Evergreene Digest A Journal of Progress for the Rest of Us

Last year, more than 2.8 million workers were victims of mass layoffs or plant closings that should have fallen under the 1988 WARN Act, which requires employers to give workers and communities advance notice before shutting down. But, as a new AFL-CIO report reveals, the plant closing “has proven severely flawed.”

Numerous reports have concluded that most layoffs are not subject to WARN Act requirements; few employers act in compliance with the law; and penalties for noncompliance are so lax that they do not act as deterrents.

The AFL-CIO report, “The Public Availability of WARN Notices: Lack of Accessibility and Disclosure Calls for Reform,” examines the difficulty in obtaining WARN notice information that can be vital in planning for the economic and jobs impact of a mass layoff or plant closure.

With access to comprehensive and easy-to-use data bases of past layoffs and plant closures, organizations working to increase employment in states can look for trends in past economic dislocations as they chart their paths forward.

We presented the report to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration today.

Essentially, the WARN Act requires employers with more than 100 full-time workers to provide 60 days advance notice of a plant closing to local and state officials, the workers and their union.

Community leaders and workers who are given this advance notice can then work to mitigate the effects of the job losses by offering retraining programs, providing social services and working to avoid layoffs altogether.

But nearly each state has its own set of rules and regulations on handling WARN notices, which the report describes as a:

flawed jumble of websites, offices, and email accounts, which organizations and individuals must keep track of to obtain information on economic dislocations across the country.

Most states have Rapid Response Teams to assist employers, workers and communities during a mass layoff or plant closing. But the report  found that in many cases when those coordinators tried to push for easier and more WARN notice public disclosure, the coordinators reported they had:

encountered pressure from businesses and politicians when they tried to push for disclosure on websites.

The report examines states with difficult or flawed disclosure rules and states with best practices and makes a series of recommendations to the Labor Department, including:

• Issuing a regulation, training and employment notice or guidance letter requiring states to forward any WARN notices received to the Department of Labor for inclusion in a centralized, publicly accessible database.
• Developing a standardized format for WARN notices and conducting an educational campaign to encourage adoption of the format in the submission of notices.
• Adopting the best practices described within this report for the handling of WARN information within that centralized database.
• Connecting WARN data to other site-specific employment information using unique, site-specific nine-digit identification numbers.

Click here for a copy of the full report.

AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow Jennifer Angarita contributed to this report.

As Social Security turns 75 years old Aug. 14, the nation’s most successful social program likely will be under attack by the federal budget deficit commission, which, by all accounts, is considering benefits cuts and raising the retirement age.

Today, more than 60 groups, including the AFL-CIO, announced the creation of the coalition Strengthen Social Security…Don’t Cut It. The group is launching a major mobilization to push back the commission’s phony assertions, backed by the Wall Street spin machine, that claim Social Security is a major component of the budget deficit and is teetering on the brink of disaster.

In a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., the group outlined plans to build support in Congress to fight benefits cuts and press candidates this election to pledge to fight any move to raise the retirement age or privatization scheme. Says Ed Coyle, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans:

The Strengthen Social Security campaign unites everyone here to improve—not weaken—Social Security. We are united against any cuts in benefits, such as increases in the retirement age, and to any form of privatization of Social Security.

We will stand united if the commission calls for any cuts to Social Security. We are launching a major lobbying campaign for Congress to block their recommendations.

Speaking at the press conference, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said that raising the retirement age is:

a benefit cut, plain and simple. It is a cut that is unnecessary and one that Americans can ill-afford.

He also says it unfairly singles out workers in demanding physical occupations,

workers like my father who spent his life in the mines and couldn’t work another day by the time he qualified for Social Security—and those older workers who may no longer be able to find work due to age discrimination.

Social Security benefits are the largest source of retirement income for most retirees. For six of 10 seniors, Social Security represents more than half of their income. In addition, nearly one-half of older unmarried women and widows, and one-third of all beneficiaries, have little other than Social Security and rely on its monthly benefit for 90 percent or more of their retirement income. Says Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW):

Social Security is the mainstay for millions of older women. Every year, a major share of the nearly 24 million women age 62 and older who receive benefits are kept out of poverty because of Social Security. Often that monthly Social Security check is their only income.

A new Gallup Poll out today shows that by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, Americans oppose raising the retirement age and, by an even bigger margin, say the best way to strengthen Social Security is to ensure the wealthiest pay their fair share.

Currently, all workers pay the Social Security payroll tax on the first $106,000 of their earnings. Earnings above $106,000 are exempt from the Social Security payroll tax. That means a grocery clerk or warehouse worker pays a bigger chunk of income to Social Security than a hedge fund manager. By a 67 percent to 30 percent margin, the public supports raising the Social Security payroll tax to cover all earnings.

Also taking part in the press conference, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee says the deficit commission is trying to

turn Social Security into a scapegoat for the deficit. Social Security is not the  problem.

