Some 2 million children are living with HIV/AIDS worldwide, and 1,000 more become infected every day. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) is teaming up with the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation and the producers of the fun children’s DVD “Sockville—A New Pair of Socks” to help fight pediatric HIV/AIDS.

For every DVD purchased at a special $9.99 price, $3 will go to the Elizabeth Glaser Foundation, CWA’s charity of choice for nearly 20 years. The foundation is a global leader in efforts to raise awareness, prevent HIV transmission and expand life-saving treatment to HIV-positive children around the world.

 Click here to buy the DVD at this special rate and help children with AIDS. This special offer is only good until Dec. 15, 2009.

The “Sockville” DVD was designed and produced by Patrick Voss, a member of CWA Local 6300 in St. Louis. The story explores the question that has been bugging us, our parents and even our grandparents—”Where does that one sock go when it gets lost in the laundry?”

“Sockville: A New Pair of Socks” introduces us to Bobby Sock and Polly Esther, who, like many socks before them, got lost in the dryer. But have no fear. Sockville awaits them. It’s a land full of imagination, creativity, learning and lots of colorful and unique sock friends. Check out the video trailer for the DVD here.

The report by Ethan Pollack, an Economic Policy Institute (EPI) policy analyst, says the recession has led to much lower tax revenues for state and local governments. Unlike the federal government, state and local governments must balance their budgets by law. So state and local policymakers are cutting spending and raising taxes, steps that will lead to lower consumer demand and more unemployment.

At an EPI forum yesterday to release the report, Trenton [N.J.] Mayor Douglas Palmer said mayors and governors could use additional federal stimulus money to create jobs now, improve the nation’s infrastructure and help small businesses—all of which would have lasting economic and environmental benefits.

Metropolitan economies now account for 86 percent of national employment, 90 percent of workers’ income and 90 percent of our gross domestic product, Pollack said. Mayors lead these metro economies that drive the nation, Palmer said. To reverse the current economic situation and create jobs, the only way to do so is to invest in these metro economies.

In the EPI report, Pollack says states face a two-year $357 billion budget shortfall for the fiscal years 2010 and 2011, while local governments face an additional $80 billion deficit. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided much-needed relief, but its $106 billion in aid to states fills only about 25 percent of the shortfall. The rest of the budget must be balanced by spending cuts and tax increases. Click here to read the report, “Dire States: State and Local Budget Relief Needed to Prevent Job Losses and Ensure a Robust Recovery.”

State and local spending cuts can be particularly harmful to the economy, Palmer and Pollack said. Not only do they deprive citizens of needed public services like health care, transportation, education and safety, they also fall disproportionately on the backs of those with low incomes. Businesses’ sales fall, forcing firms to slash wages or lay off workers, and these workers then cut their own consumer spending. As a result, each dollar of spending reduction by state and local governments leads to $1.41 in lost economic activity.

Without additional state and local budget relief, current and future shortfalls will cause millions of job losses and likely contribute to a drawn-out and painful recovery.

Pollack put it this way:

At this point, Congress has a choice. On the one hand, it can do nothing, thereby forcing states and local governments to cut budgets and raise taxes by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next few years. The result will be a drag on the economy that will at best lead to a long, painful, and relatively jobless recovery and at worst cause enough damage that the economy reverses course and begins to contract again.

During a telephone press conference sponsored by the Campaign for America’s Future, Carolyn Bartholomew said China has developed a plan to build national wealth and increase its power and influence in the world and the United States has not.    

Bartholomew, who chairs the USCC, said the commission found that China employs a wide range of subsidies that include land, loans, energy, water and tax incentives to attract foreign manufacturers for the production and export of higher technology products. State-owned banks also provide massive loans to industries producing over capacity. Click here to read the report.

As AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says:

The report drives home the point that the Chinese government’s export-led manufacturing strategy is driven by a full range of subsidies, many of which are illegal under both the WTO [World Trade Organization] and our own trade agreements with China. These industrial policies begin with the most important illegal subsidy of all—the continuing substantial undervaluation of the Chinese currency. 

