How does that make any sense, when it's the Obama administration that nominated him twice?

We have a big job ahead of us now, securing these jobs in the next contract. We're ready for a fight, if that's what it takes. But we hope that after the dust settles, the company will recognize what we have said all along--these are the most highly skilled overhaul, repair and refurbishment workers in the world. Pratt may think that moving the work will save costs, but quality and reliability are crucial in aerospace operations. If they want the best performance possible for their demanding customers, Pratt should keep the work here.

As kids, we all loved the sugar-coated fairy tales of handsome and brave princes rescuing beautiful princesses from despotic kings.

The new CBS “reality” show “Undercover Boss” that debuted last night after the Super Bowl is a 21st century sugar-coated fairy tale. But this time, the brave prince is actually a CEO who goes undercover as a regular worker near the bottom of the food chain. There he finds how hard and dirty the job is; how stifling and draconian the company’s workplace rules are; and how crappy the pay is.

Then after walking so many miles in an employee’s work boots, the boss sees the light and promotes workers, raises pay, eases rules and promises a new found respect for all workers.

(If your boss isn’t going undercover anytime soon, be sure to check out American Rights at Work’s new website, Fix Our Jobs, where you can vent about how lousy—and even how great—your job is and learn how to make it better. Click here to watch the video.)

But just like our childhood stories ignored the dark, bloody and scary Brothers Grimm originals, “Undercover Boss” ignores the grim reality of too many of today’s workplaces.

“Undercover Boss” is a sweet, happy-ending tale for a handful of workers, but make-believe for millions of others. The best way to make workplace improvement and worker rights a reality is with the Employee Free Choice Act, that would restore the right of workers to form unions and bargain for a better life.

The bosses portrayed on the show may indeed be sincere and a handful of workers will enjoy the benefits of their foxhole conversions. But what about the millions of workers whose CEO’s will never be on TV? That’s where unions come in: to ensure employees have a voice at the workplace, with family-supporting pay and affordable health care and retirement security.

Along with the restoring the freedom to form unions, rebuilding the middle class means fighting for health care legislation, strong enforcement of wage and hour laws, holding  Wall Street accountable and most importantly creating jobs. Unions and their members at the forefront of all these battles—out in the open—not undercover.

As Congress considers whether to renew unemployment insurance (UI) for long-term jobless workers and extend COBRA to help unemployed workers maintain health care, they should take time to find out about the experiences of workers beyond the Washington, D.C., beltway.

Richard Duncan, who works for the Tennessee AFL-CIO technical assistance program, has met many unemployed workers. The assistance program helps union workers who have been laid off (see video above).

I’ve traveled the state of Tennessee and seen an enormous number of union brothers and sisters lose their jobs. Since 2006, I’ve seen the same people. They lose their job at one facility. Then they go to another facility, then there’s an additional layoff and they lose their job again.  

The extensions for UI and COBRA expire Feb. 28. Click here to tell your lawmakers it’s time to act.

Duncan’s video highlights workers urging Congress to act on the AFL-CIO’s five-point jobs program. Union members across the nation are rallying behind the AFL-CIO plan to create jobs now and President Obama’s jobs legislation. As AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said after Obama’s state of the union address:

Now it’s time for all of us to get busy and work together to bring the big changes that are essential-starting with enacting a jobs bill that is big enough to create jobs for the millions of people who want to work and can’t find jobs.  The time for small change is long gone.

Looking for the latest in international labor news? Now it’s just a click away with the launch of RadioLabour.net and its Solidarity News program. The weekly podcast will focus on union and workers’ activities and issues from around the world with special emphasis on emerging market and developing countries.

A new report, hosted by labor educator Marc Belanger, debuts each Monday morning. RadioLabour reporters will provide regular weekly presentations, and the audio cast will feature reports from unionists on particular events.

For union activists interested in learning more about progressive podcasting, be sure to check out the Labour Podcasting group on UnionBook. 

Don’t forget these working family, union friendly broadcasts, all available live streaming or via podcasts on their websites. 

