OurFuture.org Blogs: Tula Connell

In This Election, It's the Economy--and Race

Tula Connell — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:15:17 -0400

The issue of race in this presidential campaign is one we talk around, or whisper about, or don't discuss publicly at all. Or, as with some McCain supporters, the issue of race is used as an ugly bludgeon in the spirit of Jim Crow.

But AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka is taking the issue head on. Beginning with a recent speech to the United Steelworkers and continuing in other union venues, Trumka directly addresses how working people can, and must, combat the racism of those who say they will not vote for a black man as president. In addressing union leaders, Trumka also speaks to all of America's workers:

There's not a single good reason for any worker--especially any union member--to vote against Barack Obama. There's only one really bad reason to vote against him: because he's not white.

A lot of good union people just can't get past the idea that there's something wrong with voting for a black man. Well, those of us who know better can't afford to look the other way.

[There's] no evil that's inflicted more pain and more suffering than racism--and it's something we in the labor movement have a special responsibility to challenge.

Trumka urges union leaders, and all of us with a stake in the economic policies of the next president, to confront, head on, our inchoate and irrational fear of black Americans.

When you hear someone say America isn't ready for a black president, you have to get in their face and say: "You may not be ready for Barack Obama, but I sure as hell am!"

His initial speech was greeted by surprise--surprise that someone of his rank took on the issue--and praised as the opening of a long-needed dialogue. And, yes, his words were not universally welcomed, a reaction he addresses in an open letter to union members here.

Yet, in experiencing firsthand how divisions of race and ethnicity have been used by employers to undermine worker solidarity on the job, many union members have a visceral understanding of how and why Obama opponents are subtly and not so subtly seeking to attack him. And having already fought these battles, union members are well prepared to do so again. As Trumka puts it:

We've seen how companies set worker against worker--how they throw whites a few extra crumbs off the table and how it's black and Latino workers who get the dirtiest, most-dangerous jobs. But we've seen something else, too. We've seen that when we cross that color line and stand together, no one--and I mean no one--can keep us down. That's why, imperfect as we are, the labor movement today is the most integrated institution in American life.

When he headed up the Mine Workers union, Trumka led two major strikes against the Pittston Coal Co. and the Bituminous Coal Operators Association. The actions resulted in significant advances in employee-employer cooperation and the enhancement of mine workers' job security, pensions and benefits. Such victories of workers over hard-bitten and often brutal employers will be far fewer going forward unless we dramatically change the anti-worker culture that has been created in this country over the past eight years.

The bottom line, says Trumka, is nothing less than the future of our nation.

I don't think we should be out there pointing fingers in peoples' faces and calling them racist. Instead we need to educate them that if they care about holding onto their jobs, their health care, their pensions, and their homes.

If they care about creating good jobs with clean energy, child care, pay equity for women workers, there's only going to be one candidate on the ballot this fall who's on our side, only one candidate who's going to stand up for our families, only one candidate who's earned our votes…and his name is Barack Obama!

Do you think John McCain will do these things for America?

I don't.

(Trumka's full speech to the Steelworkers is here.)

(This is a cross-post from Firedoglake.)

Chamber of Commerce Staff Gets Drunk, Blames Workers

Tula Connell — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:00:09 -0400

They may be party animals when chugging $8,204 worth of booze but, after the hangover is over, the staff at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce goes back to being their ugly anti-worker selves.

Seems that some 100 or so Chamber of Commerce staff recently ran up an $8,204 tab at The Exchange, a sports bar within staggering distance from the Chamber's architecturally ever-so ponderous Washington, D.C., headquarters. The tab included 155 pitchers of beer, 37 bottles of beer, 208 mixed drinks, 111 shots, 43 margaritas and 11 open bottles of liquor.

And when the bosses got the tab, they weren't happy. After all, the image of Chamber staffers soaking in thousands of dollars worth of Red Bull and pitchers of vodka that sources say the party-goers ordered, strays a bit from the pin-striped image the Chamber sells its members. And then there's that problem of justifying such a large, booze-soaked expense to its frugal dues-paying members out in DeKalb, Ill., or Anaheim, Calif.

So, when confronted with the bill, the staff did what the Chamber always does--blame workers. That's right. The Chamber now is saying The Exchange waitstaff was tipped too much.

Should have thought of it. The problem is not the thousands of dollars the Chamber of Commerce staff wasted on getting wasted, it's the 18 percent tip for the waiters and waitresses that's the real crime.