Bartholomew warned that a side product of our growing trade deficit with China is that as more business goes abroad, the technology that we have developed for aircraft, computer chips and other products go with it. She related how the Army recently had a problem buying domestically made triggers for its rifles because the tool-and-die industry is so decimated.  

Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute, just returned from a trip to China and said the reality of the global economy is that some countries like China don’t always play by the rules of free trade. Although the United States should not emulate China’s illegal actions, lawmakers should develop a deliberate and well-planned strategy to build national wealth, create jobs and protect our national security, he said.

Writing on the Campaign for America’s Future website, Scott Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, says Obama should have insisted that China play by the global rules of free trade.

China, I believe, wants to be treated with the dignity and respect of a rising economic power. The Obama administration should have made clear exactly how that could have been accomplished: playing by the rules of global trade, achieving balance in its current account, and taking steps to ensure that more Chinese are able to share in the country’s prosperity.

 Trumka says the 2009 report

makes it clear that the United States needs a new strategic approach to our relationship with China as part of our nation’s economic strategy. Such an approach must begin by responding vigorously to the problems created by the Chinese economic strategy of massive trade subsidies.

In Louisiana, Maine, North Dakota, Delaware, Arkansas and Indiana this week, Working America members and union volunteers are sending a message to their senators: You need to pass real health care reform.

Working America and union members delivered thousands of handwritten letters to senators in these key states. On Tuesday in Louisiana, Wednesday in Arkansas and yesterday in four other states, these activists brought more than 15,000 letters to their senators in support of health care reform that expands coverage, doesn’t raise costs for middle-class families because it doesn’t tax their benefits and includes a public health insurance option to help hold insurance companies accountable.

You can join the fight and demand a Senate                                                                                                                                               debate on health care reform here.

The Senate’s health care bill, launched yesterday, still has flaws, but it’s moving in the right direction, and the Senate will be voting tomorrow night on whether to proceed with debate. Debating and voting on a bill in the Senate are critical and necessary steps toward passing health care reform and improving the lives of millions of working families, both those with and those without insurance today.

State and local union leaders and activists were also in Washington, D.C., yesterday visiting members of Congress to ask them to pass health care reform. This is the time when grassroots activity will matter the most, so contact your senators today.

Get set to join a tweet-a-thon Friday, at 10 a.m. EST, to help launch the #notmychamber campaign spearheaded by the worker advocacy group, American Rights at Work.

If you are on Twitter, starting at 10 a.m., sign the organization’s “Not My Chamber” act.ly petition at http://act.ly/1cc or by tweeting: RT @araw petition @chamberpost: The U.S. #Chamber doesn’t represent me. It’s Not My Chamber! http://act.ly/1cc #notmychamber (RT to sign!)

If you don’t use Twitter (and can understand nary a word of the previous paragraph), you can sign the “Not My Chamber” pledge here: www.notmychamber.org. Already, 20,301 people and 3,102 business owners have signed the pledge.

With its nearly $100 million lobbying budget, the Chamber of Commerce is actively fighting issues like aid to jobless workers, paid sick leave and creation of an agency to watchdog the interests of consumers. Most recently, it tried to kill health care reform by hiring a paid gun to call health care reform “a job-killer.” The Chamber has “U.S.” at the front of its name but relentlessly promotes trade and jobs policies that send good U.S. jobs overseas.
So, don’t stop at one tweet. Here are some samples to send out throughout the day:

1. US #Chamber of Commerce reconsidering junk “study” to attack healthcare reform. http://bit.ly/3ZXfbP #notmychamber
2. Apple, Nike, Johnson & Johnson rejected the U.S. #Chamber over global warming. I agree: they’re #NotMyChamber http://act.ly/1cc
3. Over 3,000 businesses have joined with Apple, Nike, PG&E to speak against the #Chamber on climate change! http://act.ly/1cc #notmychamber
4. US #Chamber demands that employees give up their legal rights to press charges if they are raped. #NotMyChamber http://bit.ly/2ierXS
5. The US #Chamber of Commerce doesn’t believe in climate change. #NotMyChamber
6. US #Chamber tops the charts at $34M in lobbying in ONE QUARTER! http://bit.ly/2RaJl3
7. US #Chamber of Commerce has 300k members. In September, it was 3 million. Quite a difference! #NotMyChamber http://bit.ly/M3d3g
8. US #Chamber of Commerce leads spending against health care reform: $24M total last month http://bit.ly/2uXhtf It’s #NotMyChamber.
9. The US #Chamber opposes emergency H1N1 sick leave. It’s #NotMyChamber http://bit.ly/1rlnL5

Goldman Sachs, one of the Wall Street firms that got the H1N1 flu shot well ahead of millions of America’s school children, sent this health tip in a memo to its pampered, out-of-touch execs: “Resist the urge to open your own car door; let your driver do it.”

