California Republican candidates Meg Whitman, for governor, and Carly Fiorina, for the U.S. Senate, share many traits. They are both mega-wealthy CEOs with job-killing records. While they portray themselves as competent, sensible and reasonable business women, both are really anti-worker corporate cutthroats who embrace the extreme right-wing agenda that’s taking over the Republican Party this fall.
Another thing they share: concerted efforts to keep their connections and meetings with the radical Tea Party out of the public eye—especially the eyes of moderate voters. But thanks to Joe Garofoli at the San Francisco Chronicle, California voters know with whom and where they are sipping the Tea Party’s Kool-Aid.
Today in Mill Valley, Fiorina is set to meet with Bay Area Patriots and the San Francisco Tea Party and other Republican groups. Writes Garofoli:
We’d love to tell you about it, but it is billed as “open to the public—closed to the press.” What’s up with that? Not very transparent, which is what the TP wants of government, no?
The TP-GOP link is interesting given that, statewide, the California Republicans seem to have an ignore/love/ignore relationship with the Tea crew. First, they blew them off at their first big time rally, in Sacramento, in April 2009. Then, earlier this year, they sucked up to them at their state convention—and even let them stage musical numbers there.
Carly Fiorina’s decision to embrace a radical right-wing fringe group speaks volumes about how out of touch she is with California voters.
Meanwhile, the Redlands Daily Facts reports that workers for the Whitman campaign would not address a meeting of 200 Redlands Tea Party Patriots last week until reporters left. Even the Tea Partiers were surprised about the Whitman campaign’s reluctance to be connected. Tea party cabinet member Sandy Ziegler told the paper the refusal to speak with reporters
‘’seemed odd” but she would not speculate on what the refusal might mean about Whitman’s willingness to run an open and transparent campaign.
“I would say that it gives the appearance of a lack of transparency but I don’t have all of the facts.”
The fact is that Whitman and Fiorina want to keep their Tea Party dalliances in a backroom and out of sight.
“The Number One advantage companies have over unions during [union] election campaigns is access to voters. Simply put, you can compel employees to listen to your campaign messages.”
US Airways is buying the pitch—literally. The airline is paying LRI $375 an hour to fight workers seeking to form a union with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) at Piedmont Airways. The 3,000 gate and ramp workers seeking a union make far, far less than $375 an hour.
You can help the Piedmont workers by sending a message to U.S. Airways Doug Parker urging him to cut ties with the union busters. Click here to go to American Rights at Work and tell Parker:
Your employees have worked hard to make your airline a success; they should be able to decide for themselves if they want to form a union—without the outside interference and coercion from a firm like LRI.
By hiring LRI, US Airways is showing it is willing to manipulate and coerce its employees to stop them from exercising their rights. The mail ballot election runs Oct. 7 through Nov 4. Be sure to click here to take action.
For a closer look at the Piedmont workers’ struggle, click here to read Mike Elk’s recent story on In These Times.
Kentucky State AFL-CIO President Bill Londrigan doesn’t pull punches when he talks about the Bluegrass State’s Tea Party-backed Republican U.S. Senate candidate. Speaking to a sun-baked crowd at Paducah’s 35th annual Labor Day picnic Monday, he warned:
A vote for Rand Paul is a vote for the continuation of the economic nightmare now facing workers across Kentucky. Vote like your job depends on it—because it does.
The state AFL-CIO unanimously endorsed Democrat Jack Conway over Paul, whose anti-union views earned him a $2,500 donation from the National Right to Work Committee.
Conway is the state’s attorney general. An ophthalmologist, Paul is the son of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). Dr. Paul is bad medicine for Kentucky’s working families, according to Londrigan.
He supports privatizing Social Security and increasing the retirement age for Social Security eligibility. He supports so-called free trade agreements like NAFTA, which are responsible for shipping millions of good-paying American jobs overseas.
When it comes to jobs safety, a vital issue for state’s coal miners and other workers, Londrigan said Paul’s response to catastrophic mine accidents and oil rig explosions is:
“‘accidents happen.” In Rand Paul’s world, corporations should be completely unregulated so they can cook the books and undermine our economy.
