union blogs

We Couldn't Have Said It Better

Tula Connell — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 17:25:16 -0400

Want to pass along this blog from AFL-CIO Now's Mike Hall.

After President Obama finished delivering his speech to the AFL-CIO Executive Council this morning, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka had this question for the president.

We're going into a congressional election three months from today, and I think it's fair to say that workers' hopes for congressional action to protect workers' rights and to create jobs have been frustrated by a Republican minority that has filibustered every matter in front of them, every single thing that's been good for us.

I just want to ask you, what advice do you have for workers as the election approaches, particularly for workers who are trying to organize to have a voice on the job?

We couldn't have answered any better. Take a look at Obama's response.

Well, you guys don't need advice from me, but let me tell you what I see out there. We were hurt by this recession, badly hurt. This is going to take some time to recover. Unemployment is at unacceptably high levels.

But as I said before, we'd had challenges before the crisis hit. A lot of your membership had been hurting long before, partly because we just live in a more competitive world. There's nothing we can do about that, that's just the truth. But a lot of it also had to do with the fact that we put policies in place that were not good for working families. There's a reason why incomes, wages, were stagnant for average workers, even while the costs were going up. And part of it had to do with the fact that we had a philosophy that said that providing help to workers, allowing them to collectively bargain, allowing them to negotiate for better benefits, that that all was something of the past instead of something we need for the future.

So on the one hand, I think everybody here understands we've got to be competitive in America. We've got to have competitive price structures. We've got to make the best products possible. Workers have to be invested in trying to help the companies they work for succeed. With respect to public employees, we've all got to work together to make sure that whatever we're doing, whether it's as firefighters or as teachers or postal workers, whatever it is, that we're providing the best possible service. I think everybody understands that there's no operation in the United States of America that shouldn't be efficient and effective in doing what it does.

But it is my profound belief that companies are stronger when their workers are getting paid well and have decent benefits and are treated with dignity and respect. It is my profound belief that our government works best when it's not being run on behalf of special interests, but it's being run on behalf of the public interest, and that the dedication of public servants reflects that.

So FDR I think said--he was asked once what he thought about unions. He said, "If I was a worker in a factory and I wanted to improve my life, I would join a union." Well, I tell you what. I think that's true for workers generally. I think if I was a coal miner, I'd want a union representing me to make sure that I was safe and you did not have some of the tragedies that we've been seeing in the coal industry. If I was a teacher, I'd want a union to make sure that the teachers' perspective was represented as we think about shaping an education system for our future.

And that's why my administration has consistently implemented not just legislative strategies but also, where we have the power through executive orders, to make sure that those basic values are reflected.

Republicans First Slime, Then Maneuver to Block Labor Board Nominee

Tula Connell — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:07:30 -0500

Mike Hall on our AFL-CIO Now Blog staff wrote about the latest Republican maneuvering to kill a qualified nominee for the nation's Labor Board and I want to share it with you.

Republican Senate leaders are so frightened that a member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) might actually have an open mind about workers' rights, that in two purely partisan maneuvers, they've blocked a majority vote on one of President Obama's nominees for an NLRB seat.

Craig Becker is a highly respected and experienced labor law practitioner and scholar. He has an impressive 27-year record of advocating for and representing workers, especially low-wage workers. He is currently an associate general counsel for the AFL-CIO and SEIU.

That experience—as opposed to being the type of management stooge favored by the Bush administration—is what has driven Republicans into a mouth-foaming frenzy.

First, they've rushed to seat newly elected Scott Brown (R-Mass.) moving up his original Feb. 11 date to this morning in order to break the Democrats 60-vote filibuster proof majority. A vote to end the Becker filibuster was set for Monday, followed by a confirmation vote that only requires a simple majority—basic democracy. Brown's seating scuttles that if Republicans vote in a 41-seat bloc.

In addition, two Republican senators, Mike Enzi (Wyo.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who earlier had voted for Becker at the committee level last year, somewhere along the line had an epiphany that Becker was the devil incarnate with a union card and now say they will vote against Becker.

Of course, both the rush-job swearing in and see-the-light moments by Enzi and Murkowski came following a full-court press by a panicked U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other corporate lobbyists that had an inside track and cozy relations with the pro-management Bush NLRB for nearly a decade.