Social Security—with a $2.6 trillion surplus projected to grow to $4.3 trillion by 2023—is not the cause of the nation’s deficit. Says O’Neill:

The fiscal commission should address the real causes of the deficit—unfunded wars, irresponsible tax breaks for the wealthiest, and an economic crisis caused by financial regulatory failures.

This fall, says Coyle, coalition members will be “demanding clear, unequivocal answers from the candidates on where they stand on Social Security.”

As McEntee warns congressional candidates:

If you break promise from 75 years ago, we will hold you accountable. Keep your hands off our Social Security.

In a major profile of Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA/NNU), Bloomberg Businessweek writes:

DeMoro is expert at dishing out political pain with a flourish, a talent that has endeared her to her 86,000 constituents in the California Nurses Association. Under DeMoro’s leadership, the union has recast itself from a special-interest trade group to a consumer and patient advocate that lobbies hard—and volubly—for universal health care and patients’ rights.

“Nurses are the last line of defense for patients,” says DeMoro from a seat in her cactus-filled office at the union’s Oakland headquarters. “This isn’t about just bread-and-butter issues for registered nurses, this is about living in a good and a just society.”

Click here for the full article.

Most recently, CNA/NNU created a crowned and scepter-carrying Queen Meg parody of Meg Whitman, the billionaire former eBay CEO and California Republican gubernatorial candidate, a sharp-elbowed spoof that DeMoro says is a sharp poke at:

the new corporate aristocracy, they’re used to unilateral control, no democracy.

Just hours before Arizona’s controversial anti-immigrant law was to go into effect, a federal judge today blocked one of its most contentious provisions—the requirement that police stop and question anyone they have “reasonable suspicion” is undocumented.   

The law does not define “reasonable suspicion,” a fact that many opponents say is a carte blanche for racial profiling.

Earlier this month, the federal government filed suit to block Arizona from implementing the new law, which has drawn heavy criticism from civil rights organizations, immigrant groups, unions and the religious community.     

U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton also blocked provisions of the law making it a crime to fail to apply for or carry alien registration papers or for “an unauthorized alien to solicit, apply for, or perform work,” and a provision “authorizing the warrantless arrest of a person” if there is reason to believe he or she might be subject to deportation.

Arizona is expected to appeal the temporary injunction ruling, however, and most observers believe the case is eventually going to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a statement the Justice Department said the court “ruled correctly.”

While we understand the frustration of Arizonans with the broken immigration system, a patchwork of state and local policies would seriously disrupt federal immigration enforcement and would ultimately be counterproductive.

When the suit was filed, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said:

The solution to our broken immigration system must protect all workers and provide a fair path toward citizenship for undocumented workers already living and working in the United States. It must address the unique circumstances faced by undocumented students who were brought to the United States by their parents long ago. It must include an independent commission to determine our society’s genuine need for more workers that does not afford employers a steady stream of exploitable labor. And it must include a mechanism to ensure that employers are held accountable when they break the law.

Yesterday, we reported that the nation’s biggest health insurers are “sparing no expense to weaken” the new health care reform law by lobbying the state regulators who are writing new regulations to ensure consumers’ premium dollars are spent on real medical care.

Today, a new report from the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) reveals the same insurance giants are discussing forming a $20 million, “nonprofit” front group to influence regulations, sway voters and back industry-friendly candidates.

The companies, according to CPI, are Aetna Inc., Cigna Corp., Humana Inc., United HealthCare Inc. and WellPoint Inc. Sources told CPI they:

expect millions of dollars will be pumped into issue advertising in a number of races where candidates sympathetic to health industry concerns have a shot at winning….Overall, the insurers are expected to focus on swaying about two dozen close House contests, says one source.

Keep in mind that during the health care debate there was near unanimous Republican opposition to the bill and the strong insurance reforms the industry is now fighting. Senate and House Republican leaders have marked repeal of health care reform as a top item on their agenda if they win back control of Congress.

During last year’s contentious health care debate in Congress, writes CPI:

these same five insurers—teamed up to channel between $10 million and $20 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to underwrite a negative advertising drive to block the legislation.

The front group under discussion would be what is known as a 501(c)(4) group, which, says CPI:

is legally allowed to engage in lobbying and election-related work. Donors to this type of nonprofit don’t have to be publicly disclosed.

Click here for more on the industry’s drive to weaken new health insurance rules and here for a report from Health Care for America Now!

     

It’s not quite as scary as looking up and seeing Godzilla lurking over the city skyline, but a two-story-tall Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) staring down from the side of a downtown Louisville office building caused a few surprised gasps Monday night.

In a bit of guerilla theater, AFSCME projected a 30-second silent video reminding passers-by about McConnell’s role as chief architect of the Republican’s obstructionist battle plan. The Party of No’s obstructionist tactics cost more than 2.5 million long-term jobless workers their unemployment insurance (UI) and blocked aid to state and local governments that would save or create nearly a million jobs for teachers, public employees, police officers, firefighters and others.