Yo, Jeeves. While you’re at it, dust around the edges of those massive CEO pay packages. Because according to a report released today by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), top executives at four companies that jettisoned their employee pension plans received $49.5 million in retirement and severance benefits in the years before the companies filed for bankruptcy, while retirees saw their benefits cut by as much as two-thirds.

Yet Wall Street bankers are making that cash flow keeps coming: Yesterday, writes David Dayen, Senate Republicans bowed low before their corporate masters and delayed a move by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) to immediately take up a bill that would freeze all credit card rates, charges and fee increases.

The freeze would be in effect until the CARD Act, a bill passed earlier this year, became law. Because of the time lag between passage of the CARD Act—which prevents arbitrary interest rate, fee and finance charge increases on existing balances—and its implementation next year, credit card companies have been jacking up their rates in what Dodd described as “a last-ditch attempt” to pad their profits until all of the provisions of the CARD Act became effective.

Back on Main Street, the scene is bleak. Not only do we not have any drivers to open our limo doors, millions of us—more than 26 million unemployed or underemployed—don’t have jobs. And by January, 1 million people without work also will be without unemployment insurance—unless Congress acts fast to extend unemployment aid.

Now you’d think throwing a lifeline to people—to voters—would be a no-brainer. But seems many of the same Republican senators who blocked a freeze on credit card interest rates are likely to be those who block a vote on extending aid to jobless workers. They did it this fall, stalling passage of unemployment aid for weeks. Guess they haven’t figured out that if they want U.S. consumers to pay outrageous interest rates on credit cards, they need money to do so.

Extending unemployment aid to people without jobs is one of five points the AFL-CIO union movement and our allies are pushing for in our jobs initiative announced this week. The others include:  

• Rebuild America’s schools, roads and energy systems.
• Increase aid to state and local governments to maintain vital services.
• Fund jobs in our communities.
• Put TARP funds to work for Main Street.

We’ll take this message to the White House as part of President Barack Obama’s Dec. 3 Jobs Summit. Already, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka met earlier this week with House Democrats to explain our plan, which will “create or save” 2 million jobs over the next year.

Because America’s workers don’t need limo drivers. They need jobs.

After he was elected AFL-CIO president in September, Richard Trumka traveled around the country on a listening tour. Here’s one story he heard, which he described this week as the AFL-CIO, along with several key allies, launched a jobs initiative to help get our nation back to work.

Last summer at an event in Ohio, I met a young woman who is facing this crisis head-on. Lacey, who is not yet 20 years old, wants to become a teacher. But after her dad’s factory closed and he was laid off, she had to put off her hopes of attending college to help her parents keep a roof over their heads. Lacey took a job in a school cafeteria—until the state budget got cut, and she got laid off, too.

After months in which she and her father were both searching for jobs, Lacey said she felt lucky to find a part-time fast food job that pays half of what the cafeteria paid. Lacey has more unemployed friends than friends with jobs, and, like a third of workers her age, she’s still living with her parents. Here’s what Lacey said to me that day:

I wanted to be a teacher to help children get the education they need to get ahead. But now I feel like I’m just going backward myself. I’m really scared for the kids my age. We want to work. We need jobs.

For many Washington insiders, Lacey’s life is hard to fathom. They’re obsessed with the GDP and fixated on the budget deficit (as opposed to the trade deficit, which, if it were addressed, would improve the U.S. jobs situation). The fact that more than 26 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed just isn’t registering. And who in D.C. can grasp that there are just no jobs in this country—that, in fact, there is more than six workers for every one job?