This, after all, is the group that fights every boost in the minimum wage--like the federal increase that finally got passed after minimum wage workers received no pay increase for 10 years. The same bunch of lobbyists that pushed the Senate to approve the Bush nominations of Samuel Alito and John Roberts to the Supreme Court. The same cabal took a big role in promoting Bush's scheme to privatize Social Security and in killing legislation to expand children's health care through the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

Such influence does not come cheap. The Chamber spent the most money in lobbying expenditures in the past decade, with General Electric Co. ranking second at $161 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

If the Chamber had its way, the waitstaff who put up with a mass of drunken fools dripping with a massive sense of entitlement should serve the rich for less than minimum wage. And be happy about it.

Just like the rest of America's workers.

This is a crosspost from Firedoglake.

McCain's Flea-Market Economy

Tula Connell — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:41:48 -0400

George W. Bush's solution to our nation's economic mess—that his failed policies helped create—is to applaud people who must work three jobs to make ends meet.

Sen. John McCain colors his solution to working families' financial struggles with similar crayons: He encourages us to make a living selling stuff on eBay. As reported on Bloomberg:

McCain, seeking to address voter anxiety about the economy, uses eBay to signal that he is ``fundamentally optimistic about the capacity of the U.S. economy to innovate, for that innovation to give new opportunities for jobs,'' said Doug Holtz-Eakin, the candidate's senior economic adviser. "We shouldn't be obsessed with looking backwards all the time, and saying, 'Gee, where did those jobs go?' "

Why worry indeed? After all, top McCain adviser Randy Altschuler is fond of an India-based company whose mission is to convince U.S. companies to outsource jobs to India. McCain also takes economic advice from a former lobbyist for a bank with interests in the housing market—and then there's Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a top economic adviser to McCain who acknowledges McCain doesn’t want to include labor and environmental standards in trade agreements.

McCain's support for a flea-market economy based on eBay is fundamental to his disconnect from the realities facing working families. Like Bush, McCain recently admitted he doesn't know the price of gas. Guess what? Working families sure do.

Stumping for the presidential primaries, McCain has snubbed America's workers by:

· Promoting failed trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) while standing in front of a failed factory in Ohio.
· Holding a town hall meeting at Worth & Co., a Bucks County, Pa., contracting company investigated by the state Department of Labor and Industry for “intentionally failing to pay the predetermined minimum wage” to its employees. The state has accused the company of cheating employees out of $142,000 in wages for government projects.
· Not bothering to respond to invitations by union members holding roundtables on the economy.

This is how McCain's treats workers when he needs votes. Imagine what a McCain presidency would be like for working families when he thinks he has a mandate to govern.

Take It--The 2008 Ask a Working Woman Survey

Tula Connell — Fri, 16 May 2008 11:51:33 -0400

A woman who spends years in medical school emerges to take her place alongside a panoply of male physicians—who, on average, make 38 percent more than she does. Female attorneys fare better—they make 30 percent less than their male counterparts. But it's not just a matter of higher pay for men in traditionally male occupations: Male registered nurses are paid 10 percent more than women—even though 90 percent of RNs are women.

This data, from a report by the AFL-CIO Department for Professional Employees, touches on just one of the many "challenges," to utilize a euphemism, U.S. working women face today.

Working women have lots of concerns. Equal pay. Balancing work and family. Job security. Health care coverage. Paid maternity leave.

The AFL-CIO and our community affiliate, Working America, are providing a chance to share those concerns through our just-launched online 2008 Ask a Working Woman survey [pdf]. The bi-annual survey enables working women to share workplace concerns about such issues as equal pay and stronger family and medical leave laws. (Click here to take the survey and here to share it with other working women.) The Ask a Working Woman survey runs through June 20.

We'll compile the survey results and give them to candidates running at all levels of public office to help shape the policy agendas of incoming lawmakers.

More than 22,000 women took part in the 2006 Ask a Working Woman survey—with the majority saying they were worried about such fundamental economic issues as paying for health care, not having retirement security and pay not keeping up with the cost of living.

And that was when the economy wasn't in the sewer. Today, 87 percent of Americans say the economy is getting worse, matching the year's high. But women are at greater economic risk today than in past recessions, according to a new study. In the past year, women’s real wages fell by 3 percent, compared with half a percentage point for men’s wages.

