Blog

Kenneth Quinnell
AFL-CIO

Fast food workers at more than 60 restaurants in Detroit walked off the job Friday. This may be the largest fast food strike in American history, involving more than 400 workers from McDonald’s, Long John Silver’s, Burger King, Popeyes and KFC. Some locations were forced to shut down. At issue is workers’ right to form a union and an increase in base pay to a minimum of $15 per hour.

Pastor W.J. Rideout III, a leader in Detroit’s Good Jobs Now coalition, said the organic action was a result of a long history of mistreatment of fast food workers:

“They’ve been wronged in so many ways, it really doesn’t take much coaching to say, hey, we’re going to organize together, we’re going to stand up together,” he said. (more…)

By Mike Hall
AFL-CIO Senior Writer

Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who fund a number of extreme right-wing organizations and are major contributors to the tea party and bankrollers for host of anti-worker state ballot initiatives and legislation, now have their sights set on building a major media empire.

They are expected to make a $600 million-plus bid to purchase the Tribune Co. and its eight regional newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, the Orlando Sentinel and the Hartford Courant, and more than 20 TV stations like WGN in Chicago and KTLA Channel 5 in Los Angeles.

With the Tribune Co. emerging from bankruptcy, the investment firms that own media conglomerate are seeking buyers.

Journalists, workers and community groups are raising concerns about the possible purchase, and the Kochs turning these independent news outlets into mouthpieces for their extremist agenda.

The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor will rally Tuesday, May 14, outside the offices of Oaktree Capital Management, which has a significant ownership stake in the Tribune Co., along with managing a number of public employee and union pension funds.     (more…)

By Mike Hall
AFL-CIO Senior Writer

New York City workers will receive, starting next year, five paid sick days a year to care for themselves or an ill family member under a measure the New York City Council passed (45-3) this afternoon. The vote culminates a four-year effort by a powerful coalition of workers, unions and community groups.

At a press conference before the historic vote, Vincent Alvarez, president of the New York City Central Labor Council, said:

This vote marks a big step in the right direction toward providing paid sick time to workers in our city. I commend the many advocates who have fought so hard to improve the lives of workers and their families through this bill. As this legislation is voted upon, we reaffirm our commitment to protecting and improving the basic rights of all workers here in New York City.

The issue had been stalled in the City Council, but in late March the New York City Campaign for Paid Sick Days, a broad coalition of low-wage workers, women’s rights advocates, health care providers, small business owners, labor unions and community organizations, reached an agreement with Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn to bring the paid sick leave measure to a vote.

After the vote, MomsRising Executive Director Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner said:

It’s been a long fight, but today the New York City Council heeded the call of New York families and passed a bill that would allow more than a million New Yorkers to earn paid time off to use when they are sick or to take care of a sick child, spouse or parent. (more…)

By Mike Hall
AFL-CIO Senior Writer

Today, 150 people will likely be killed on the job or die from job-related illnesses and disease. That deadly toll will continue tomorrow and the next day and the next until the nation “renews the commitment to protect workers from injury, disease and death,” and makes it a high priority, says the 2013 edition of the AFL-CIO’s Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect.

The report, released this morning, finds that along with the 4,693 workers killed on the job in 2011 (about 13 a day)—the last figures available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)—an estimated 50,000 workers a year (about 137 a day) die from occupational diseases. In addition, some 3.8 workers are reported to suffer job-related injuries or illnesses each year, but workplace safety experts believe the actual numbers could be more than 11 million because of under reporting.

Says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, it is “unacceptable that so many hardworking men and women continue to die on the job.”

No one should have to sacrifice his or her life or health and safety in order to earn a decent living.

The report includes state-by-state profiles of workers’ safety and health and features state and national information on workplace fatalities, injuries, illnesses, the number and frequency of workplace inspections, penalties, funding, staffing and public employee coverage under the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act).

North Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska and Arkansas were among states with the highest workplace fatality, while New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Washington State were states with the lowest. Latino workers, especially those born outside of the United States, continue to face higher rates of workplace fatalities—14% higher—than other workers, the same as last year. (more…)

Kenneth Quinnell
AFL-CIO

After last week’s Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh, which killed at least 377 garment workers, United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) started a petition calling on three of the leading users of Bangladeshi garment workers—Walmart, the Gap and H&M—to demand that factories in the country be made safe for workers. The building collapse is already the deadliest garment factory disaster in known history and the death toll is not yet final. USAS says the deaths could have easily been prevented, as cracks appeared in the structure the day before it collapsed. Workers were ordered to work in the building anyway, under threat of losing a month’s pay.

The Rana Plaza tragedy is not the first in Bangladesh in recent history. The Tazreen Fashions factory fire in November 2012 burned 112 workers to death. Survivor Sumi Abedin jumped from the third floor of the factory, realizing she was likely to die, but didn’t want to be burned alive. “I jumped to save my body, not my life.” She says she wanted her family to be able to recover her body. (more…)

By Mike Hall
AFL-CIO Senior Writer

If you are one of the millions of workers who count on overtime to stretch your paycheck, including the 59% of US workers paid by the hour, it’s time to tell House Republicans, “Don’t cut my overtime with your so-called Working Families Flexibility Act (H.R. 1406).”

The bill would allow employers to stop giving workers any extra pay for overtime work and instead substitute “comp time.”

What would that mean for most workers?

1. “Comp Time” means a pay cut—Workers compensated with time off rather than cash would see a reduction in their take-home pay.

2. “Comp Time” means mandatory overtime—“Comp time” legislation would make mandatory overtime less expensive for employers. Under “comp time” legislation, employers may be able to receive the benefits of overtime work at no additional cost to themselves.

3. “Comp Time” means more unpredictable work schedules for employees—Making mandatory overtime cheaper for employers would keep workers on the job longer and result in more unpredictable worker schedules and, for workers with children, higher day care costs.  (more…)

By Mike Hall
AFL-CIO Senior Writer

Congress must fix “the glaring safety issues revealed in the wake of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster,” said Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) this week, as he introduced legislation to bring the nation’s mine health and safety laws up to date.

The bill (S. 805), the Robert C. Byrd Mine Safety Protection Act of 2013, would  give mine safety officials the ability to effectively investigate and shut down habitually dangerous mines and hold mine operators accountable for putting their workers in unnecessary danger. Says Rockefeller:

Since the terrible tragedy at Upper Big Branch more than three years ago, some crucial steps have been taken to improve mine safety, but we are long overdue to make an even bigger leap forward by passing comprehensive mine safety legislation.

The bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), is the Senate companion to a House mine safety bill introduced last month by Reps. George Miller (D-Calif.) and Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.). Says Manchin:

Every miner should wake up in the morning and expect to come home safely to their loved ones at night. That is why we need to continue to improve mine safety so that our miners’ lives are never in jeopardy. I look forward to working with my colleagues from both sides of the aisle on this important piece of legislation. (more…)

Kenneth Quinnell
AFL-CIO

Current laws in the United States allow corporations to use offshore havens to avoid paying their taxes and, if it’s up to many in Washington, the problem will only grow larger, particularly if the so-called “territorial” tax system is passed. The details of the use of such tax havens were discussed in a conference call with Campaign for America’s Future (CAF), Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ).

Current tax laws encourage the offshoring of America’s jobs, manufacturing and profit centers, which has led to the hollowing out of the middle class, manufacturing and much of the country, according to Dave Johnson of CAF. Changes in the tax code in recent decades have led to a series of dangerous statistics for America’s working families:

• Corporate tax revenues as a share of GDP are at near historically low levels.
• In 2009, the U.S. share of GDP made up of corporate tax revenues was only 1.7%.
• The top corporate tax rate in 1970 was 52.8%, now it is 35% (although the effective rate is much lower).
• The United States has the third-lowest effective corporate tax burden in the world.
• Corporate taxation as a share of total tax revenue was 26.4% in 1950 and was down to 7.4% in 2010.
• Personal income, Social Security and Medicare taxes were 51.4% of total tax revenue in 1950, now they are up to 83.4%.