Yet as we found in our recent survey of young people, “Young Workers: A Lost Decade,” the recession is flushing their earning power and their futures down the drain:

• More than one in three young workers say they are currently living at home with their parents.
• 31 percent of young workers reports being uninsured, up from 24 percent without health insurance coverage 10 years ago.
• One-third of young workers cannot pay the bills and seven in 10 do not have enough saved to cover two months of living expenses.

Brad DeLong, an economist at the University of California-Berkeley, has described the debilitating effects of the oxymoronic “jobless recovery” on young people: Every 1 percent increase in unemployment results in the loss of 7 percent of income for young people entering the job market.

Overall, the long-term damage of an ongoing recession, says Economic Policy Institute (EPI) economist John Irons, seriously damages the chances unemployed workers will get jobs. Irons cites a study in which some 35 percent of jobless workers don’t have jobs two years later and 13 percent had only part-time jobs. Meanwhile, 13 percent of those who did find full-time work were paid less than at the job they lost.

David Dayen lists the five points in our jobs proposal here. We’re pushing it with our partners: the NAACP; National Council of La Raza (NCLR); Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR); and the Center for Community Change. Together, we’re trying to light a fire under lawmakers on Capitol Hill—who, if they don’t act fast, likely will get a close up and personal look at the unemployment line themselves. We plan to press the White House and Congress to act on these recommendations immediately, starting at President Barack Obama’s Dec. 3 Jobs Summit.

Speaking at yesterday’s event, LCCR President Wade Henderson said the nation’s jobs crisis requires urgent attention—because it’s not just an economic imperative to put people to work, it’s a moral responsibility:

Make no mistake, for us this is the civil rights issue of the moment. Unless we resolve the national job crisis, it will make it hard to address all of our other priorities.

The 2008 campaigns mobilized young people and turned them out to vote. Lawmakers have an obligation to ensure they—and our nation—have a future. As Trumka says:

We owe Lacey our support. We owe Lacey and millions like her a future to be hopeful about—not one to be feared. Lacey and her generation could find their future permanently stunted, their potential never fully met. That’s unacceptable. We can’t afford to let that happen.

This is a cross-post from the Firedoglake blog.

Today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) officially released the Senate’s version of health care reform legislation, a major step toward the health care reform bill America has been waiting for. The first vote to begin debate on this historic bill could happen as soon as Saturday.

It’s an improved bill from the one passed by the Senate Finance Committee last month. It still falls short of an ideal bill but, like the one passed by the U.S. House earlier this month, it greatly increases coverage, helps make health insurance more affordable and includes a public health insurance option to compete with insurance companies.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says Reid has shown courage and leadership in bringing a good bill to the full Senate. Trumka says the bill is a step in the right direction, because it would cover 31 million people, control costs, include a public option and cut $127 billion from the deficit in the first decade. Trumka notes that unfortunately, while many of the bill’s financing mechanisms are fair, it is still partially funded through a tax on health benefits.

We commend Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for bringing forward a health care bill that moves us closer to the historic goal of health care for America—high quality, affordable health care for all in our rich nation. The Senate leadership bill takes the strongest steps yet to bring down costs. But the bill is not perfect. It retains a version of the excise tax from the Senate Finance Committee bill. We continue to believe that a tax on working families’ benefits is the wrong way to finance health care and we will work hard to eliminate this provision as the bill heads to the floor. 

You can read the bill here or at Open Congress. Read the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the bill here.

There still are some procedural hurdles toward passing this bill. To even begin debate in the Senate, 60 votes are needed for cloture—the initial procedural vote that allows a real vote to happen—on a “motion to proceed.” Contact your senators here and tell them you think we deserve a fair debate on health care reform.

Here’s more news from the fight for health care:

• The AFL-CIO’s Stewart Acuff, writing at the Huffington Post, says the Senate’s health care bill moves us “towards a just America” and promises union members will keep up the grassroots pressure.
• The Senate bill would have a number of immediate benefits, including beginning to close the “donut hole” gap in Medicare prescription drug coverage, preventing insurers from rescinding coverage when customers gets sick, stopping insurers from putting arbitrary lifetime limits on coverage, tax credits to small businesses to help them provide coverage, extending coverage for young people under parents’ insurance through age 26 and immediate assistance to uninsured people and early retirees.
• Ed Coyle, president of the Alliance for Retired Americans, praised Reid and other senators for moving in the right direction on health care.
• Mike Lux at Open Left looks at the process ahead in the Senate.
• J.P. Green looks at what the bill will do, and when, if it passes.
• Wonk Room compares the details of the Senate bill to the House bill and looks at how the new Senate bill stacks up against other proposals.