Other findings include:

Women also are disproportionately at risk in the current foreclosure crisis, since women are 32 percent more likely than men to have subprime mortgages.
Women have significantly fewer savings to fall back on in a time of economic hardship. Non-married women have a net worth that’s 48 percent lower than non-married men, and women are less likely than men to participate in employer-sponsored retirement savings programs.

And as working moms know all too well, the United States doesn’t make it easy for mothers to raise children. In a selection of 19 countries with comparable per capita income, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found the United States provides the fewest maternity leave benefits in both length of leave and paid time off. That doesn’t include any disability insurance for which mom may qualify.

The U.S. federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which has been the law for 15 years, gives eligible parents 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a new child. Aside from being unpaid, the leave is limited to workplaces of more than 50 employees, which excludes about 48 million workers. About two-thirds of the women who responded to the 2006 AFL-CIO Ask a Working Woman survey said they don’t have paid family leave benefits.

Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, told a congressional committee last month there are millions of workers eligible to use FMLA but don’t because they can’t afford to take unpaid time off, especially low-wage workers. Said Ness:

Without some form of wage replacement, the FMLA’s promise of job-protected leave is a chimera for too many women and men. In fact, 78 percent of employees who qualified for FMLA leave and needed to take the leave did not because they could not afford to go without a paycheck.

(Crossposted from Firedoglake)

Electrocuted at Age 22

Tula Connell — Mon, 05 May 2008 10:46:25 -0400

Every day, most of us go to work and then come home. Next day: Rinse, repeat.

But some U.S. workers go to work and never come home.

In April 2005, Donald Wilcher Smith was one of them. The 22-year-old central Texas man was electrocuted at the Sanderson Farms processing plant.

This week, his father, Donald Coit Smith, described what it's like to lose his son.

I do not possess the capacity to adequately describe the horror that possesses my soul from my son’s death. To lose him caused me to reflect on faith in my God.

He testified Tuesday before a U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in a hearing on "When a Worker is Killed: Do OSHA Penalties Enhance Workplace Safety?"

Smith, a workplace inspector for a polyurethane manufacturer who worked regularly with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), said his encounters with OSHA as an employer were far different from his dealings with them as a parent.

I have been met with resistance at virtually every corner I’ve had to turn. It started with the inspection of the death facility and getting information on the why and how of my son’s death. I’m not talking about the fact that he was electrocuted…that was obvious. But how could this have happened? And why weren’t the events that led up to his death avoided? In my study of the situation from the information I’ve obtained, the root problems that surfaced were really simple and stood out....There was no commitment. There was no deterrent.

Earlier this week, we commemorated Workers Memorial Day, as we have since 1989. April 28 was chosen because it is the anniversary of OSHA. Every year, people in hundreds of communities and at worksites recognize workers who have been killed or injured on the job. Trade unionists around the world now mark April 28 as an International Day of Mourning.

This week, we at the AFL-CIO also released our annual Death on the Job report, where cold data underlies the painful tragedies of those like Donald Wilcher Smith. The report is a powerful witness to the progress and the slippage in maintaining safe and healthy workplaces throughout the nation, and points out how federal safety agencies must improve.

Such constant vigilance is needed: The number of workplace fatalities increased between 2005 and 2006, worsening from 5,734 workplace deaths to 5,840. That means each day in 2006, 16 workers were fatally injured and more than 11,200 workers injured or made ill. Again, that's each day. These data (2006 stats are the latest available) do not include deaths from occupational diseases.

Some 29 states saw a rise in either the rate or number of fatalities between 2005 and 2006. Death on Job, which in large part compiles federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, also breaks down the data by state:

Alaska led the country with the highest fatality rate (13.8 per 100,000), followed by Wyoming (12.9), West Virginia (10.2), Montana (9.2), South Dakota (8.8) and North Dakota (8.7). The lowest state fatality rate (1.8 per 100,000) was reported in Rhode Island and New Hampshire, followed by New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts (2.1), and New York (2.6).

The number of Hispanic workers killed on the job continues to worsen—990 in 2006, the highest-ever number reported since the BLS began keeping such reports. Nearly all those deaths happened at construction sites.

OSHA was created in 1970, after years of effort by unions and our allies. Death on the Job estimates 369,000 lives have been saved since then. Yet the agency suffers from many flaws that—surprise!—have snowballed under the Bush administration.