• Workers Independent News-The daily broadcast looks at top worker-oriented news.
• Building Bridges-The weekly one hour program covers local, national and international labor and community issues.
• The Rick Smith Show-Pennsylvania activist Rick Smith, a Teamster member and ILCA vice president, hosts a two-hour labor talk each Saturday and Sunday, 12-2 p.m., broadcast and webcast on WHYL AM.
• America’s Workforce-Ed “Flash” Ferenc host the nation’s only daily labor radio program,  from 4-5 p.m. on  Cleveland’s WERE AM.
• The Solidarity Effect-Every Friday on KNDS FM in Fargo, N.D., Machinists Kevin and Heather Murch engage in-studio guests and the listening audience “in the social issues of our times from a working class perspective and also play some great music as well     
• The Union Edge-Long-time AFGE member Charles Showalter hosts this daily labor talk show.  
• Democratic Talk Radio-The weekly broadcast on WGPA AM advocates for American workers and consumers.
• Inside Government-AFGE’s weekly one-hour radio program on Federal News Radio features interviews and commentary on a wide range of subjects that impact the lives and livelihoods of federal and D.C. government workers and the general public
• Heartland Labor Forum-The Institute for Labor Studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) produces the weekly show for working people and has been “agitating on the air since 1989.”

When both unemployed and underemployed workers are counted, there still are 25.5 million people without jobs or full-time work.

As AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says:

We welcome the news that unemployment dropped to 9.7%, but we shed another 20,000 jobs last month, following a revised 150,000 loss in December. These numbers underscore what we have been saying all along. Working families need bigger and bolder actions—in the short, medium and long term—to create jobs in the immediate future—or we risk permanent scarring of our economy and our workforce.

Among the worst aspects of the nation’s unacceptably high unemployment rate—and there are many—the growing numbers of long-term jobless workers is something that can, and must, be addressed immediately. Long-term U.S. unemployment (those without a job for 27 weeks or longer), with more than 6 million unemployed workers out of a job for more than six months. In January, the number of long-term unemployed workers worsened, to 6.3 million workers.

But the unemployment insurance (UI) extension for millions of workers expires Feb. 28, unless Congress—specifically, the Senate—takes action.

In December, the U.S. House passed a jobs bill that included a long-term UI and Cobra extension, but the U.S. Senate failed to act and Congress was forced to pass a short-term extension of both programs. (Click here to tell your lawmakers it’s time to act.)

According to National Employment Law Project estimates, of the nearly 1.2 million U.S. workers facing a cut off of benefits in March alone:

• 380,000 workers will exhaust their 26 weeks of state benefits without accessing the temporary EUC extension program or the permanent federal program of Extended Benefits.
• Another 814,000 workers will not be eligible to continue receiving EUC past their current tier of benefits.

A one-year extension of unemployment insurance is part of our AFL-CIO five-point jobs program, and the Obama administration supports a long-term extension. But it’s unclear what shape a Senate jobs bill will take. Senate Republicans say they will oppose any jobs legislation on a scale large enough most economists say will do real good.

After all, why should those senators worry? They have a job. For now.

Our friends at Union Plus have just launched the Union Plus Book Club that will delve into the latest publications by leading experts on vital working family and workplace issues. The books will be available at the AFL-CIO’s The Union Shop Online^TM and chosen every two months by union leaders based on their interest and expertise in a subject.

The club’s first selection, from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, is Up From Wall Street: The Responsible Investment Alternative, by Thomas Croft.

In the forward to the book, Trumka writes that Croft ”uses real life stories” to show how

responsibly investing savings assets, pensions, insurance funds and other trusts can generate positive social, economic and environmental benefits, while bringing solid financial returns.

Up From Wall Street, lays out high-road alternatives to the reckless loans and dicey short-term bets that have savaged the economy and ravaged working people’s savings and pension funds.

The book makes a strong case that there are strategic and union-friendly investment paths that have the capacity to rebuild our economy and infrastructure, reinvigorate our cities, and finance a clean energy economy that creates and retains good jobs.

The Union Plus Book Club’s goal is to “create labor movement dialogue about current issues and to inspire thought-provoking conversations within our union community.”