AFSCME chose Louisville because McConnell was there to speak before the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). The group had just released a report that said without federal aid, more than half the nation’s states will see their budget shortfalls grow by as much as $72 billion next fiscal year, forcing cuts in vital services and jobs to make up for the shortfalls.

McConnell’s words of advice to the state legislators desperately scrambling to keep their budgets afloat? He was opposed to further federal stimulus help for the states and, in a nutshell, told state lawmakers: Get used to it—you all have been spoiled for years by federal funds.

Along with the video that was moved about and was projected on several buildings, AFSCME took out a full-page ad (click here) in the Louisville Courier-Journal telling McConnell, “It’s Time to End the Obstruction,” and highlighting editorials from around the country calling on Congress to approve badly needed federal aid for cash-strapped states.

Mine operators around the country, like Massey Energy, owner of the deadly Upper Big Branch coal mine where 29 miners were killed in April, routinely escape tougher enforcement by appealing serious safety violations to a federal agency that’s bogged down with a 17,000-case backlog.

It can take the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission (FMSHRC) more than two years before it finally adjudicates a case. During the appeals process, operators like Massey with troubling safety records avoid being placed under a stricter safety watch because of their pattern of violations.

Last night, as part of an emergency supplemental funding bill, the U.S. House approved $22 million for FMSHRC and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to reduce the backlog of appeals. Says Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the Education and Labor Committee:

It is clear that the seemingly indiscriminate appeals of nearly every significant safety violation by some mine operators are undermining important enforcement tools and putting miners’ lives at risk. This additional funding approved today will reverse a backlog that has been allowed to pile up since the Bush administration and is a step in the right direction in holding some of our most dangerous mine operators accountable.

Miller says it takes an average of 30 months to adjudicate a contested violation. In a preliminary report on the Upper Big Branch blast, MSHA says that Massey “contested the majority of its serious violation citations” that could have led to putting the mine under the tougher safety watch before the April 5 explosion.

From 2009 through March this year, MSHA inspectors cited the Upper Big Branch mine for more than 600 safety violations, nearly 40 percent  of which were classified as “significant and substantial.” Also the Massey mine’s rate for repeated serious violations was 19 times higher than the national average, according to the report. But because Massey appealed the serious violations, it was able to avoid the stricter enforcement and inspections that a pattern of violations finding triggers.

The Senate already approved the bill and President Obama will sign it.

After spending tens of millions of dollars trying to kill the new health care reform law, the nation’s big health insurance companies now, says Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), are:

sparing no expense to weaken this new law and the protection it promises to America’s consumers.

According to a new report by the coalition Health Care for America Now (HCAN), big insurers are trying to gut proposed new rules that require they spend a certain amount of premium dollars on actual medical care, not wasteful administration, marketing or executive pay and bonuses.

The medical care cost benchmark under the Affordable Health Care for America Act is known as the medical-loss ratio (MLR). It is set at a minimum of 80 percent of premiums for individual and small employer plans and 85 percent of premiums for large employer plans. Insurers that fail to meet those MLRs must rebate the difference to enrollees.

The new MLR rules are being established by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), which is made up of insurance regulators from the states. According to the HCAN report, the America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association and their member insurers:

want to redefine MLRs by pressuring the NAIC to give insurers vast discretion over what expenses they may classify as clinical and administrative costs. Already, Wellpoint Inc., the nation’s largest private health insurer by enrollment, has reclassified $500 million in administrative costs as medical expenses.

Rockefeller says the insurance industry is “furiously lobbying” the NAIC to write the new rules in a way that will:

allow them to do business as they did before the passage of health reform. The resources health insurance companies are throwing into the effort to weaken the medical loss ratio appear almost endless.

On HCAN’s The Now! Blog, HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome writes:

The definition of “medical care” is at the core of this fight….So they want to change the definition of “medical care” to include things that aren’t medical care and that have never been considered as such. And the insurance companies are shameless in just how far they will go. They really are trying to have “underwriting,” the process by which sick people are weeded out of eligibility for coverage, defined as a medical expense! Along with claims processing, call centers and other expenses that aren’t about the actual delivery of care.

According to the report, if the new law had been on the books in 2009, the six largest for-profit health insurance companies would have been required to refund $1.9 billion for that year alone. That would have represented only a fraction of their massive profits. The top five for-profit health insurers alone recorded $12.2 billion in profits in 2009.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who helped write the medical cost requirements into the bill, says health care reform:

will bring coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans, which will bring lots of new business to private insurers. We need strong regulations for medical-loss ratios so Americans can be confident that they’re getting value for their premium dollars.

  BP CEO got a golden parachute. These Gulf pelicans weren’t so lucky.      