More than 400 flight attendants and 170 pilots now have strong union voices after voting to join the Flight Attendants-CWA( AFA-CWA) and the Air Line Pilots (ALPA) in three elections, recently certified by the National Mediation Board (NMB).

In the latest victory for airline workers, the 300 flight attendants at Compass Airlines voted 2-to-1 for AFA-CWA representation. Compass flight attendant Catriona Bagley, temporary president of the Compass local, says she and fellow flight attendants

look forward to negotiating a contract that will provide security, as well as advance our careers. As AFA-CWA members, we will have a voice at the bargaining table and work alongside management in creating a leading regional airline contract that recognizes our role as safety professionals.

Compass Airlines was formed in 2007 as a Northwest Airlink partner and now is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Delta Air Lines.

Last month, flight attendants at USA3000 Airlines voted to join AFA-CWA—96 of the 114 eligible voters chose AFA-CWA. AFA-CWA President Patricia Friend says the new union members recognize

the benefits of a legally binding contract and the opportunity to advance their career through AFA-CWA representation, and have joined together to achieve their goal. They spoke in favor of having a voice in their workplace, and management heard their message loud and clear.

Meanwhile, an overwhelming 91 percent of the 170 eligible flight deck crew members at Air Transport International (ATI) voted for ALPA. Capt. Tom Rogers, temporary chairman of the ATI unit of ALPA, says ATI pilots are

excited about working with other pilot groups and the ALPA staff, and leveraging the other resources ALPA provides to its members, to ensure ATI crewmembers can negotiate the contract they deserve and better protect our careers and industry.

Says ALPA President Capt. John Prater:

ATI crewmembers realized that the world’s largest pilots union will best represent their interests in all aspects of the aviation arena and give them every available resource to negotiate a fair contract.

The crew members of ATI fly McDonnell Douglas DC-8 and Boeing 767 aircraft for passenger, military and cargo operations around the world.

Click here to read about the NMB’s proposed changes to union elections in the air and rail industries that transportation unions say will make the election process more fair for workers.

Shockingly for American taxpayers, and sadly for the staggering 10.2 percent of Americans who are unemployed, it doesn’t even rank second.

That’s because Washington already has doled out hundreds of millions in stimulus funds to foreign renewable energy firms. Of the $1.05 billion in clean energy grants awarded by Washington, D.C., $849 million—84 percent—went to foreign wind companies, according to an analysis by Russ Choma of the Investigative Reporting Workshop. He wrote:

The cash grants were given for the installation of 1,763 megawatts of capacity—1,566 installed by foreign companies. Using the Renewable Energy Policy Project’s own numbers, as many as 4,500 manufacturing jobs may have been created overseas.

A strong, broad Buy American clause in the stimulus bill could have prevented the off-shoring of U.S. tax dollars intended to create jobs for unemployed Americans. My union, the United Steelworkers, and the AFL-CIO pushed hard for that language, and polls showed 86 percent of Americans supported it. Republicans and lobbyists for multinational corporations that wanted to spend U.S. tax money overseas opposed Buy American provisions.

Congress adopted weak, limited Buy American language. Now Washington, D.C., exports stimulus dollars to create jobs in foreign countries. 

Some of the foreign wind firms that got stimulus funds have American subsidiaries. But most of them shipped major components for wind farms to the United States. That means American stimulus dollars employed foreign workers. One Spanish company, Iberdrola S.A., got $545 million from U.S. taxpayers.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a Democrat from New York, denounced the request to use U.S. tax dollars to create jobs in China and demanded the Obama administration deny funding. But it’s too late for the $849 million in stimulus dollars already given away to foreign wind companies. American tax dollars, meant to create jobs and nurture a green energy industry in the United States, are gone with the wind.

