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Ten year ago, Republicans made a mistake. They gave tax cuts to millionaires. They decided our country needed less money and millionaires needed more.

Now our country doesn’t have the money we need to build an economy that will work for all of us.
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I opened up my Yahoo account when I got off work and was greeted by an article from the New York Times about how the State of California is outsourcing the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge project to China.

Outsourcing has become an everyday occurrence. Big Businesses and governments like this tell our American citizens and workers exactly what they think about them every time a project like this is sent overseas. According to the article, the California government saved around 400 million dollars by sending our jobs overseas.

This type of action should be considered criminal.

The state of California contracted a Chinese company that pays their workers less than a dollar an hour, and works them for more than 100 hours per week to steal 3000 jobs from qualified and competent American Workers. Their safety concerns were so great that they had to ship 250 consultants, government employees, and contractors to Shanghai. (more…)

A parody of the University of Wisconsin fight song inspired by the resistance of the public workers and their allies to Governor Scott Walker’s attack on their standard of living and collective bargaining rights. (more…)

The AFL-CIO today is announcing a major “commitment to action” to bring public and private partners together to encourage both workers’ capital and skilled labor to promote large-scale investments in America’s infrastructure.

This pioneering commitment, which will be announced at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in Chicago, will seek to create good jobs and address our public infrastructure deficit and the threats posed to the environment and our economy by the way in which we use energy.

As part of the commitment, the AFL-CIO will work with business and government to promote infrastructure investment with a goal of at least $10 billion in new funding over the next five years. (more…)

Statement Delivered on the Floor of the United States Senate — June 27, 2011:

Mr. President, this is a pivotal moment in the history of our country. In the coming days and weeks, decisions will be made about our national budget that will impact the lives of virtually every American in this country for decades to come.

At a time when the richest people and the largest corporations in our country are doing phenomenally well, and, in many cases, have never had it so good, while the middle class is disappearing and poverty is increasing, it is absolutely imperative that a deficit reduction package not include the disastrous cuts in programs for working families, the elderly, the sick, the children and the poor that the Republicans in Congress, dominated by the extreme right wing, are demanding.

In my view, the President of the United States of America needs to stand with the American people and say to the Republican leadership that enough is enough. No, we will not balance the budget on the backs of working families, the elderly, the sick, the children, and the poor, who have already sacrificed enough in terms of lost jobs, lost wages, lost homes, and lost pensions. Yes, we will demand that millionaires and billionaires and the largest corporations in America contribute to deficit reduction as a matter of shared sacrifice. Yes, we will reduce unnecessary and wasteful spending at the Pentagon. And, no we will not be blackmailed once again by the Republican leadership in Washington, who are threatening to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States government for the first time in our nation’s history unless they get everything they want. (more…)

Wow. Who knew? When your collective bargaining rights are taken away, it’s not about workers’ rights, says Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R).

Over the weekend, Walker signed the bill he pushed that eliminates the right—let’s repeat that word, the right–of public employees to collectively bargain for a better life. The bill goes into effect tomorrow, taking away a right that had been guaranteed by law for more than 50 years. But now he tells the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

It’s not a rights issue. It’s an expensive entitlement.

Oh, really? Tell that to the tens and tens of thousands of Wisconsin workers who filled the streets of Madison and are now fueling the biggest recall election in the state’s history. (more…)

The word “boss” traces its roots to the Dutch word “baas,” meaning master, and some have argued that it caught on in the Americas as a way for workers to avoid the word master and thus the pairings of “master and servant,” or worse, “master and slave.” As a slang word for “awesome” or “excellent,” boss took on an added positive meaning as early as the 1880s. It was used in that way throughout the 20th century, as the character Michael Scott observed on The Office:

Remember when people used to say “boss” when they were describing something really cool. Like, “those shoulder pads are really boss man.” “Look at that perm, that perm is so boss!” It’s what made me want to become a boss. And I looked so good in a perm and shoulder pads. But now, boss is just slang for jerk in charge.

Have you ever had a horrible boss? Have you ever fantasized about doing something to get rid of your boss that was, ummmm, kind of extreme? Like….MURDER? If so, you might enjoy this summer’s latest popcorn comedy, Horrible Bosses, in which three white (and white collar) workers played by Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day come together with the help of a black conman (Jamie Fox) to kill each other’s bosses. Their bosses are each horrible in their own special way: there is the “Psycho” boss, played by Kevin Spacey, the “Maneater,” a sexually aggressive dentist played by Jennifer Anniston, and the “Tool,” an impossibly ugly, sleazy boss, played by Colin Ferrell outfitted with a paunch, a comb-over, and the classic short-sleeve-shirt-with-a-tie-look. (more…)

The United States is rapidly falling behind the rest of the industrialized world when it comes to life expectancy, and no demographic is facing a more rapid decline in life expectancy than women. According to a new study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, the life expectancy of the American woman is not just growing too slowly — in 313 American counties, it is actually declining.

In these counties, primarily located in the Southeast, Central Appalachia, and the lower Midwest, life expectancy rates for women are as many as 50 years behind the best-performing countries. In other words, the worst female life expectancy rates in the U.S. are equal to the rate the best countries experienced in the 1950s.

Researchers and analysts caution against attributing the decline to any one factor, but say it is clear that “income plays a very large role in determining adult health outcomes,” suggesting that poverty and socioeconomic status play a key role in raising — or lowering — life expectancy. And while there may not be consensus as to why the decline is occurring, University of Wisconsin professor Dave Kindig told Remapping Debate that, to reverse the trend, the U.S. needs to strengthen its investment into public health programs, particularly those focused on preventive medicine and nutrition:

“If we tripled our investment in public health, and did it in a smart way, we would almost certainly get that money back in savings in the long run because fewer people would be going to the hospital for heart attacks and strokes and cancer and diabetes.” (more…)

It was an accident of scheduling, but call it fate. As President Obama was meeting with 600 major donors from the gay and lesbian community in New York to raise money for his re-election campaign, three blocks away, Van Jones and the driving beat of the The Roots electrified an overflowing Town Hall meeting of citizen activists intent on reviving the movement of hope and change – the American Dream Movement – that helped put the president in the White House in the first place.

The place was rocking, and Jones was as hot as the band. “We voted for peace and prosperity,” he stated, “not war and austerity. We’ve got to challenge both parties in Washington once more.” (more…)

If we lost 12 soldiers every day in Iraq or Afghanistan, this country would be outraged!

PhilaPOSH is the Philadelphia Area Project on Occupational Safety and Health and is made up of unions, health and legal professionals working together since 1975 for a safe and protected workplace as well as for the rights of injured workers.

The video below is in commemoration of those who lost their lives at work while trying to provide for themselves and their loved ones.

Every year between 4,000 and 5,000 people die on the job. The equivalent of more than 12 per day.

The video was created by filmmaker and Temple University Graduate Student, Oscar Molina, in conjunction with the 2011 Workers Memorial Day program. The goal of the piece is to show the link between labor, family members and community activists … all of whom are joining together in the fight for workplace safety and health.