Upcoming topics and selectors include:

• Young Workers (AFL-CIO Secretary/Treasurer Liz Shuler).
• Communications and Partnerships (AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker).
• Innovation (Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen).
• Organizing (UNITEHERE! President John Wilhelm).
• Green Jobs (United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard).

Remember, go to The Union Shop Online.^TM for Up from Wall Street and future selections and after you’ve read the book, share your thoughts and questions on the Union Plus Facebook Fan page.

We’ll keep you posted on each new selection.

Staging a symbolic soup and bread line and carrying shoes to encourage state legislators to walk a mile in a jobless worker’s shoes, some 500 Delaware Building and Construction Trades Council (BCTC) workers rallied for jobs legislation in Dover last week.

The rally at the steps of the state Capitol spotlighted the tremendous loss in construction jobs throughout the recession. Although state unemployment stands at 9 percent, construction unemployment is more than twice that and more than 2,100 construction and trades jobs vanished in 2009.

Delaware BCTC President Harry Gravel says the state legislature needs to move on jobs legislation, such as a stalled bill to allow casinos that some estimate could create thousands of jobs.

I support jobs period. If it’s a casino, good. I don’t care if it’s Jack in the Box, a Wendy’s, a school or an outhouse, we want to build it. We’re out of work, we need to go work, we’ll build it, period.

Workers also called on lawmakers to boost the state’s unemployment benefit that is far lower than surrounding states, including just slightly more than half of what jobless workers in neighboring New Jersey receive.

Following the rally, workers donated the shoes to Haitian relief efforts.

Click here for more photos from the rally.

Jack Cafferty at CNN this week asked viewers one of his seemingly routine questions. But the responses to: “How has definition of ‘middle-class American’ changed?” reveal a cataclysmic shift in our nation’s economic identity.

Gary from El Centro, Calif., summed up the vast majority of the nearly 200 responses when he replied:

You should ask this question of the three or four people in the country still remaining in the middle class.

The comments reflect more than the run-of-the-mill griping about taxes or middle-aged discontent. They demonstrate a visceral understanding of the deep forces underlying the dramatic change that in recent decades has eroded the solid financial footing of America’s working families—America’s middle class.

In short, the American public knows what most lawmakers in Washington and policymakers around the country have yet to figure out: The nation is losing its middle-class backbone and bifurcating into a have/have not country.

As Karen from Idaho Falls writes on Cafferty’s site:

In my world, there is no middle class–only the very rich, the rich, the poor, and the very poor. Most of us are hanging on to being “poor” by our fingernails and hoping that we won’t join the ever growing “very poor” class. Somewhere along the line, “middle class” disappeared.

The not-so-Great Recession is just the latest and loudest part of the long decline of the middle class. From the end of World War II to the early 1970s, wages grew along with productivity. But since then, wages have been stagnant or declining—while productivity skyrocketed. The decline in a family’s earning power was offset by the entrance of vast numbers of women in the labor market—and then by wage-earners holding multiple jobs. By the late 1990s, debt—from second mortgages or credit cards—kept the middle class afloat. And now what is revealed is a middle class held together by nothing more than string.

One of the most consequential but least recognized aspects of the current economic disaster is the growing length of time workers are without jobs. In December, the average jobless worker had been unemployed for 29.1 weeks. In contrast, when the recession began in 2007, the average unemployed person had been out of work for 16.5 weeks.

At Economix blog, Catherine Rampell points out in an tellingly titled post, “A Growing Underclass,” that the longer unemployed workers stay out of work, the less likely they may be to find work.

First, their skills may deteriorate or become obsolete—especially if they are in a dynamically changing industry like high technology.

Second, the stigma—both internal and external—of their unemployment grows. Studies have linked job loss to declines in self-worth and self-esteem, meaning these people will probably make less compelling job candidates.

So, even if there were jobs available—there are now more than six unemployed workers for every one job—getting one becomes harder and harder the longer you’re out of work. Jobs are so few, in fact, even a weekly columnist at Forbes had this to say:

For many, many Americans there are no jobs and few prospects. For them the Great Recession is not a cute aphorism but a major cataclysm.