First, all workers aren't covered under OSHA—more than 8.5 million U.S. employees are not. And if your industry is covered, chances are an OSHA inspector will never see the inside of your workplace in your lifetime: OSHA has the capacity and resources to inspect workplaces on average once every 92 years.

Further, OSHA's penalties have little or no deterrent effect on employers. The cost of killing a worker? Around $6,000—the national average penalty assessed against companies in fatality cases for FY 2003–2006.

As part of the Senate Committee hearing this week, Sen. Edward Kennedy released a report that documents, case by painful case, the extent to which OSHA has failed to punish safety violations that kill workers. As the report notes:

OSHA supervisors reduce penalties even more for employers who contest the penalty––employers who do so can get a “contest discount” of 300 percent.

Among the many egregious examples the report includes is one from October 2006, when a worker was killed at a Martin Block Co. worksite in Jackson, Ohio.

The [OSHA] inspector assessed one willful citation, 15 serious citations and one other than serious citation and assessed total penalties of $27,600. After the employer contested the willful citation, OSHA deleted one serious citation and reduced total penalties by half to $13,800…no follow up or “related site” inspection was conducted.

For Bush's OSHA, congressional hearings on U.S. workers killed on the job is just election-year posturing. In response the hearing, OSHA sent the St. Louis Post-Dispatch this statement:

Election-year political theatre cannot mask the truth that under this administration, workplace illness, injury and fatality rates are the lowest in OSHA’s history. This administration’s pro-worker safety record is an inconvenient truth for the AFL-CIO and their partisan allies who are peddling dishonest political attacks—masquerading as ‘reports’—to the media.”

The statement neglected to mention the Death on the Job report is based on government data.

Since its establishment 38 years ago, OSHA has prosecuted only 68 cases—during a time when 341,000 workplace fatalities occurred. And prison time for the few who get it is minimal: In the criminal context, the law permits a maximum prison sentence of six months for willfully violating a safety standard or regulation which leads to the death of a worker. By contrast, the maximum sentence for mail fraud is 30 years.

Testifying before the Senate Committee, Donald Coit Smith read aloud OSHA's mission: "to assure the safety and health of America's workers…" and went on:

Let’s look at the word “assure” closely. Webster’s says it is to “make certain.”
Senators, OSHA doesn’t make certain of anything from what I’ve been through. If I had to change one thing that could make a profound difference in OSHA, it would be to make fines and punishment so severe that employers would tremble at the thought of violating the code.

Colombia Trade Deal Is Derailed. Let's Keep It Off the Tracks

Tula Connell — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:03:06 -0400

In August 2004, Hector Alino Martinez and three other Colombian trade unionists were dragged out of their homes and assassinated in the streets of Caño Seco. The men were among 96 unionists killed in Colombia that year. But supporters of Bush's drive to ram the Colombia Free Trade Agreement through Congress must think a few dozen murdered trade unionists a year is OK—because they are basing their support for the deal by saying the number of murdered unionists in Colombia has dropped off in recent years. After all, there were "only" 39 killed there in 2007.

Which is why the successful move by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to take Bush's Colombia trade bill out of Fast Track is such a victory for workers here and in Colombia.

Bush really wanted to slam the Colombia deal through Congress. And because the trade agreement was negotiated while the now-expired Fast Track trade-promotion authority still was operative, lawmakers had only 90 legislative days to consider it after Bush sent it to Congress April 8. Now with the Colombia FTA out of Fast Track—a move none of its supporters anticipated—the trade deal is "dead." According to whom? According to Bush:

…that bill is dead unless the speaker schedules a definite vote. This was an unprecedented move.

For once, he got it right. Democrats in Congress caught supporters of a trade deal flat-footed. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) whined that the vote was “cheating.” Not so. Rules give the House the authority to revoke Fast Track, which in addition to creating a timeline for votes on trade bills bars lawmakers from amending agreements—so there's no way to make sure Bush-backed agreements include protections for workers' rights or the environment.

Under a Republican-controlled Congress, Bush steamrolled every piece of anti-worker, anti-consumer legislation he could, like the deeply flawed and massively overpriced Medicare prescription drug legislation in 2003. Now, he and his Republican backers face opposition. But it's up to us to make sure we hold the feet of Congress to the fire so it's not revived as a result of pressure from the bill's supporters. Supporters like visiting Harvard professor Edward Schumacher-Matos, who recently wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece:

Union members have been assassinated, but the reported number is highly exaggerated. Even one murder for union organizing is atrocious, but isolated killings do not justify holding up the trade agreement.