Congress is now proposing lowering corporate taxes even more and even, possibly, eliminating taxes on earnings reported as having been earned outside the country. (more…)

Richard Kim
Executive Editor, The Nation.com

Ask yourself this: Do you know the name of any one of the victims killed in the West Chemical and Fertilizer Company disaster? Do you know how many of them there were? Their ages, aspirations, what they looked like, whether they left behind children or what messages they last posted on Facebook? Do you know if there is an explanation yet for what caused the explosion? Or if investigators are still searching for one?

You probably don’t know the answer to any of these questions, and I didn’t either until I started writing this article. I didn’t know that as of Sunday, April 21, four days after the explosion, officials have confirmed fourteen deaths, eleven of whom were first responders, and that as many as sixty people remain missing. I didn’t know the name Jerry Chapman, 25, who volunteered with the Abbot Fire Company and who, according to his girlfriend Gina Rodriguez, was training to be an EMT. I didn’t know the name Cody Dragoo, 50, who was both an employee of the fertilizer plant and a West firefighter (the town has an all-volunteer force). And I had never heard of West firefighter Morris Bridges, 41, who lived just a few doors down from the facility and whose 18-year-old son Brent Bridges stood on the porch as the blast that killed his father blew out the windows of their home.

I do know, however, the names and faces of Sean Collier, Krystle Campbell, Martin Richard and Lu Lingzhi. I know that Sean, 26, had been on the MIT police force for a little more than a year when he was allegedly shot by Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, that Lu was a Chinese national studying at Boston University, that Krystle was a regular Boston Marathon watcher and that Martin was just 8 years old and had recently made a sign that read: No More Hurting People Peace. I’ve seen the photo of him holding, with obvious pride and joy, those words drawn on a sheet of blue construction paper more than a dozen times. I can’t get away from it on Facebook, and when it shows up on my feed, I can’t look away.

What separates these victims from one another? Surely not innocence, for they are all innocent, and they all deserve to be mourned. And yet the blunt and awful truth is that, as a nation, we pay orders of magnitude more attention to the victims of terrorism than we do to the over 4,500 Americans killed each year while on the job. As former Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis once put it, “every day in America, 13 people go to work and never come home.” Very little is ever said in public about the vast majority of these violent and unnecessary deaths. And even when a spectacular tragedy manages to capture our collective attention—as the West explosion briefly did, as the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster did three years before—it is inconceivable that such an event would be constituted as a permanent emergency of world-historic proportions. (more…)

By Mike Hall
AFL-CIO Senior Writer

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said that in 1965, and African Americans still hear his quote ring.

A new report, Blacks in Unions: 2012, by the University of California, Berkeley, Center for Labor Research and Education, finds that black workers are 19% more likely to be in unions than non-black workers. In the nation’s 10 largest metropolitan areas, African Americans are 42% more likely than non-blacks to be in unions.

There’s a pretty good reason for this. Unions make a difference in the lives of black workers—in cold, hard cash terms, it amounts to $185 a week in median weekly earnings, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Overall, union members also are more likely than nonunion workers to have health care coverage from their employers and good pensions.

But I believe Dr. King spoke of more than dollars and cents. I think that as he said those words to the Illinois AFL-CIO 48 years ago, he referred to the doors unions opened to the middle class for generations of African Americans and other workers otherwise shut out. I think he had in mind the dignity that comes with having a voice on the job—a say in how to make a job and a life better. And he also honored the union movement’s long advocacy for civil and human rights and economic and social justice. (more…)