When most of us screw up big time, we pay for it, instead of getting paid for it. If it was the other way around, I’d be a rich man, sort of like ousted BP CEO Tony Hayward who is finally getting his life back. He is also the latest example of what seems to be the new corporate game of “fail big, win big.”

Hayward, who whined about the time and toll the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster was taking on his life, is walking away with a tidy severance check of $1.6 million, a pension of more than $16 million and a chance to cash in on BP stocks that, if the company’s share price recovers from its recent battering, could mean millions more, according to news reports.

Hayward’s platinum parachute is nowhere near the biggest prize for recent corporate failures. Remember the Big Banks—who can really forget—that blew up the nation’s economy and racked up hundreds of billions of dollars in losses and even more in jobs destroyed and lives shattered?

Last week, a new report found that at the depths of the financial meltdown in late 2008, a group of 17 banks that pocketed money from the Bush Big Bank Bailout fund paid out more than $1.6 billion in unmerited and undeserved bonuses to the executives, hedge fund managers and traders who were at the controls when the economy crashed and burned.

The report by Kenneth Feinberg, appointed by the Obama administration to examine executive pay at firms that received bailout funds, cited Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, AIG and several others for the lavish bonuses.

The Feinberg report follows last year’s findings by  New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that nine of the “too big to fail” banks and institutions that posted $81 billion in 2008 losses before going on the federal bailout dole, paid out $1 million-plus 2008 bonuses to more than 5,000 of their traders and bankers. Talk about pay for non-performance.

If you’re a Big Oil CEO, Big Bank exec, or corporate chief who screws up major big time, eh, don’t worry. No problem. No consequences. Here’s a little something to get you through the hard times.

But for the rest of us, it’s “pack up your things and don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out.”

A new report from the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) warns that if Congress does not extend Medicaid assistance to help states operate the low-income health care program, the states’ budget crises and budget gaps will grow even larger.

The Medicaid funding assistance program, known as FMAP, was originally included in legislation to extend unemployment insurance (UI) benefits for the long-term jobless that Senate Republicans blocked for more than two months. The filibuster against the UI bill was finally broken last week, but the Medicaid money was not included in the bill.

After passage of the extended UI bill, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee said:

Republicans continue to block emergency aid for state and local governments, funding that the majority of U.S. governors have specifically requested, and almost half have factored into their state budgets. Without this funding, nearly a million more jobs will be lost in the private and public sectors.

The NCSL report shows that at least 25 states assumed an extension of the enhanced FMAP funding for their 2011 budgets. Without it, according to the report, budget gaps could grow by more than $12 billion in the current fiscal year and as much as $72 billion next fiscal year, forcing cuts in vital services and jobs to make up for the shortfalls.

Corina Eckl, NCSL’s fiscal program director, says while there are some signs of economic recovery:

[G]limmers of improvement are tarnished by looming problems. States are in a tenuous fiscal position, teetering between delicate revenue improvement and the end of the federal stimulus.

Dr. Paula Peinovich has been appointed president of the National Labor College (NLC). She has served as interim president since January and will serve a three-year-term as head of the nation’s only fully accredited institution devoted to educating working families and labor activists.

Peinovich holds a Ph.D. in higher education policy from the University of Pennsylvania and has devoted her career to increasing access for underserved learners. Says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:

Dr. Peinovich’s outstanding track record as a teacher, scholar and administrator makes her uniquely qualified to lead the only institution of higher education in America that is solely devoted to the needs of working people and their unions.

Peinovich has served as both provost and president of Walden University, a distance education graduate university based in Minneapolis. She is the former president of the Association for Continuing Higher Education. Previously, she spent more than a decade as vice president of academic affairs at Excelsior College, another online institution based in Albany, N.Y. A former college English instructor and AFT local union officer, Peinovich says:

As someone with a passion for lifelong learning, I’ve found a true home at the National Labor College. The faculty and staff here are outstanding, and it is a rare privilege to work with our student body, who come to the NLC from all walks of life and from all corners of the U.S. and Canada to pursue their dreams.

Peinovich says the NLC has a wide and accessible range of programs to meet “adult learners on their own terms.”

With our new green workplace representative program, flexible degree programs offered through a distance learning model, union skills continuing education classes and certificate programs, the Labor College is extremely well-positioned to offer our student body of adult learners a wide range of educational choices for the future.

She succeeds William Scheuerman, who retired earlier this year after serving as NLC president since February 2008.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank discovered what those of us who watched Massey Energy CEO Donald Blankenship operate over the years have known for some time.

Blankenship, who has made a career of busting unions, violating mine safety laws, attacking environmentalists and shilling for the far right and corporate America, has no shame.

Blankenship didn’t hit the national stage until one of his coal mines blew up and killed 29 West Virginia miners in April. In the wake of the Upper Big Branch disaster, Blankenship has sued the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), implied the deadly blast was God’s fault and told the government to keep its hands off patriotic business like Massey. Writes Milbank:

If Don Blankenship had any sense of shame, he’d crawl into a mine and hide.