Londrigan went on to highlight the differences between Rand Paul’s world and the world in which most Kentucky workers live.
In Rand Paul’s world, Social Security is a burden and not a reward for a lifetime of hard work and sacrifice and something to be handed over to Wall Street.
In Rand Paul’s world, the budget deficit is a monstrous problem, but tax cuts for the rich are still a priority.
In Rand Paul’s world, teachers and the Department of Education are a hindrance to learning. In Rand Paul’s world, farm subsidies are a handout. In Rand Paul’s world, lowering workers’ wages is the way out of a recession.
And in Rand Paul’s world, property rights trump civil rights. If you’re an ordinary American, a hard-working Kentuckian, you can’t afford to live in Rand Paul’s world.
Jeff Wiggins, a United Steelworkers (USW) members and president of the Paducah-based Western Kentucky Area Council, said Kentucky union families are a vital element in the fight to send Conway to the Senate and Paul back to his practice.
But Wiggins, the Labor 2010 coordinator for western Kentucky, also says working families must be mobilized. He doubts Paul will win many union votes, but says the Republican is hoping for the next best thing: a slew of union card-carrying Kentuckians will forget that the GOP’s gospel of greed caused the recession, will blame hangover hard times on the Democrats and will show their disdain by not voting.
Wiggins has a message for potential non-voting union members:
If you stay home on Nov. 2, you’ll be helping the same sort of people who tried to push labor off the cliff under Bush. Democrats like Jack Conway want to throw us a rope and pull us away from the edge. But Republicans like McConnell and Paul still want to push us off.
For the latest on Labor 2010 in Kentucky, click here.
In the words of sportscaster Al Michaels: “Nothing like a labor statement to start a season.”
Last night, right after the national anthem at the kickoff of the NFL season, players for the Minnesota Vikings and the New Orleans Saints came out on the field holding up their index fingers. But this was not the usual gridiron “We’re Number 1″ bravado. It was a statment by the players that off the field they “stand as one” in collective bargaining talks with the team owners.
Like workers everywhere, the members of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) are facing the possibility of being out of work if owners lock them out next season. So the players who push, block, tackle and generally rough each other up on the field are sending a message to fans and the owners that they will work together off the field to make sure they are treated fairly.
The players have set up a website to explain their position and to get out the facts about team owners’ revenue and their plans for a lockout. Check out 2011 Lockout Central here.
Jared Allen, Minnesota Vikings defensive end and a player representative, talks about the importance of the players “standing as one” in an interview on the NFLPA site:
I think that’s the only way we’re going to accomplish what we want to accomplish. We have to be able to decide on something and stand as one on it because we are stronger accomplishing something that way than we are standing apart. Not everybody is on the same financial ground. Together, we can be strong and accomplish what we want to accomplish.
By the way, for those who didn’t see the game, the Super Bowl champion Saints won 14-9.
Roger Smith, president and CEO of American Income Life Insurance and National Income Life Insurance, tells why investing in workers pays off for business.
As a CEO of a fast-growing, profitable insurance company, I have a unique perspective on creating private-sector jobs.
My formula for success begins and ends with honoring the workers who sell and service our product. For more than 50 years, American Income Life, based in Waco, Texas, has negotiated union agreements with our employees. We have never had a layoff or a strike and have consistently grown our home office staff and agency workforce. We create jobs in every state!
So how do you create private-sector jobs during the worst financial crisis in our country? You get rid of the notion that austerity will solve the problem. First, you say, “No” to layoffs, and then you say, “No” to stagnant wages, you say, “No” to forced time off without pay, and finally you say, “No” to increased employee contributions for health and welfare benefits.
By cooperating with our union workforce, increasing the amount of money invested in recruiting, hiring, retaining and training talent, we have happier and more productive workers.
Collective bargaining is a powerful vehicle to increase corporate growth. In reality, it is productive workers who create the demand for additional jobs.
Let us honor the unsung, unappreciated and sometimes unnoticed engine behind our economy: the workers who make us grow and prosper.
Luisa Blue is the new president of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA). She succeeds John Delloro, who died unexpectedly of a heart attack last June. Blue was first vice president of APALA, one of six AFL-CIO constituency groups.