Lavishing stimulus funds on foreign businesses is tragic for another reason: Those overseas companies are competitors to fledgling U.S. firms that were supposed to get the money. President Obama has said he wants the United States to be “the world’s leading exporter of renewable energy.” That’s not going to happen if the United States pays European and Chinese manufacturers to import wind turbines.

Congress set aside at least $3 billion in the stimulus bill for renewable energy projects. That investment would have two benefits. Growth in renewable energy—from sources such as windmills and solar cells—could reduce dangerous pollution from burning fossil fuels. In addition, the Blue Green Alliance estimated in its report, “Building the Clean Energy Assembly Line,” that U.S. manufacturers could create 850,000 jobs if Congress adopted a national standard requiring 25 percent of electricity to be generated with renewable sources by 2025.

The key, obviously, is that the wind turbines and solar cells constructed to meet that standard couldn’t be imported for the jobs to be created in the United States. The U.S. industry, however, needs the kind of help foreign governments give their clean energy manufacturers. The Blue Green Alliance report notes:

Without new policies promoting domestic manufacturing, an unnecessarily large portion of these jobs will remain overseas.

In a July 13 story, Keith Bradsher of the New York Times described China’s policy to protect and promote its renewable energy industries: “China is shielding its clean energy sector while it grows to a point where it can take on the world.” That includes, Bradsher recounted, a competition last spring where China disqualified all foreign bidders on technicalities for 25 contracts to supply wind turbines. Beijing then awarded the contracts to seven Chinese companies, including some that had never built a turbine.

There’s no reason except a desire to shoot itself in the foot for the United States not to protect and promote its own renewable energy industries. “The Building the Clean Energy Assembly Line” report provides recommendations for Congress to cultivate American renewable energy industries, including long-term investment tax credits, adopting a national standard requiring a minimum percentage of electricity be generated through renewable energy, passing cap and trade legislation and providing low-interest financing.  

After the Texas windmill incident, I wrote Sen. Schumer asking for bold action to support U.S. clean energy manufacturing. In the letter copied to all members of Congress, I told him we must expand and accelerate the availability of incentives for manufacturing wind turbines and other clean energy technologies—here, in the United States. One important way to do that is for Congress to extend to the manufacturing of components like turbines the funding incentives that are now provided for production of clean energy.

Clearly, another method would be to Buy American. When constructing a wind farm in Texas, why would taxpayers give their money to support importing the turbines from China or Spain when there are perfectly good turbine manufacturers here in the United States?

The Texas windmill farm developer announced this week that its Chinese partner plans to construct a $50 million turbine factory in the United States, according to a story in the New York Times.  But that facility won’t supply the turbines for the project that the partnership wants $436 million in stimulus funds to support. Those would come from China. So, in the end, it still means nearly half a billion in U.S. tax dollars would create 2,000 turbine-building jobs in China. 

When China passed its $600 billion economic stimulus bill this summer, it adopted “Buy China” provisions. Obviously, as far as wind turbines were concerned, it was implementing a “Buy China” policy before that.

Is the United States going to continue thwarting itself and tilting at windmills or is it going to adopt and enforce a robust Buy American policy and build some?

Workers, community leaders and religious activists are holding rallies, prayer vigils and other actions in more than 40 cities around the country today as part of a National Day of Action to Stop Wage Theft.

Wage theft is a national epidemic, which robs millions of workers of billions of dollars they’ve worked for but never seen, says Kim Bobo, executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) and author of the book Wage Theft in America.

During a Capitol Hill press conference this morning, Bobo said:

Too many workers can’t buy a Thanksgiving turkey because employers have stolen their wages. Wage theft is not a small, isolated situation. It’s a national epidemic. 

Wage theft affects workers like Cleve Williams, who worked for a city contractor in Cincinnati. Williams told the press conference he was fired after he organized his fellow workers to fight for a living wage. The city’s law required the comapny, which holds a city contract, to pay a minimum wage. But Williams says it took three years to get the wages raised to the legal level.  

Bobo cited a study by the National Employment Law Project, which shows how widespread wage theft has become. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 4,387 workers in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City, a group of respected academics estimates that 68 percent of the workers surveyed are routinely denied proper overtime pay and often are paid less than minimum wage. The average low-wage worker lost more than $2,600 in annual income due to the violations, 15 percent of their annual earnings. Click here to read the report, “Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers.”

AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker, speaking to the press conference by phone, said the nation’s economy suffers when millions of workers are denied their just pay. Unions are the first line of defense against wage theft, she added. With a union contract, workers don’t have to worry about not getting paid for overtime or not getting a decent, living wage and other benefits.

Wage theft is not only an economic issue, but a moral one, says Thomas Shellabarger, of the Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

 As we pause this Thanksgiving to remember all that we are thankful for, we also remember the workers across the nation whose wages are stolen and struggle to put a meal on their holiday table. We must put an end to this national scandal of wage theft.

AFL-CIO President Emeritus John Sweeney received the top honor at last night’s 5th annual American Rights at Work Eleanor Roosevelt Awards for his long-term dedication on behalf of workers’ freedom to form unions.

Business Leaders for a Fair Economy and “West Wing” actor Richard Schiff also were recognized at last night’s event in Washington, D.C., where hundreds of labor activists and our allies gathered to celebrate their outstanding leadership.

Sweeney credited the union members, activists and advocacy groups who make up the coalition for making real progress on the Employee Free Choice Act:

You are the front-line fighters for social and economic justice, working towards a better future for America’s working families.

Speakers noted the tough fight ahead for passage of the bill but said we are closer than ever to passing the Employee Free Choice Act and making sure that the freedom to form a union and bargain for a better life is a reality.

Kimberly Freeman Brown, the new executive director of American Rights at Work, said Sweeney, Schiff and the business leaders have been a critical part of a growing movement for labor law reform:

This year’s honorees have played an important role in fighting for the Employee Free Choice Act. We are serious about restoring our middle class—we recognize a vital labor movement is critical to this goal. We are unified in our effort to make the American Dream an achievable aspiration—a fair day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay, good benefits, safe conditions and dignity and respect on the job.

Along with other “West Wing” cast members, Schiff joined workers from around the country in the Faces of the Employee Free Choice Act campaign this year. He said while he, Bradley Whitford and Martin Sheen helped draw attention to the cause, the people who really deserve the award are those who have fought against great obstacles for a voice on the job and a better life for their co-workers:

I don’t have the right to speak for the real heroes, but we live in a culture that listens to celebrities and the least I can do with the spotlight is to shift it over to the people who deserve it. I’ve been a member of many unions, and I know what it means to have the protection of a union and a fair wage.

In a powerful acceptance speech, Roger Smith, the CEO of American Income Life and chairman of Business Leaders for a Fair Economy, said he and other business owners realize the whole economy benefits when workers can bargain for a fair share. Smith and business leaders like him have been able to succeed by working with, not against, their employees:

This is a community that believes in workers’ rights and the value of shared prosperity. We believe that shared prosperity starts with closing the ever-growing wage disparities.

By honoring workers’ right to organize, business gives workers a chance at real change, and that lets business grow and thrive.

Smith said far too many people equate “CEO” with greed, irresponsibility and disdain for the hard work of the employees who build companies. He criticized CEOs who have profited while driving their companies into the ground, those who have raided pension funds and those who have squandered millions on union-busting consultants and attacks on their own employees.

The art on the left is just one of six fantastic submissions to the Public Option Please (POP) contest, launched earlier this fall to cut through the Washington Beltway “insider” clutter and provide a vehicle for artists to make the moral case for health care reform and promote a public health insurance option as a vital part of health care reform.

You can take part in the contest by helping choose a winner from among the six finalists. You have until midnight tomorrow to make your selection in the contest, sponsored by POP, a non-profit, grassroots organization committed to achieving affordable health care for all Americans. Click here to vote.

The six finalists (click here to see all and vote) were selected earlier this month by a panel of judges, including AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker. The Public Choice Award winner will be announced Saturday along with the several juried prizes chosen by the judges. The winning art works will be featured on posters, T-shirts and stickers.

The first-prize winner will receive $1,000, second-prize, $750, third-prize, $500, and the Public Choice winner will receive $750. Joining Holt Baker on the judges’ panel:

• Arianna Huffington, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post.
• Jesse Dylan, an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and artist.
• Marshall Ganz, a longtime organizer with the Farm Workers and lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
• Aaron Rose, a film director, art show curator, musician and writer.