Dismissing brutal murders as "isolated" incidents is bad enough. But "isolated" in no way describes the killings of 2,550 trade unionists since 1986.

Clearly, moral arguments like the sanctity of human life don't work with the Bush crowd. Those like Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, who says the Colombian government is making progress in decreasing violence against labor leaders. In fact, the Colombian government has successfully prosecuted less than 3 percent of cases involving murdered trade unionists.

So what would a trade deal with Colombia do? Essentially, it would continue to do the same as all the other bad trade deals Bush has negotiated—destroy jobs. And those aren't only low-wage jobs that have moved—we are losing ground in advanced technology products, autos and even aerospace. Tradable services—from call centers to legal research to airline maintenance—also are increasingly being off-shored. In the past five years, American workers have lost almost 3 million manufacturing jobs, many due to the failures of our trade policy. Meanwhile, the Bush trade agenda contributed to a trade deficit of $712 billion in 2007.

Workers in countries on the other side of these trade deals aren't benefiting, either. Last week, Benedicto Martinez Orozco, co-president of a Mexican trade union, described what happened to workers in his country after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was passed:

"In the first years, thousands of middle-sized businesses closed, and that left thousands more workers without jobs," Mr. Martinez said through an interpreter.

The result, he said, was that there were many people who became very rich, while now 14 years later, about half the population of the country is either underemployed or unemployed.

In just the last six years, he said, wages have deteriorated by 60 percent; so while the minimum wage is 51 pesos, or between $4.50 and $5 a day, a kilogram of meat, which is about 2 pounds, costs 70 pesos.

In Mexico, Mr. Martinez said, the climate for workers and their ability to organize has gotten more harsh since NAFTA was passed, as large corporations have pressured the government to change its labor laws. Recent regulations have limited collective bargaining and restricted the ability of workers to strike.

Maybe now we're getting at the crux of the push for these deals: They don't guarantee any rights for workers, they weaken unions and create a low-wage labor pool global corporations can exploit.

Much of the major press has been following along in lockstep with the argument that the Colombia trade deal must pass, regardless of that government's disregard for human rights. But The Washington Post especially outdid itself with an editorial whose brutally insensitive headline, Drop Dead, Colombia, illustrates all too well the disconnect between the elitist press and the suffering of working people. The Post wasn't highlighting the egregious murders of trade unionists. It was bemoaning the successful move in the House to derail the bill.

The support for this measure is so strong among powerful lawmakers and their media mouthpieces, we must keep up the pressure to ensure if it ever gets introduced—this year or next—Congress will vote it down. Click here to tell your representative to oppose a trade deal with Colombia until its government makes real progress in protecting the lives and rights of union members.

USLEAP also has created two Mother's Day cards you can choose from to send to your loved one, letting her know you made a donation to the labor group's Flower Workers Economic Justice project (Colombia produces 62 percent of all the flowers brought into the United States).

Greedy Troglodytes Attack Teachers

Tula Connell — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 09:45:54 -0400

What is it about teachers that reactionaries don't like?

Maybe it's because an educated electorate poses a threat to those who seek to control the public—"Danger: Educated Union Member" is one of our favorite phrases—and so teachers pose an easy target for the antediluvians among us. (Remember John Stossel's ABC trash piece, "Stupid in America"?).

The success of teachers' unions also draws particular ire from the anti-education crowd.

This week, you may have seen full-page ads in USA Today or teevee spots on CNN and Fox attacking teachers. The ads are part of a $1 million advertising assault on teachers' unions launched days ago.

Two questions emerge.

Who would spend this amount of money trashing teachers? And who stands to make tons of money off this campaign?

The second question is the simplest to answer. The egregiously misnamed Center for Union Facts is the money-making entity pushing the campaign. The organization is another front group by sleaze propagandist Richard Berman. Among Berman’s list of hatchet jobs is a PR campaign through his American Beverage Institute to slam Mothers Against Drunk Driving on behalf of the alcohol industry. Via the Center for Consumer Freedom, Berman wielded a literally toxic campaign for the tuna industry to encourage pregnant women to eat tuna—never mind the mercury. (AFT's NCLBlog also points out Berman's attacks on Robert Redford here.)