Despite Republican and corporate attempts to paint Becker as a red-tinged radical, he is a mainstream labor lawyer, whom Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, calls "one of the pre-eminent labor law thinkers in the United States."

Last month, 66 labor law professors from our nation's top law schools wrote Senate leaders urging Becker's immediate confirmation and attesting to his "integrity, fairness, and dedication to advancing Congress' purposes in adopting federal labor law and to the role of the NLRB."

How's this for far-out, dangerous and crazed pro-union beliefs? Here are some excerpts for Becker's opening state to the HELP committee yesterday.

As an attorney, I have sat across the table from management and also on the same side of the table, in both postures gaining an understanding of employers' concerns and often finding common ground between labor and management....I have represented parties on both sides of unfair labor practice cases.

I fully understand that, if confirmed, I will occupy a position far different from the positions I have occupied as a scholar, teacher, and advocate...if confirmed I will have a duty to implement the intent of Congress as expressed in the law, to consider impartially all views appropriately expressed to the Board.

Pretty scary stuff if you're a Republican senator, huh?

Young Workers--Hit Hard, Hitting Back

Liz Shuler — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:16:52 -0500

As the newly elected secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, I traveled the country this fall, talking with workers and hearing their concerns. The economic crisis is causing a lot of pain. So many people have no jobs, no health care—and many are losing their homes. And as I looked into the faces of young workers, the reality hit home that these young people are part of the first generation in recent history likely to be worse off than their parents.

This is a tragedy.

The AFL-CIO and our community affiliate, Working America, recently surveyed young workers—and I'm not talking about 17- and 18-year-olds. I'm talking about 18- to 34-year-olds. In the past 10 years, young workers have suffered disproportionately from the downturn in the economy:

One in three young workers is worried about being able to find a job—let alone a full-time job with benefits.
Only 31 percent make enough money to cover their bills and put some aside—that is 22 percentage points worse than it was 10 years ago.
Nearly half worry about having more debt than they can handle.
One in three still lives at home with parents.

Young workers are living the effects of a 30-year campaign to create a low-wage workforce. It has succeeded.

For decades, the far right led an anti-government, anti-investment, feed-the-rich-and-starve-the-poor drive that gave us an era of deregulation, privatization and job exporting.

At the same time, corporations and government attacked unions and workers' freedom to form unions and bargain for decent wages and benefits. When unions are strong, paychecks grow and workers have benefits like health care and pensions.

When unions are under attack, paychecks shrink. Pensions vanish. Health care becomes the emergency room.

What's left is not working for young people—or for any of us. It will take a broadly shared sense of wartime urgency to replace today's low-wage economy with a high-wage, high-skills economy. The first step must be immediate action to address the nation's jobs crisis, with five essential steps:

Extend the lifeline for jobless workers.
Rebuild America's schools, roads and energy systems and invest in green technology and green jobs.
Increase aid to state and local governments to maintain vital services.
Fund jobs in our communities.
Put TARP funds to work for Main Street with job-creating loans to small businesses.

We took these initiatives to the White House Summit on Jobs on Dec. 3 and are pushing Congress to take action now. The first reports from the Jobs Summit are encouraging, and we look forward to working with the Obama administration and Congress to carry on this momentum.

It's time to rebuild an economy that works—an economy based on prosperity, an economy we can be proud to pass on to our children and their children. And we need young people to lead the way. That survey I mentioned earlier shows they are ready.

Young workers have a whole new level of civic engagement, with the surge of new voters in the 2008 election.
They are well-informed and following government and policy news.
They believe in collective action and understand the power of having a union.
They have hope for the future and the vision of a savvy, diverse movement to bring about progressive change.

We're planning a major summit for young workers after the first of the year to bring all our ideas and voices together. When crises hit, it's young people who drive change.

Martin Luther King Jr. was 26 when he led the Montgomery bus boycott. At 25, César Chávez was registering Mexican Americans to vote. Walter Reuther headed strikes demanding GM recognize its workers' rights starting when he was 30. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was 33 when she drafted the declaration of women's rights.

Young people are being hard in this jobs crisis. But I believe they provide much of the fuel we need to get out of it.

This is cross-posted from the Huffington Post.