This is the second time in the top chair for Blue, who served as APALA’s president from 2001–2005, when she became the first woman and the first Filipino to hold that post.
Currently the organizing coordinator for SEIU in California, Blue began her union career in 1977 as shop steward for her San Francisco local union, whose members were primarily registered nurses. She became president of several local unions and was organizing director for SEIU Local 790, where she helped more than 10,000 workers join unions in five years. She also was instrumental in the successful effort to organize airport screeners— predominantly Asian immigrants—at the San Francisco airport.
If you could ask AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka one question, what would it be?
Now’s your chance.
On the one-year anniversary of their election, the AFL-CIO’s top leadership team, Trumka, Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler and Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker, will respond to your questions in a live Web chat on Thursday, Sept. 16, at 4 p.m. EDT at www.aflcio.org.
Submit your question now, in text form or by video, to www.aflcio.org/askofficers. Read and recommend other questions, get your friends to recommend yours and encourage them to submit questions, too.
The AFL-CIO leadership team will discuss our union movement, America’s jobs and economic crisis, the 2010 elections, AFL-CIO leadership, legislation, corporate greed and more—whatever is on your mind. They won’t be able to answer every one of the questions, but they’ll be online for at least 45 minutes and will respond to as many as possible.
Visit www.aflcio.org/askofficers to recommend questions. And then stop back here to watch the webcast live and comment in our live chat tool: Thursday, Sept. 16, at 4 p.m. EDT.
The United Steelworkers (USW) today filed a comprehensive trade case under Section 301 of the trade law claiming China has used hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies, performance requirements, preferential practices and other trade-illegal activities to dominate the renewable energy market.
The 5,800-page petition, filed with the U.S. Trade Representative, identifies five major areas where China’s protectionist and predatory practices helped develop their green energy sector at the expense of production and job creation here in the United States. The actions violate the terms China agreed to when it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, the petition says. Under federal trade law, the Obama administration has 45 days from the date of filing to determine whether to accept the petition for further action.
“Green jobs are key to our future,” said USW President Leo W. Gerard.
Right now, China is taking every possible step—many of them illegal under international trade laws—to ensure that it will control that sector. America can’t afford to cede more of its manufacturing base to China.
It’s a national priority to reduce our dependence on foreign energy supplies. But if all we do is exchange our dependence on foreign oil for a dependence on Chinese alternative and renewable energy production equipment, we will have traded away our nation’s energy, economic and job security.
In a telephone press conference this morning, Gerard said the violations have helped Chinese companies expand their share of the world market for wind turbines, solar panels, nuclear power plants and other clean energy equipment, at the expense of jobs in the United States and elsewhere.
USW Vice President Tom Conway told reporters:
America has to stand up for itself at some point and say these were the agreements we made and we expect you to live by them. People don’t understand that [imports] in renewable goods from China in the period 2001–2007 into the U.S. have increased by sevenfold.
We’ve been told we’ve lost manufacturing jobs in the past and we can’t bring them back in the past. These are good high-tech jobs that can build a foundation in America and bring back some research and development.
“It is time for the U.S. government to put an end to the unfair trade practices by countries like China that undermine the push for good jobs and clean energy investment,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statement.
The AFL-CIO applauds the action by the United Steelworkers in filing a comprehensive clean energy trade case against the Chinese government. The predatory trade practices of the Chinese government have consistently violated the rules they promised to follow upon joining the World Trade Organization. Their actions have directly led to massive outsourcing and unrelenting trade deficits that have cost millions of American workers their jobs.
Click here to read more or to download a copy of the executive summary.
New Orleans Saints Player Representative Jon Stinchcomb sports a “Save Avondale Shipyard” T-shirt at the NFL Players Live event.
On the football field they are the Super Bowl champions, but earlier this week, the New Orleans Saints showed they are workers’ champions, too.
At the NFL Players Live community event in the Crescent City, the NFL players joined with the Teamsters, Feed the Children and School of the Legends, the NFL’s online football social community, to distribute food to local families in need.
As part of the program, many of the players wore “Save Avondale Shipyard” T-shirts to show their support for the workers at Avondale shipyard, which is set to close in 2013, putting nearly 5,000 people out of jobs.