Berman regularly reproduces organizations with innocuous-sounding names to perpetrate the opposite of what they seem.

As a result, Berman makes money. Lots of it. He runs five campaigns out of his offices in Washington, D.C., with backers paying "huge fees" to his lobbying firm, according to the Union Busting Network at the non-profit American Rights at Work. Citing USA Today, American Rights at Work notes Berman's company has 28 employees and earns $10 million a year, but "only Berman and his bookkeeper wife" know how much of the $10 million ends up in their own pockets. Or as the Las Vegas Sun puts it:

[Berman] never discloses his financial backers, allowing large, mainstream companies to fund him without having to associate their brand names with his sharp-elbowed approach.

At the Conservative Leadership Conference in Nevada last October, the Las Vegas Sun notes that when Berman described the tactics behind his teacher attack campaign, he approvingly quoted mobster Al Capone: “You can get further with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word.”

In Ohio, where Berman is aiming his "gun" at the Columbus Education Association, the association sums up his mission:

Not enough Columbus City teachers have been fired between the 2003–04 and 2006–07 school years to satisfy the Center For Union Facts. The anti-labor group posits that it is too easy for many Columbus City School teachers to obtain a continuing contract (known as tenure in other states) and they are therefore able to escape the accountability and scrutiny of the evaluation process.

Berman's sights clearly are off. Columbus was one of the first National Education Association (NEA) locals to host a Peer Assistance and Review Program, winning a Saturn Award for the program and becoming a centerpiece in former NEA President Bob Chase’s concept of “New Unionism." The program involves intensive hands-on training, conferences, evaluation and mentoring to ensure the highest skill levels among teachers. Further, as Columbus Education Association President Rhonda Johnson stated:

I find it highly ironic, that on the day that this smear campaign begins, the [Peer Assistance and Review Program] panel is meeting to consider whether to make a recommendation to the Superintendent to non-renew 4 intern teachers and to receive reports on three experienced teachers whose [Peer Assistance Review] consulting teachers have grave concerns about their classroom performance.

AFT President Ed McElroy describes Berman as "a shameless lobbyist who has shilled for pesticide, alcohol and tobacco companies."

Berman has a record of using hidden funders to attack groups that contribute a great deal to society. Now, he is coming after teachers at a time when most Americans support education and want to make improving education a top national priority.

The groups funding Berman have lots of money to spend. As part of his teacher attack campaign, he's inviting nominations for a contest to determine the nation's worst unionized teachers. The "winners" will be offered $10,000 each if they permanently resign or retire from any career in education—if they sign a release agreeing to have their name and the reasons for their selection published by the group.

This leads us back to the first question: Who would spend this amount of money trashing teachers?

Behind Berman's Center for Union Mis-Facts, are an array of organizations, such as the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that have an ideological and pecuniary axe to grind. They hate unions and more importantly, the workers who join together in unions to assert their rights as human beings are entitled to decent wages, affordable health coverage and retirement security.

The Las Vegas Sun puts his attack on teachers unions in perspective, saying it is "really a small front in a much bigger battle over the future of the labor movement and its role in American politics."

It’s not clear Berman cares at all about education policy. His real target is the broader labor movement offers profiles of anti-union organizations with details on their lobbying, litigation and media outreach, as well as their connections to each other.

The Sun article goes on:

If the public doesn’t trust the teachers unions, he reasons, surely they won’t trust steel workers or other unions that don’t have such a seemingly beneficent pedigree.

Berman wants lots of money and will do what it takes to keep the feeding at the pig trough. Those paying him to do their dirty work don't want us, as individuals, joining together to face the boss, the Big Business employer, the corporate conglomeration that profits when we don't challenge a wage system that means we must work two and three jobs to support our families, or go without prescription medication so we can pay the rent.

Workers in unions challenge that ideological mindset every day. And that's why Berman is being paid millions to go after us.

This is a crosspost from Firedoglake.

Green, the Color of Good Jobs

Tula Connell — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:04:37 -0500

The union movement is turning green. Not with envy, but with an escalating sense that the nation must work to address climate change and that we must be part of the effort to create good jobs that also are green jobs.

Last December, an unprecedented delegation of unionists traveled to Bali, Indonesia, for the U.N. climate change conference. Of the 90 union delegates, more than 20 were from North America.