Long-term joblessness is one more nail in the middle class coffin. As Working-Class Perspectives describes it:

Unlike in past business cycles, the middle class has not been able to recover so far, despite increases in productivity and stock prices. In “America Without a Middle Class,” Elizabeth Warren documents how the de facto unemployment rate, credit debt, “underwater” mortgages, increased use of food stamps, personal bankruptcies, and the loss of pensions and health care have all dramatically increased. Middle-class households have depleted their savings and are increasingly accruing debt to pay for college, health care, and other expenses.

Some experts believe that the decline in jobs will only continue. For example, Alexandra Levit predicts significant losses in a number of key industries between 2008 and 2018: semiconductor manufacturing (33.7 percent), apparel manufacturing (57 percent), newspaper publishers (24.8 percent)….Corporations are moving many of these jobs offshore or replacing them with technology rather than paying middle-class wages and benefits. The economists are right that new jobs are being created in place of these. But as Jack Metzgar discussed last week, most of the new jobs offer even lower wages and benefits and require less education.

Jobs are offshored while the jobs that remain in the United States are low-wage, with little affordable health care or retirement options. Meanwhile, the smooth of face and soft of hand financial wizards who turn their noses up at the industrial manufacturing sector fail to realize that when the United States loses its ability to make things, it also loses the research and development power that fueled the nation to greatness. And it loses something a lot more. Louis Uchitelle interviews Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) about the humiliation of building a new World Trade Center with no glass made in the United States:

“Imagine China,” he said in an interview, “building a huge structure intended to be an important national symbol and importing glass from the United States to build it. There is no way the Chinese would do that.”

And a low-wage job nation fuels income inequality. This from a stunning report by economist John Schmit at the Center for Economic and Policy Research:

From a peak just before the 1929 stock market crash through the early 1950s, wage and income inequality, broadly measured, were declining. From the early 1950s through the late 1970s, inequality was flat, or even falling slightly. Since the late 1970s, however, inequality has skyrocketed, climbing back to levels last seen in the 1920s. In 1979, for example, the top one percent of all U.S. taxpayers received about 8 percent of national income; by 2007, the top one percent received over 18 percent. If we include income from capital gains in the calculation, the increase in inequality is even sharper, with the top one percent capturing 10 percent of all income in 1979, but over 23 percent in 2007.

Back at Cafferty’s site, Chad from Los Angeles knows why:

The middle class has turned into the “peasant class.” We have been taken over by a few wealthy people who control our politicians and government. We have become an Aristocracy. Except the ones in control are not royalty, they are businessmen hiding behind a cloak of deception that is Corporate America.

In the short term, critical steps must be taken for immediate relief. The first is getting the Senate to extend unemployment insurance (UI) for the long-term unemployed. As usual, the House already has acted, extending UI in December, while senators dither. (Click here to tell your lawmakers it’s time to act.) Extending UI is part of the jobs initiative the AFL-CIO is pushing for immediate relief for jobless workers.

But before the current crisis fades, the nation must begin to reverse the more than 40-year trend in which the gap widens between rich and poor and the middle class falls out of the bottom.

Silas from Boston—a city not unfamiliar with fomenting revolutions—offers an intriguing insight:

We’ve allowed the “upper” class to become too big to fail. As a result, the middle class is an endangered species which has to bail out the class that got us into this mess to begin with. This is how the French Revolution started.

This is a cross-post from the Firedoglake blog.

The late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) described the solicitor general’s job as “the workers’ lawyer.” During her confirmation hearing last year, Smith said she would bring to the job a “philosophy of proactive enforcement.” Says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:

At a time when working families are bearing the brunt of the economic recession and violations of workplace rights are rampant, Ms. Smith’s commitment to strong, fair and effective enforcement of our workplace laws is crucial.

The vote follows some nine months of Republican obstruction in an attempt to block Smith from the U.S. Department of Labor post as the nation’s top labor lawyer.

Adhering to their strict policy of “No to everything,” all Republicans voted against Smith, the current commissioner of labor in New York state. Earlier this week, the Republican filibuster against Smith was broken. Says Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio):

We’ve had one year of Republicans saying “no,” of blocking and obstructing. This isn’t an inconsequential position. It’s a position that protects workers’ ability to be part of the middle class.

Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), says:

For the last decade, lax labor law enforcement has made workers far more susceptible to abuses like unpaid overtime and wage theft, unsafe working conditions, and workplace discrimination, which is why Patricia Smith’s confirmation as Solicitor of Labor marks such an important change.

Despite reports of improved conditions in Port-au-Prince, two weeks after the earthquake hit Haiti, workers still lack basic shelter, food, water and medicine, reports Cathy Feingold, the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center representative in the neighboring Dominican Republic.

Feingold met with union leaders in Haiti last week and says:

…the majority of union leaders and members are sleeping outside their homes because many completely collapsed or became unstable as a result of structural damage. Direct access to international humanitarian aid remains challenging; so many workers and their unions depend on the support received from the global labor movement.

You can take action now to help the Haitian survivors by clicking on the AFL-CIO Haitian Disaster Relief site here. You can read Feingold’s full report here.

Meanwhile, union support continues to pour into Haiti:

• Some of the 11,000 nurses who responded to the National Nurses United’s call for volunteers to help in Haiti left this week to join the U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort, which is crewed by members of the Seafarers. You can help send a nurse to Haiti by clicking here.
• Donations to the Solidarity Center’s Earthquake Relief for Haitian Workers Campaign are already being put to use. Delegations from Dominican unions have traveled to Port-au-Prince with truckloads of bottled water, non-perishable food, first aid products, re-hydration liquids and other needed supplies.  Click here and Union Plus will automatically match your contribution to the fund, up to $100,000. You do not need to use a Union Plus credit card for the matching donation.
• Fire Fighters (IAFF) members from Los Angeles, Fairfax County, Va., and other cities are still conducting rescue operations in the rubble.  

A delegation of the workers filed a petition yesterday asking the Massachusetts Division of Labor Relations (DLR) to certify their union, UMass Postdoctoral Researchers Organize/UAW (UMass PRO/UAW), as their representative for collective bargaining.

Says Simona Maccarrone, a postdoctoral researcher from UMass Amherst:

We’ve taken this step so we can protect our rights on the job, and make sure postdocs working on different campuses and in different labs are treated fairly and receive comparable pay and benefits. This will give us the same union rights as other workers and faculty at UMass.

If the Employee Free Choice Act is implemented, workers would be able to choose for themselves how to form a union, including through majority sign-up. The UAW represents workers at more than 40 universities and colleges across the country, including teaching assistants, research assistants, graders, tutors and other student academic employees and support staff.

Caleb Rounds, a plant biologist at UMass, adds:

 We’re a vital part of the university workforce and leaders in our fields, yet our pay is very low.  With the economy rebounding, the university’s financial situation is improving, so it’s time to address our needs.   

UAW Regional Director Bob Madore says the UMass workers are the first postdoctoral researchers in Massachusetts to join a union. 

These are first-class academic employees working in a world-class institution, and they are pioneering on behalf of their colleagues at other colleges and universities in Massachusetts.

Postdoctoral researchers perform basic scientific research and contribute to the development of new innovations in biomedical science and industrial technologies. They also publish scholarly articles and write grant proposals that help bring in millions of dollars in grants and contracts.

Earlier this week, we noted a new study that predicts health insurance premiums will jump between 10 percent and 11 percent this year. Now a new government report says health care costs last year took the biggest bite ever out of the nation’s economy.

The non-partisan Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reports that health care spending ate up a record 17.3 percent of the nation’s economy, or $2.5 trillion, in 2009, up from 16.2 percent in 2008. That is the largest one-year jump in 50 years. In 1960, health care costs consumed just 5 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.

Over the past 50 years, as health care costs have soared and working families pay more and more for less and less, profits have skyrocketed in the health care industry, especially the private health insurance industry.

Yet the Party of No Republican opposition to meaningful health care reform means these through-the-roof costs for families and the entire nation will climb higher and higher.

Comprehensive health care reform would slow the growth in health care spending, lower working families’ costs and maybe even take a small bite of the health care profits. Independent experts have predicted that health care reform could save working families between $2,000 and $3,000 a year if enacted. If not, costs will continue to soar.