The POP campaign is working with musicians, actors, artists and social justice advocates to engage the public in a way that makes the public option part of a larger, longer civil rights battle for universal health care. Click here for more information.

Members of UNITE HERE are walking out and digging in to fight for fair contracts at hotels across the country. Some 650 workers at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco went on strike this morning and will remain out until the first shift on Saturday morning.

Members of UNITE HERE Local 2 voted by a 92 percent to 8 percent margin to authorize strikes at any of the 31 upscale hotels in San Francisco. Despite earning record profits over the past five years, the hotels are using the recession as an excuse to demand changes in eligibility for the employees’ health care plan that would eliminate coverage or put it out of reach for many workers.

UNITE HERE contracts covering some 7,500 workers at 37 hotels in Chicago and 9,000 at 31 San Francisco hotels expired in August. Talks are continuing with the largest employers in each city. The hotel management companies are pressing for contracts that would slash health and retirement benefits and would increase workloads.

Says Francesca Ramos, a 19-year seamstress at the St. Francis:

They just want to use the economy as an excuse to cut back, even though we know they’re making big money.

Says Local 2 President Mike Casey, also in San Francisco:

There has never been a question of whether [the Westin St. Francis] can afford what’s on the table. The question is whether these companies will make a business decision that’s in the best interests of workers, the city and the hotels themselves.

This is the third three-day strike at a San Francisco hotel in as many weeks. Workers previously staged strikes at the Grand Hyatt and the Palace hotels.

Penny Pritzker, who chairs four major corporations, including the parent of the Grand Hyatt, is a vocal opponent of workers’ freedom to form unions, strongly opposing the Employee Free Choice Act.

Earlier this year, Pritzker, who serves on President Obama’s White House Economic Recovery Advisory Board, joined with other billionaires to fight the Employee Free Choice Act. She also served as the Obama campaign’s national finance chairwoman.

Click here to learn more about Penny Pritzker.

Meanwhile, contract talks in Chicago have stalled and are far from settlement, union leaders say. “Things have gotten really bad,” Annemarie Strassel, spokeswoman for UNITE HERE Local 1, told the Chicago Tribune.

I think that employers see the bad economy as an opportunity to ram through proposals.

In recent months, the Boston Hyatt fired all 98 housekeepers at its three nonunion hotels, replacing them with lesser-paid temporary workers with no benefits. Since then, these housekeepers have been engaged in the fight of their lives. Workers in cities around the nation have rallied in support of the fired workers.

For more information on UNITE HERE’s campaign for fair hotel contracts, go to www.unitehere2.org.

More than 1,100 graduate student employees at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) won protection of their tuition waivers and other key improvements in a tentative deal reached with the university last night following a two-day strike.

The Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO/UIUC), an AFT affiliate, says in a statement the three-year agreement secures the “four pillars” of the union’s contract demands and “represents a major victory for labor in the state of Illinois and the United States.”

Graduate student Sarah Hennebohl told the Daily Illini, the school newspaper:

Without a tuition waiver, I can’t pay for anything. I can’t even apply for a credit card. I don’t want to have to discontinue my education.

In addition to protecting tuition waivers for the university’s teaching assistants and graduate assistants, the new contract includes an additional two weeks of unpaid parental leave, increases the university’s contribution to health care premiums and provides a 10 percent increase in the minimum salary over the next three years.

The graduate employees—who teach nearly a quarter of the undergraduate classes at UIUC—began their strike Monday after months of unsuccessful negotiations, while the university refused to include the tuition waiver protections in the collective bargaining agreement. They had been working without a contract since August.

In a letter of support Monday, AFT President Randi Weingarten praised the graduate employees for taking action “that will result in better working conditions for you and that will in turn ensure a high-quality education for the students you help to educate.”

You are not only standing for yourselves, but you are standing up for thousands of graduate employees around the nation who may one day find themselves in a similar situation. The AFT has long held that universities should provide tuition waivers as a condition of employment for graduate employees.

A vote on the new contract will be held later this month.