Roger Toussaint, president of Transport Workers (TWU) Local 100 in New York, was one of them. He explained the need for union involvement this way:

We have to rise to the challenge of climate change by making it a key priority for our unions. A trade union agenda, rooted in the organized strength of workers and day-to-day engagement in affected communities, can help transition our society to a low-carbon future. This will bring “green” employment in such areas as public transportation, which is critically important now and in the years ahead.

I firmly believe all leaders of America’s working people must take immediate steps to familiarize themselves and their organizations with the issues involved and figure out the obligations of their appropriate job sectors. Nationally, the union movement must take the lead in shaping policy and legislation needed in this area. We need meaningful engagement and decisive action. We are on borrowed time, but the chance to make our mark on the process is there for the taking.

Earlier this month, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney addressed the Investor Summit on Climate Risk where he said investors, workers and government must come together to create a stable climate and a strong global economy that creates good jobs.

The global economy cannot prosper unless we secure a stable climate and sustainable sources of energy. Global warming means global depression, food and water shortages and drowned cities. I have stood in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward and seen that future.

Al Gore also spoke at the one-day meeting, sponsored in part by the United Nations Foundation and including more than 450 investor, financial and corporate leaders, who together control more than $20 trillion in investment capital.

Next month, unionists will take part in the "Good Jobs, Green Jobs: A National Green Jobs Conference," to share best practices about revitalizing our manufacturing sector, driving green building, promoting safer chemicals and realizing the economic benefits of global warming solutions. We will be joined by environmental and public health advocates, policymakers, business leaders and others who will launch a nationwide discussion on the benefits of a new green economy. The location of the March 13–14 conference at Pittsburgh’s David Lawrence Convention Center highlights the group’s commitment: It’s the only entirely green convention center in the country.

Unions increasingly are taking concrete steps toward making the connection between good jobs and green jobs. Here are just a few examples.

The United Steelworkers (USW) and the Sierra Club have formed a “blue-green alliance” to work for good jobs and a clean environment. The alliance is focusing on three issues: global warming and clean energy, fair trade and reducing toxics. USW President Leo Gerard says the union movement’s vision of addressing global warming challenges global policies that allow corporations to make huge profits by buying and trading the rights to emit carbon "without ever addressing the basic inequalities in our global economy."
The USW also recently released a report, DuPont and Greenwash, the first in its series of “Greenwashing” reports. The report notes that while DuPont touts its environmental image, its products are likely to dramatically impact global warming as greenhouse gases when they are disposed and used. It also finds the emissions from those products could be enormous, possibly canceling out or exceeding DuPont’s touted reductions in greenhouse gases from its facilities. The USW report says the company refuses to disclose the climate impact of those products.
Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) President Warren George has called on policymakers to invest in mass transit systems to reduce greenhouse gases:

We don’t need to reinvent the wheel, or create new infrastructure from scratch (although the infrastructure needs a lot of work). The machinery is in place. We the skilled workers are in place. All we need is the political will to provide the funding and the insight and incentives.
In November, the AFL-CIO—together with the Apollo Alliance––convened a meeting of workers’ pension trustees and money managers to discuss opportunities in clean-energy technologies. Through the Apollo Alliance, the AFL-CIO and some affiliated unions such as USW, seek to create jobs with a public investment in sustainable energy such as hydrogen fuel systems and related transportation, construction and manufacturing.
The Oregon AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions have been engaged in moving an agenda of renewable energy and good jobs by coordinating the activities of the Oregon Apollo Alliance. In October, Oregon AFL-CIO convention delegates passed resolutions on climate change and jobs and set up a task force of affiliated union leaders to help examine its impact on our members and implications on its policy work.

Last year, the AFL-CIO endorsed the Low Carbon Economy Act of 2007. Introduced by Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the bill set a goal of reducing the nation’s carbon emissions by at least 60 percent by 2050.

Electrical Workers (IBEW) President Edwin Hill said the legislation offered an effective approach to address climate change while allowing our economy to grow.

The fact that this bill is the only climate change legislation that also addresses the problems of international participation in emissions control makes it unique.

The AFL-CIO Energy Task Force last year issued a report which said in part:

It is time for our nation to take bold steps to meet the 21st century challenges related to energy policy. We believe our nation should embrace a balanced approach that assures abundant, affordable energy supplies, creates good-paying jobs for American workers, improves the environment and reduces our dangerous dependence on foreign oil.

In focusing on our core issue, family-supporting jobs, we in the union movement provide unique insight into an as-yet little explored facet of addressing climate change. There's still much work to be done, and part of that involves educating our members.