But Blankenship must have no sense of shame, because he visited the National Press Club last week to complain about “knee-jerk political reactions” to mine deaths and to demand that the Obama administration lighten regulations on his dirty and dangerous company. “We need to let businesses function as businesses,” an indignant Blankenship proclaimed. “Corporate business is what built America, in my opinion, and we need to let it thrive by, in a sense, leaving it alone.”

While Milbank powerfully indicts Blankenship’s incredible arrogance, he also writes that the coal baron is a poster child for the corporate world’s newly aggressive campaign to paint government as the heavy-handed bully with crushing safety, tax and environmental laws that is beating up these poor companies that are just trying to save the nation’s economy.

It’s easy to paint Blankenship as a villain, with his moustache, double chin and rough edges (he twice lamented the “abstract poverty” in the world). But his theme—and his complete absence of corporate responsibility—is very much the message corporate America has adopted in this mid-term campaign year: If you’ve got a problem, blame the government.

Milbank then goes on to blow up the myths the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “a sort of radicalized corporate Tea Party,” and the Blankenships and other Big Business bullhorns are spreading. Click here to read his full column.

Union members negotiate a contract that keeps an Oregon Daimler Trucks plant from closing, and more news from the “Bargaining Digest Weekly.” The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily, bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 1,300 subscribers. Union leaders can register for this service through our website, Bargaining@Work.

SETTLEMENTS
Multiple, Daimler Trucks North America: Good news in Portland, Ore., where a Daimler Trucks North America plant slated for closure will remain open after union members ratified new three-year contracts with the company. Most of the nearly 700 workers are members of Machinists (IAM) Local 1005, and others are represented by Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) Local 1094, Teamsters Local 305 and SEIU Local 49.

USW, Vale Inco: Some 3,000 United Steelworkers (USW) members at Vale Inco in Canada approved a five-year contract, ending a yearlong strike, one of the longest in Canadian history.

ALPA, Jazz Air: Pilots at Canadian airline Jazz Air ratified a new six-year contract. The 1,500 pilots are represented by the Air Line Pilots (ALPA).

USW, AK Steel: Members of USW Local 1865 in Ashland, Ky., ratified a three-year contract extension July 9 at AK Steel. The 750 workers covered by the contract will receive annual lump sum payments of $1,500, and the hourly wage will be increased by $1 in September of this year.

UWUA, DTE Energy: Members of Utility Workers (UWUA) Local 223 in Michigan ratified a new three-year contract with DTE Energy. The contract covers nearly 4,000 workers.

IUOE, Mid-American Regional Bargaining Association: Members of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 150 in Chicago ratified a new three-year agreement last week.

ALPA, Spirit Airlines: Pilots at Spirit Airlines last week ratified a new five-year contract, which includes raises for the 500 members of ALPA. The contract came after four years of negotiations and a five-day strike last month.

USW, Alcan Aluminum: Members of USW Local 5668 ratified a two-year contract with Alcan Aluminum in Ravenswood, W.Va. The contract maintains current health care benefits and provides the 700 workers with annual $0.35/hour wage increases.

UFCW, Shaw’s: A four-month strike by United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) warehouse workers at Shaw’s in New England ended with a settlement July 8. More than 300 workers fought to save their benefits and pay with the support of the AFL-CIO and Teamsters.

UFCW, Multiple Supermarkets: The BNA Daily Labor Report (subscription required) reported that members of UFCW Local 1500 in New York ratified 39-month contracts with King Kullen, Pathmark and Stop & Shop supermarkets. The 16,000 workers will receive weekly wage increases of between $60 and $110 over the term and will maintain their current health care co-pay of $20.

NEGOTIATIONS
UNITEHERE!, Hyatt: The same day thousands of hotel workers protested Hyatt hotels around the country, members of UNITEHERE! Local 483 in Monterey and Carmel, Calif., reached a tentative agreement with the company. No details of the deal covering 400 workers at two properties have been released.

MNA-NNU, North Adams Regional Hospital: In Massachusetts, North Adams MNA-NNU nurses voted to authorize a strike if necessary.  Management is demanding the union agree to a gag order provision that would not permit nurses to speak out about patient care, working conditions and staffing.

WORK STOPPAGES
IAM, Pratt & Whitney The IAM earlier this month won a significant court battle to save 1,000 Pratt & Whitney jobs in Connecticut. The long fight to save the jobs will soon move to the bargaining table. The IAM contract expires Dec. 5.

Disclaimer: This information is being provided for your information only.  As it is compiled from published news reports, not from individual unions, we cannot vouch for either its completeness or accuracy; readers who desire further information should directly contact the union involved.

     

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka laid out a 21st century U.S. economic policy at today’s lunchtime keynote session at Netroots Nation before a diverse crowd of 2,000 progressive political activists. Restoring the nation’s middle class in part means returning  to a “real economy”—one  in which we make things, rather than move around complex financial products, Trumka said. Strengthening U.S. manufacturing must be part of the process to reverse five decades of stagnating wages.