Remembering Studs Terkel

Tula Connell — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 10:22:15 -0500

What bitter irony. Studs Terkel, who gave voice to working people throughout his life, passed away yesterday, just days before a potentially historic presidential election. Should Sen. Barack Obama win on Tuesday, his victory would be a sweet vindication for Terkel, whose affinity for America's workers would be reflected in the policies of an Obama administration.

Terkel, 96, has been renowned for his compilations of oral interviews with famous and mostly not-so-famous Americans. He has talked with thousands of people about their experiences on the job, serving their country in World War II, their perceptions of race and most recently, the challenges of growing old and facing death. One of his most famous books is Working, in which more than 100 Americans share their hopes, dreams and daily struggles on the job.

In April 2006, Terkel received the Lifetime Achievement award from the workers' advocacy organization, American Rights at Work. After accepting the award, Terkel said:

What brings workers together can be a belief, a hope of improving the climate and community at work--the spaces where so many of us spend so much of our lives. Respect on the job and a voice at the workplace shouldn't be something Americans have to work overtime to achieve.

Born Louis Terkel, he grew up in the 1920s and 1930s in an environment filled with workers, union organizers and other progressives who gathered in the lobby of his parents' Chicago rooming house. Starting his career as an actor, disc jockey and radio and television personality, Terkel ultimately turned to documenting oral interviews in a series of books. In Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do, Terkel elicited first-hand experiences of workers as varied as bus driver and strip miner, policeman and film critic. Blacklisted in the 1950s by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Terkel went on to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1985 and a National Humanities Medal from President Bill Clinton in 1997.

Terkel, who has been called a "guerilla journalist" and a man "whose name is synonymous with Labor Day," sprinkles his conversation with references to the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes and American revolutionary Thomas Paine--yet has the unique ability to engage people in a way that draws forth the hopes, dreams and heartfelt experiences of everyday Americans.

In July 2005, I was honored to interview Terkel, and in his inimitable style, his conversation ranged from erudite quotes from the classics to conversations heard at his local bus stop. In remembering Terkel, there's no better way than to hear him in his own words. Below is the excerpt from that July 2005 interview.

"The thing that's so ironic, is we are stuck with what I call national Alzheimer's disease. The general American public, through no fault of its own, but through the media--which is laughingly called, absurdly called, obscenely called--liberal media, which is a joke, of course. But the point is that because of that, day after day after day, putting down of labor organizations, or not mentioning them led to the children not knowing a thing about it.

How did the eight-hour day come into being? It began in Chicago and four guys got hanged for it--the Haymarket affair in 1886. What were they fighting for? The eight-hour day.

There's no knowledge what the labor movement did for the lives of people. Social Security came out of the New Deal, and the minimum wage idea, and the idea of national health, these all came out of [labor]. And that's all being dismantled by what we have now. And so part of it is not knowing the past. No past, therefore there is no present and no future.

What was the first thing Ronald Reagan did as president of the United States? In 1981, he broke the air controller's strike. You know what they were striking about? It wasn't about pay. It was about R and R, rest and recreation. So the issue was passenger safety, right? And Ronald Reagan said, 'No,' and four out of five Americans applauded.

You start wondering, 'Wait a minute. Are we a necrophiliac people?' And you start thinking some more. 'We're the only industrialized country that still has the death penalty, right? We're the only industrialized country that does not have national health insurance.' So one is death, and the other is life. And so you start thinking, 'My God, have we become so perverse?

If so, then all my books are junk? Because my books depended on the sense of decency of ordinary Americans and their native intelligence and it's under assault today as never before.

[Americans' sense of decency and native intelligence are] there, but the information has been siphoned through--we know what it's siphoned through: Fox News, Rupert Murdoch and Rush Limbaugh. And thus we have a certain kind of news filter to it. Right? It becomes entertainment, it becomes banality, it becomes nothing. And there's no past. The big thing is to revivify in one way or another the past and to show how we came to be.

So that's part of the problem facing labor, to reacquaint these people with what happened. The new members are fresh and they have grievances and we've got to hit that and reach as many as possible--caregivers and…maids and get all the people who never thought of organizing, organized. And that's what the oral histories I write are all about, I hope--to recapture our history. And I think we can do it--provided we…stick together.

Whatever split there is has to be healed--immediately. Because we agree on the big thing. Basically, it has to be under one big tent. I like the phrase 'under one tent.' And so, that's pretty much the ticket."

This is a cross-post from the AFL-CIO Now blog.