Barbara Byrd, secretary-treasurer of the Oregon AFL-CIO, was among our U.S. union delegation to Bali. As Byrd notes:

We recognize the Western states will be enacting far-reaching policies in the next few years, and we believe the union movement must be at the table to debate with other stakeholders how best to craft climate change legislation.

We will need to educate our own members as well, sothey will not only understand the complicated technical issues, but also so they will feel the urgency that drives the work of the labor delegates in Bali.

But we've taken big steps forward—concrete action as well as countering what USW President Gerard accurately describes as the myth of incompatibility between unions and the environment.

Says Gerard:

We need to put an end to the lies, the myths, the hysteria that say you can have either a clean environment or good jobs. You can have both, or you have neither.

This is a crosspost from Firedoglake.com

Who's Really Sick?

Tula Connell — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:10:30 -0500

Anyone can get health care in the United States. Just ask George W. Bush. Last year in Cleveland, he had this to say to the 47 million Americans without health care coverage:

I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room.

With emergency rooms serving as the Bush administration's solution to the nation's health care crisis, so many people are cramming into them, patient care now is at risk, according to a new study by researchers at Harvard Medical School.

But let's be fair. Bush isn't the only Republican leader who doesn't get—or doesn't care—that while the United States pays the most for per person health care coverage than any similar nation, we have lower life expectancy than most other rich countries.

Here's what former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said in a recent debate:

The reason health care isn’t working like a market right now is you have 47 million people that are saying, “I’m not going to play. I’m just going to get free care paid for by everybody else.” That doesn’t work.

Bad-mouthing uninsured Americans as "slackers" is not what the union movement, the progressive community, or just about anybody with an ounce of compassion supports. (This is a crosspost from Firedoglake.)

So, to help candidates running for office this year understand what's at stake, we've just launched an online survey. The 2008 Health Care for America Survey, jointly sponsored by us at the AFL-CIO and our community partner, Working America, runs through February and we will give the results to candidates at the state, congressional and presidential levels to ensure they understand what working families are experiencing. (You can read the stories here and vote on those you think make the most impact.)

Along with specific questions on affordability and quality, experiences with insurance companies, hospitals and doctors and suggested remedies, the survey also gives you the chance to tell your own story.

People are hungry to tell their experiences. The survey has been public only a couple days, and already more than 4,600 people have filled it out, while another 1,400 have taken time to write often heart-felt descriptions of their own experiences or of those close to them. Richard, a Machinists union member in Kansas, writes:

I'm a volunteer delivering low-cost hot meals to senior citizens and the disabled. I have an elderly lady who had to stop the meal program because she had to pay for her medications and couldn't afford both. She said her prescriptions costs are over $500 per month because she's in the "donut hole" allowed by Medicare.

That donut hole—the amount not covered by Medicare prescription drug benefit—is compliments of the Republican-led Congress, who strong-armed lawmakers into passing the hugely flawed Medicare prescription drug bill in 2006.

In South Dakota, Kim's writes that his brother, Kent, hadn't seen a doctor in years because he couldn't afford health insurance and certainly couldn't pay the doctor's bill out of his own pocket. By the time his bladder cancer was diagnosed in 2003, it was too late. Kent died less than two years later.

The stories are more than about individual pain. They say a lot about the values of those who run this nation. Kelly, in Rhode Island, says she has the following options to obtain health care coverage she and her family can't afford:

A few months ago we were notified that we make "too much money" to continue to the state shared-cost health insurance. I discussed options with my employer. Finding out that my share of the cost would be $865/month, I re-contacted the carrier dropping us to see if there was anything that we could do. We were told the following options:

I could divorce my husband and he could apply for himself and the children; since he is disabled with very little income he would qualify. Next option was to work less. I was told straight out that if I were to work less—bring home less money—I would qualify for the health insurance and possibly welfare and food stamp. The last option given to me (just cruel!) was to transfer legal guardianship of my children to my parents who would then be able to place the children under their health care plan at a more reasonable cost.

I should give up my husband, give up my children, give up my home ( I won't be able to afford it very soon) or take the state for all I can?…Someone needs to take a stand and something needs to be done! Please, for all Americans, not just my family, make sure that you vote!

I hope you get a chance to take the survey, vote on stories you think make the most impact and pass around the survey. Lawmakers need to know.