We have to think big and we have to go big. We have to let go of this notion that we can’t compete in this world. We can compete. Other countries are already doing this and so can we. We can’t get left behind.

Speaking as part of a panel on Building a Progressive Economic Vision, Trumka outlined the need for the the nation to invest in infrastructure, implement fair trade policies, change our tax policies, enact comprehensive immigration reform and reform our broken labor laws. The full panel included consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren, progressive Florida Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson, Center for Community Change Executive Director Deepak Bhargava, Green for All’s Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins and National People’s Action Executive Director George Goehl. (Watch it here.)

Trumka pointed out how  the United States  is falling behind other countries in creating green technology. While our nation is building 500 miles of high-speed rail, China has begun construction of 5,000 miles and is outspending the United States 2:1 on green technology, making it even far urgent for the United States to invest in green jobs and high-end manufacturing infrastructure now before we fall further behind.

For those who say we can’t afford to make these investments, Trumka explained how we can do it with a financial speculation tax that encourages capital to invest in concrete things and discourages unproductive speculation or paper pushing for a quick buck, all the while raising more than $100 billion. Trumka made it clear that lawmakers must not reduce the federal deficit at the expense of creating jobs.

Next up, Trumka described the need for anintegrated trade policy. The nation can’t focus solely on increasing exports, we need to focus on net exports. We can’t open our markets to other countries who won’t open theirs. We can’t support countries that murder trade unionists. All we want is to compete on a level playing field and to do that we must have fair trade policy.

Third, Trumka laid out what we must do to modify our tax policy:

We need a tax policy that encourages people to produce and manufacture things in this country, not reward those who outsource and produce things abroad. We have to close the loopholes that allow corporations who have record profits to use gimmicks to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

Fourth, Trumka loudly and proudly spoke out in favor of comprehensive immigration reform and made it clear that every AFL-CIO union has endorsed our five-point plan for immigration reform. Current U.S. immigration policy has allowed corporations to create a permanent underclass of workers who they can take advantage of.

And finally, just as corporations have taken advantage of immigrants, they have skirted, exploited and violated labor laws that empower workers to form a union and bargain for a better life. The good jobs of the past were good jobs because workers organized and fought for fair wages and benefits. Without labor law reform, corporations will continue to take advantage of workers and no matter how much we invest in our economy, how much we increase our productivity, our wages will remain stagnant and we will continue to fall behind.

After laying out this five-part plan, Trumka concluded with a passionate call for coordinated action.

We knew this wasn’t going to be easy. It’s going to take a concerted effort by a lot of us over a long period of time to fix our broken economy. I’m up for it, and I look forward to fighting with you.

Check out live tweets on Trumka’s discussion and the entire Building a Progressive Economic Vision presentation with the hashtag #nn10.

The announcement today that 241 District of Columbia public school teachers would be fired under the school system’s new evaluation process raises questions about Washington, D.C., School Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s “penchant for firing teachers rather than providing supports to develop their skills,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said. This brings to nearly 600 the number of district teachers Rhee has fired in just over a year.   

Weingarten said:

Firing teachers en masse may sound to some like strong action is being taken, but in the absence of real professional supports and valid teacher evaluations systems, it simply perpetuates a destructive and failing strategy.

She said she hopes the recent contract with D.C. teachers, which calls for teachers to receive professional development and other supports throughout their careers, will bring “much-needed changes for District schools.”

Weingarten urged Rhee to follow the lead of school systems that successfully use other tools to develop highly skilled teaching forces “rather than stubbornly adhering to the destructive cycle of ‘fire, hire, repeat.’”

You can read Weingarten’s full statement here.

  AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler (third from left) moderated the Young Worker panel with (from left), Sara Flocks, Maria Escobar and Cory McCray.      

The nation’s economic crisis, lack of jobs and inability to pay for higher education are key issues for today’s young workers—and unions must focus on reaching out to them, panelists said today at the AFL-CIO panel, ”Young Workers: Taking Charge of Our Future.” Moderated by AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler, the panel at Netroots Nation included three grassroots activists who discussed their experiences in creating successful models for empowering young workers.

Shuler opened the panel by noting the AFL-CIO has made outreach to young people a top priority—young workers are the future of our nation, and their economic strength is the nation’s future. Yet even though young people need unions, they don’t know much about unions—they are less likely than in previous generations to have a family member or neighbor who talks to them about what being in a union means.

She outlined key findings of an AFL-CIO report we published last fall, “Young Workers: A Lost Decade,” based on a survey of young workers ages 35 and younger. The survey came 10 years after a similar survey we conducted. The findings showed a massive decline in the economic situation of young workers in that period. The survey found:

• 31 percent of young workers report being uninsured, up from 24 percent without health insurance coverage 10 years ago.
• One-third of young workers cannot pay the bills.
• Only 58 percent received paid sick days and only 41 percent are offered paid family leave. One of young workers’ top-rated priorities is spending time with family. But many are worried this won’t be possible because time away from work often means not getting paid.