Some 40 Avondale workers also showed up to help the players distribute food.
What are working families looking for in a candidate this fall? Let Machinists (IAM) President R. Thomas Buffenbarger explain. Speaking to members of IAM, Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) and other Washington State unions at a rally for Sen. Patty Murray in Seattle, he said:
Our candidates are the type of candidates who bring the one word we want to hear to a campaign. What word is that brothers?
A booming chorus of “JOBS!” was the answer.
Buffenbarger said Murray has a solid jobs track record, especially in preserving and attracting aerospace jobs—like the Air Force’s new air tanker—to Washington State.
If it were not for Patty, brothers and sisters, Europeans would be building the tanker today. She has been relentless. She continually looks for ways to invest in Washington State aerospace jobs.
Murray, who is running against millionaire real estate developer Dino Rossi, noted that just before Congress left town, lawmakers approved a jobs bill that saves or create nearly a million jobs for teachers, public employees, police officers, firefighters and others. The bill, says Murray, is:
fully paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes for multinational corporations who ship your jobs overseas. I thought then who in the world would support extending corporate tax loopholes over education for our kids.
Well I found him, his name is Dino Rossi.
Follow the IUPAT’s “It’s About the Jobs” Bus Tour” here. For more on Labor 2010 in Washington State, click here. Thanks to Kathy Cummings, Washington State Labor Council (WSLC) communications director for the video.
Some 3,000 union members from four states rallied last month in support of locked-out Honeywell workers.
This past weekend, just one day after the federal government allowed Honeywell to start up core production at its uranium enrichment facility in Metropolis, Ill., with replacement workers, an explosion rocked the plant. No one was reported injured, but local union officials say the plant has not been in production since the blast.
For the past two months, union workers, members of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 7-669, have been locked out of the plant after contract negotiations broke down over Honeywell’s demand that workers give up their retiree health care coverage and pension plans. Other issues include management demands to eliminate seniority, contract out about 20 percent of the work at the plant and make changes in overtime pay.
Local 7-669 President Darrell Lillie says negotiations will not resume until Oct. 11. In the meantime, the workers are running a 24/7 picket line. Last month, 3,000 people from four states rallied in support of the locked-out Metropolis workers.
Safety is important at any worksite, but especially at the Metropolis plant. This facility is the only one in the United States that can convert uranium into the extremely deadly UF6, which is used in nuclear reactors. Since it is the only conversion plant of its kind in the country, it is critical that workers in the plant be familiar with that plant.
Lillie says it takes many years to learn the skills needed at the plant and the conversion process is hard to troubleshoot if something goes wrong.
Honeywell CEO David Cote, a member of President Obama’s deficit commission, locked out the 230 workers on June 28, even though they offered to continue working under the terms of their expired contract. Honeywell had proposed eliminating retiree health care and increasing workers’ out-of-pocket health care maximums to $8,500 a year.
In a letter to President Obama, the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR) asked the president to remove Cote from the commission.
Attention, Rand Paul in Kentucky, Joe Miller in Alaska, Sharron Angle in Nevada and all you other Republican congressional candidates flopping around on the far right banks of the mainstream! Phasing out, privatizing or otherwise eliminating Social Security does not sit well with the vast majority of the voting public.
The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that 68 percent of voters are “uncomfortable” with candidates who espouse such notions. Uncomfortable is putting it nicely. It’s downright painful to listen to U.S. Senate wannabes and other Republican hopefuls “babble into the vapors” about phasing out Social Security (turnabout’s fair play, Alan Simpson!).
Of course, Simpson, as co-chair of the federal budget deficit commission, is one of the leading howlers baying about the coming demise of Social Security (check out its real long-term health here) and the need to raise the retirement age and make other painful cuts. You might say he is one of the biggest enablers of phase-out crowd.
Thanks to Bill Scheer at the Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) for highlighting the poll.
As world famous soccer announcer Andres Cantor would say, “Goooooooal!” We just got word that the Women’s Professional Soccer Players Union (WPSPU) won recognition today through majority sign-up certified by an arbitrator.
The more than 150 players make up the seven teams in Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS) that is now in its second season with teams in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Hayward in Southern California, Philadelphia, Piscataway, N.J., and Washington, D.C. It is the highest level of professional soccer for women in North America.
