to come, We are pleased that Catholic Healthcare West is joining with us to set the highest possible hospital safeguards for patients and nurses and creating an innovative model that every hospital in America should follow.
The agreement creates a new system-wide emergency task force, comprised of CNA/NNOC RNs and hospital representatives following the declaration of pandemic emergencies.
Rockefeller’s Public Option Killed in Senate Finance’s Health Care Bill
UPDATE: Schumer’s public option amendment got killed as well, 10-13, with Baucus, Conrad and Lincoln voting against it. Disgrace.
Looks like one version of public option just got killed in the Senate Finance Committee. Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s public option amendment, the strongest of the public option amendments offered, was just voted down 15-8, with five Democrats voting against it: Sens. Max Baucus (Mont.), Tom Carper (Del.), Kent Conrad (N.D.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) and Bill Nelson (Fla.).
As Rockefeller said before the vote:
Why would we not do this? People come second and the profits come first if we’re against this.
Mother Jones Online Museum and More Highlights at AFL-CIO Cool Tools
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The real life working-class hero Mary “Mother” Jones now has her own virtual museum that documents the struggles, victories and history of the woman once dubbed “America’s Most Dangerous Woman.”
The online Mother Jones Museum is the featured item in our newest collection of Cool Tools—the latest selection of books, DVDs, websites and other media with a working-class bent. Cool Tools also highlights three books and a DVD on Latina sweatshop workers’ struggles and victories.
The Mother Jones Museum describes itself as a “virtual museum and curricula about the amazing labor agitator.” It includes links to her entire autobiography and other documents about militant labor history. As the site states:
We believe that she still has something to teach us after all these years.
One page features my favorite Mother Jones quote:
I asked a man in prison once, how he happened to be there, and he said he had stolen loaf of bread. I told him if he had stolen a railroad, he’d be a U.S. senator.
USW Workers Ratify Goodyear Contract Covering 10,300 Workers
The United Steelworkers (USW) announced that workers overwhelmingly ratified a new four-year agreement covering some 10,300 union members at seven Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. plants. The new pact provides job security and maintains quality, affordable health care for the union members.
The agreement also protects six of the seven plants from closure during the term of the agreement and provides for minimum staffing levels. As part of the deal, Goodyear committed to invest $600 million in capital expenditures in the plants, keeping them up to date and globally competitive.
USW President Leo Gerard said:
During this difficult economic period, this contract gives our members job security for the next four years.
U.S. Still Lags Way Behind in Internet Speed
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The United States continues to lag far behind the world’s other industrialized nations when it comes to Internet speed—and the impact goes far beyond the time it takes your movies or music to download or family videos to upload. It slows the economy and job growth, too.
The Communications Workers of America (CWA) third annual Speed Matters survey finds that even at the current rate of improvement, it still would take the United States 15 years to catch up with the global Internet speed leader South Korea, where speeds are four times faster than in the United States.
The average download speed of U.S. Internet connections is 5.1 megabits per second, significantly below the averages of countries like South Korea (20.1 mbps), Japan (16 mbps) and Sweden (12.7 mbps).
Netroots Nation: The Labor Caucus
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The union movement has come a long way online, and at this year’s Netroots Nation conference, online union activists got a chance to check in and talk about where we still need to go. This year’s Labor Caucus was the largest yet since we first got together at what was then the YearlyKos convention in 2006.
About 60 people came out for the caucus, mostly union members and union staffers from across the movement but also bloggers and activists who support workers. Our own Tula Connell and Michael Whitney of SEIU moderated the session.
We kicked off the caucus by noting what we’ve accomplished thus far. The strong union participation in Netroots Nation is a good sign we’re a vibrant, important part of the progressive blogging community now. We’ve made the case that working family issues are progressive issues.
Members of Alliance for Retired Americans Meet with Lawmakers Over Recess
Activists from the Alliance for Retired Americans are wrapping up the last of nearly 70 meetings this week with U.S. Senate and House members who are on congressional recess back in their states or districts. The retired union members are speaking out about the need to strengthen Medicare as a cornerstone of health care reform.
In the meetings, Alliance members are outlining measures to lower the cost of prescription drugs, strengthen the Medicare Trust Fund and expand Medicare coverage for retirees ages 55-64.
IBEW Local in Portland, Ore., Goes Green
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You need look no further than Electrical Workers Local 48 to see the union movement’s commitment to creating good green jobs and protecting our environment.
The Portland, Ore., local is installing a solar array at its union hall. When completed, the all-union project not only will provide 40 percent of the local’s electrical usage for the next 30 years, but also will be used to train members on the design and installation of solar arrays.
Local 48’s project highlights the efforts by the union movement to transform the struggling economy through a range of environmental investments in green technology, energy efficiency and renewable energy.
Krugman: Think Beyond Stimulus to New Economy
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Once the nation’s economy begins to recover; we should build a durable and broadly shared prosperity. That was the message Nobel laureate Paul Krugman brought today to the first in a series of conferences on progressive ideas to turn around the economy.
Speaking to more than 800 participants at the Thinking Big/Thinking Forward conference in Washington, D.C., Krugman said that to prevent the nation’s economic pit from becoming a permanent trench, we will need a combination of fiscal and financial policies. And that will require the government to invest in the economy in a big way to spur demand.
Krugman, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2008, disputed Republican claims that the best way to stimulate the economy is through tax cuts.
There’s more bang for the buck from government spending than from tax cuts.
Time to Think Big, Push for Progressive Government Action
President Obama’s economic stimulus package is just the beginning of a long-overdue public investment in rebuilding our nation’s economy. And now is the time to seek broad solutions—to think big about what can be done.
Today at the Thinking Big/Thinking Forward conference, hundreds of progressives took the first steps to building a movement to coalesce public support for a more activist, progressive government to rebuild our nation’s economy.
The one-day conference in Washington, D.C., was co-sponsored by The American Prospect, Institute for America’s Future, Demos, and the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