Panelist Sara Flocks experienced firsthand economic hardship—and turned her experience into positive action for other young workers. Now with the California Labor Federation where she works on state policy and legislative issues, Flocks co-founded Young Workers United, a worker center based out of UNITEHERE! Local 2 in San Francisco. While there, she helped organize young workers in the restaurant and retail sectors as well as at community colleges. She helped collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in back wages for workers through direct action and won a two-year campaign at the Cheesecake Factory restaurant.

In Baltimore, panelist Cory McCray, a member of the Electrical Workers, helped launch Young Trade Unionists, which works to empower and unite members and non-members to participate in the union movement. McCray said unions reaching out to young workers need to make sure they know about the good union wages, benefits, but also need to:

Keep it interesting, keep it fun.

Panelist Maria Escobar has been working with the Student Labor Action Project, part of Jobs with Justice and the United States Student Association (USSA), and has helped students nationwide develop social and economic justice campaigns on their campuses and trained students in grassroots organizing for the USSA. Escobar’s work connected students with workers’ issues and offers a nationwide model for reaching young people through social justice and broader community issues.

Shuler told the more than 60 people who took part in the panel about the AFL-CIO’s listening tour with young workers in cities across the country early this year where we heard their concerns about jobs and the economy and their perceptions of the labor movement. Building on that, the AFL-CIO held its first-ever Young Workers Summit in Washington, D.C., with 400 young workers taking part. Shuler noted a report on the summit is set for release by August.  Meantime, we’re encourage young workers to join our Facebook page, aflcionextup.

     

One attendee of the Netroots Nation panel provocatively titled “Obama’s Social Security ‘Death Panel’” later told me he had gone into the panel dubious that there is any real threat to Social Security. “But I left mad,” he said, questioning how such an important part of America’s social fabric could be threatened. Yet as the panelists detailed, Social Security is most definitely under attack–and it’s an attack that could fundamentally alter how we understand the program.

Panelists agreed the most direct assaults on Social Security takes are likely to be defeated, as the privatization of the program was in 2005. But they pointed to a more nuanced threat. Robert Borosage of Campaign for America’s Future contrasted the “frightened, timid and cautious leadership” of today with the “confident society” that, following World War II, responded to a much larger deficit (as percentage of GDP) by embarking on a series of spending programs that reshaped the economy and built the middle class.

Today, Borosage said, there is an emerging elite consensus that is “focused on Social Security because it will show they’re ’serious,’ even though it will have no effect on the deficit.” They portray Social Security as being in crisis, then claim that proposed cuts are “saving” the program. Eric Kingson, co-director of Social Security Works, made it clear that Social Security is not in crisis.

Social Security should and can work for the next 75 years.

“But it’s up to all of us” to defend it. Crucially, defending Social Security

is not about dollars and cents and it’s not about balancing the books. It’s about how well the American people do—all of us.

The elite consensus will, unfortunately, drive too much of what happens on a policy level. But what about working people? As a panelist myself, I spoke about what Working America organizers hear in the field every night, on the doorsteps of thousands of working Americans. Working people are deeply worried that their Social Security benefits will be cut, but too much of what they hear is dominated by fear-mongering claims that Social Security is in crisis. If the progressive movement doesn’t reach out to working people with the message that Social Security is not in trouble, we allow its enemies to define the debate. And if the debate begins with the assumption that cuts are needed to “save” the program, we’re stuck fighting against backward movement. Instead, we need to be fighting our way forward by providing working people information that shifts the debate forward.

That fight “is going to be the battle of our lives,” according to the blogger Digby. She referred back to the successful fight against privatization in 2005 and highlighted the importance of repetition: For every time opponents of Social Security say it’s in crisis, its defenders have to say “no, it’s not.” Or “strengthen Social Security—don’t cut it.” (And make no mistake, raising the eligibility age is a cut.) As progressive bloggers and individuals and organizations, she emphasized, we have to use every tool at our disposal to amplify those simple messages.

Across the country, states are confronting a vast array of critical working family issues, from budget crises and health care to job creation and workers’ rights. This weekend in Louisville, Ky., some 150 union activists and leaders from central labor councils, state federations, affiliate unions and allied organizations are mapping a state legislative battle plan.

The annual AFL-CIO Workers’ Voice Conference sets the stage for union action in the upcoming 2011 legislative sessions. Through workshops and seminars with policy and political experts and activists, the conference will develop the AFL-CIO’s 2011 Working Families State Agenda. It also examines the state-level victories and challenges working families faced in state capitols this year.