With just one month to go before the World Day for Decent Work, Oct. 7, trade unions across the world are stepping up pressure for decent jobs and social justice. And bloggers can play a big role in spreading the message.
Bloggers Unite has set up a special World Day for Decent Work site here and is asking bloggers to submit blogs on or before Oct. 7 about events in their areas. Blogs about the hundreds of events planned for Oct. 7 around the world will show world leaders how determined workers are to get decent jobs with good pay, safe working conditions and benefits. Take part by signing up today to submit blogs to Bloggers Unite here.
Organized by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), World Day for Decent Work is a day for mobilization around the world: one day when all the trade unions in the world stand up for decent work, at home and abroad.
“Working people are still paying a heavy price for the world economic crisis, as the banking and finance sector returns to business as usual,” says ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow.
This year’s World Day for Decent Work will be a peak moment in the global trade union movement’s action for fundamental reform of the global economy. We will be holding political leaders to account on jobs, financial regulation and quality public services, and governments would be well advised to heed the trade union call.
There’s plenty to blog about. Yesterday, millions of workers in India took to the streets in a national strike against national and state government employment and industrial relations policies. In France, unions organized national rallies and strike actions to protest major changes to retirement and pensions proposed by the Sarkozy government. And in the United States, corporate greed at the expense of workers at Mott’s and the efforts by America’s unions to push for job creation are just some of what’s going on here.
Trade unions across Europe are planning a massive demonstration in Brussels, the capital of the European Union, on Sept. 29 to protest austerity measures. Some 100,000 demonstrators will join the march. The same day a general strike will take place in Spain and protests are also planned in the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Portugal. Massive protests across Germany are being organized by the ITUC affiliate DGB in the coming weeks over government finance, employment and social security policies.
The ITUC also launched a special interactive website for the World Day for Decent Work, with information from last year’s events and updates on this year’s actions. Organizations planning events can upload their information onto the multi-language site, which also features a Twitter feed, video and photo galleries and other interactive functions. It also will contain information on the main themes for the 2010 events.
Illinois AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Tim Drea knows what it’s like to be unemployed—he’s experienced it himself, as a laid-off coal miner. He knows, too, how important it is to keep jobless union members involved in the union movement and the fight for working family-friendly policies. That fact turned out to be the answer to a little mystery that presented itself recently to Working America, the AFL-CIO community affiliate.
Working America staff was mystified when a stack of membership registrations arrived in the mail from the Illinois AFL-CIO. Although Working America had sent membership cards to many state federations and central labor councils around the country in 2009 as part of our effort to organize jobless workers through the Unemployment Lifeline, these registrations did not use those cards. Working America was not engaged in an active organizing drive on the ground in Illinois. How did the state federation there sign up so many people?
Turns out that under Drea’s leadership, the Illinois AFL-CIO handed out fliers at dislocated worker workshops and at the local workforce investment centers, where dislocated and laid-off workers go for resources and assistance. Through its Member Assistance Program and the Peer Outreach Program, Illinois AFL-CIO staff designed a flier and sign-up form that got straight to the point. They then went out and held thousands of conversations with jobless workers and ultimately registered more than 2,000 new Working America members. Those new members now have the ongoing opportunity—and will get reminders—to participate in the union movement and hear what important legislation is being debated that will affect them.
Secretary-Treasurer Drea told Working America Program Director Maggie Priebe that the effort came about as the Illinois AFL-CIO watched the repeated battles to renew unemployment insurance and COBRA benefits play out. Those battles have been a constant reminder of the vast number of long-term unemployed workers—and, all too often, of the contempt elected Republicans have for working people who have been victims of a recession spurred by financial policies those same Republicans promoted.
People who’ve worked their whole lives, who have gone from being optimistic about their prospects to being desperate to settle for any job, at a fraction of what they used to make, and still can’t find work. So many of those people feel left behind, by their old employers, by the economy, by the government.
But the AFL-CIO isn’t leaving those people behind—and today, an additional 2,000 of them know that the Illinois AFL-CIO and Working America are with them, fighting for something better for working people.