One of the key issues is how to raise revenues to deal with the states’ budget crises that have forced layoffs and cuts in vital working family services. Attendees will discuss closing corporate tax loopholes, ways for the very wealthy to pay their fair share, more accountability in government spending and strategy to defeat the anti-tax TABOR movement. (For more on TABOR battles, click here, here, here and here.)

On the jobs front, the Workers’ Voice Conference will explore strategies to create and retain jobs, including investments in green jobs, rebuilding the manufacturing base and strong Buy American rules. Other strategy sessions include:

• State implementation of the new health care reform law;
• Unemployment insurance reform;
• Immigration reform;
• Protecting workers’ rights;
• Outsourcing and privatization of government services;
• Project Labor Agreements and prevailing wage laws.

On Sunday, the members of  National Labor Caucus—state lawmakers who are union members or strong union advocates—will hold its policy meeting and join many Workers’ Voice participants to talk about the 2011 Working Families State Agenda.

     

All the growth in union membership since 2000 has been among women, Latinos and part-time employees, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. So how can the union movement attract the next generation of working women and younger workers? A new report says unions must become more diverse and open up more opportunities for young workers and women in leadership or they will move on to other social justice organizations.  

The report, “Stepping Up, Stepping Back: Women Talk Union Across Generations,” details frank discussions in March among 30 women invited to a two-day women’s summit in New Orleans and sponsored by the Berger-Marks Foundation.

While acknowledging the significant gains for women in the workplace made possible by unions and the growing diversity in the union movement, the report urges unions to do even more to become more open.

The AFL-CIO is committed to increasing diversity in the union movement. At the federation’s 2009 convention, 43 percent of the delegates were women or people of color. The convention also passed two resolutions, “A Diverse and Democratic Labor Movement” and “Unions Should Give People with Disabilities a Voice and a Face,” that, among other things, require every state federation and central local bodies to establish concrete goals for expanding diversity in their leadership.

At the national level, several unions, including the Communications Workers of America (CWA), increased the membership of their executive boards to increase diversity. At AFT, for the first time, all three top officers are women. 

The Berger-Marks group’s recommendations include adopting term limits for elective offices, zero tolerance for sexual harassment, creating “safe spaces” for women and younger activists who want to air their concerns and training programs so young workers can learn how to “talk union” with their peers. You can download the report here.

“It’s not enough that the door is open,” one young participant said. “You have to grab them [young women] and bring them through.”

The opinions expressed by the women and young workers were very similar to the ideas that came out of the AFL-CIO Youth Summit in June. One key point: New social media such as Facebook and Twitter aren’t nearly as powerful as face-to-face contact with young people deciding whether to join a union. Many participants in both summits also said they felt frustrated that too many union officials stay in office too long.

The Berger-Marks Foundation is dedicated to achieving a voice for working women through organization and union membership. It provides funds for women workers directly involved in organizing and assists groups that support working women who want to form a union.

Earlier this week in Washington, D.C., AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka joined Labor Secretary Hilda Solis for a remarkable discussion on the importance of immigration reform. On Thursday, panelists speaking on ”Immigration Reform’s Strange Bedfellows” at the Netroots Nation conference in Las Vegas amplified President Trumka and Secretary Solis’ call to action.

Moderating the discussion at Netroots Nation was Mark Lauritsen, UFCW international vice president and director of Food Processing, Packing and Manufacturing Division, who opened with an emotional recounting of both the positive and negative sides of immigration, particularly in the meatpacking industry and how employers use immigration as a tool to oppress workers.

What America needs is an immigration system that works for all America’s workers.

Lauritsen first turned to state Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) who gave her take on S.B. 1070, Arizona’s anti-immigration law.  Sinema described it as misguided. The lesson Sinema takes from Arizona is that if Congress doesn’t act, those who want comprehensive immigration reform must respond proactively with localized legislation rather than waiting for federal action. Immigration reform is a problem that needs a federal solution, but Sinema argues that we cannot wait.

Giving a perspective from the law enforcement side, Arturo Venegas, an immigrant, Vietnam veteran and former chief of police for the city of Sacramento, laid out the risks of legally codified racial profling and how enforcement-only tactics are insufficient. Law enforcement officers like Chief Venegas are some of the most powerful voices on immigration reform and we all owe a great debt to all the brave officers who have spoken out against racial profiling as an enforcement tactic.

Looking beyond enforcement, Adam Luna, political director at America’s Voice, described the political implications of immigration reform, particularly how popular comprehensive immigration reform is, and how candidates and activists can talk about immigration.

Rounding out the panel discussion, Think Progress blogger, former UFCW communications specialist and immigrant from Guatemala, Andrea Nill, addressed the coordinated opposition to immigration reform and outlined who’s funding it and how they operate. Scary stuff. To read more work from Nill, click here.

Taking a step back, I was encouraged by the overall hopefulness expressed by all the panelists, each with a different perspective and set of life experiences. Comprehensive immigration reform: Sí, se puede.