Blog

As the news is full of stories about the super-rich and corporate CEOs giving millions of dollars in secret donations to Mitt Romney and Karl Rove to run negative TV ads, working people have not only fought back—we’re already winning.

Rep. Mark Critz was supposed to lose in the Republican gerrymandered congressional district (PA-12). The newly drawn district was two-thirds Rep. Jason Altmire’s, who had only just a month ago led all the polls from 15 to 25 percentage points.

The pundits all said Critz didn’t have a shot, even with the support of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO. They said it was a “test” for labor’s “ground game,” with the expectation we would fail. But working families never doubted the power of people speaking to their friends, family, neighbors and co-workers.

Led by the United Steelworkers (USW), the Mine Workers (UMWA), SEIU and the Alliance for Retired Americans, more than 600 volunteers knocked on more than 10,000 doors, made more than 64,000 phone calls and sent more than 36,000 pieces of mail.

And it worked. Critz won in a huge upset. (more…)

So much for Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) stewardship of the Wisconsin economy and his promise that eliminating collective bargaining rights for public employees and massive budget cuts would turn the Badger State into a job growth miracle.

A report today from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows that Wisconsin is the only state in the nation to suffer “statistically significant” job loss during the 12 months from March 2011 to March 2012. In other words, while the rest of the nation is at least holding its own or seeing improvement in job growth, Walker’s Wisconsin experiment is a miserable failure.

During the period, Wisconsin lost 23,900 jobs. That was the largest decrease in percentage terms in the country. The public-sector job losses (17,800) were far larger than the private-sector job losses (6,100).

Voters will certainly keep this in mind when they go to the polls in Walker’s upcoming recall election.

The BLS report can be found here. Also click here to check out this report from the Economic Policy Institute and here for a more detailed look at Walker’s economic record.

***

This has been reposted from AFL-CIO.

This week’s reports from the New York Times about Walmart’s practices in Mexico are breathtaking. The Times found “credible evidence that bribery played a persistent and significant role in Walmart’s rapid growth in Mexico.” The Times interviewed an executive of Walmart’s Mexican subsidiary who “bought zoning approvals and reductions in environmental impact fees.” According to the New York Times, when lawyers for Walmart discovered this activity and informed senior management, then Walmart CEO Lee Scott ordered Walmart’s internal investigative protocols revised to give the targets of internal investigations more control over those same investigations. The specific reports about conduct in Mexico were ignored, the executives involved were promoted and a senior in-house lawyer who objected subsequently left Walmart. The apparent result was that Walmart grew dramatically in Mexico at the expense of its Mexican competitors, leading to Mexico becoming Walmart’s second largest market after the United States. The executive identified in Walmart’s in-house investigator’s notes as “most responsible” was promoted to head of all U.S. Walmart stores.

Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, it is a crime for a U.S. company to bribe an official of a foreign government — just as it is a crime to bribe an official of the United States government. It is also a crime in Mexico to bribe an official of the Mexican government. And bear in mind that the Times story does not describe the acts of isolated individuals — it describes conduct and elaborate efforts to suppress the results of internal investigation of that conduct involving multiple top executives over a period of years. In other words, the New York Times story describes “credible evidence” of criminal activity and the willful neglect of criminal activity involving individuals at the highest levels of one of America’s largest corporations.

Nothing like this has happened since the collapse of Enron and Worldcom in 2002. And Walmart is of course a more important company than either Enron or Worldcom. Walmart is the largest private employer in the United States. And in the days since the Times story appeared, the Washington Post has reported that Walmart has participated in an aggressive lobbying campaign to weaken the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act which makes bribing foreign officials a crime. (more…)

Congressional Republicans this past week failed in their latest attempt to roll back workers’ rights. The U.S. Senate defeated (45-54) a measure (S.J. Res. 36) to kill a new National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rule that makes modest changes in the procedures for workers who want to vote on whether to form a union. It also would have banned the NLRB from ever issuing any similar fair election rule.

Before the vote, the White House announced that President Obama opposed the Republican assault on workers and would veto the legislation if it got to his desk.

The administration is committed to supporting the right of workers to join and participate in a union and bargain for fair wages, benefits and a safe workplace. These rights are fundamental to better conditions for American workers and to an open, just, economically fair and prosperous society. S.J. Res. 36 attacks these bedrock American values.

Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), said of the Republican proposal:

It is disappointing that in the face of growing income inequality and stagnant wages for all but the highest earners, lawmakers would fail to stand by workers who seek only to exercise their legal rights in an atmosphere free of intimidation and retaliation. (more…)

Today in a Senate hearing room usually filled with sharp-suited lobbyists and other Capitol Hill insiders, more than two dozen family survivors of workers killed on the job took the front row seats. They stood and faced the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and held photographs for lawmakers to see–images of their fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, sons and daughters.

“The pictures that you hold,” said committee chairman Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa),

“are the faces that we should remember every time we hear that safety rules are too burdensome or that regulations cost jobs.”

The Senate held the hearing in conjunction with Workers Memorial Day, April 28. It focused on the innumerable delays and roadblocks new safety standards from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) must clear before becoming law. On average, it takes eight years for a new rule to be approved–which Harkin described as resulting not from cumbersome bureaucracy but is the result of

relentless external pressure from business lobbyists and anti-labor groups. These groups pressure both OSHA and OMB to create delays that cost lives.

An OSHA silica exposure standard has stalled 14 years after work on it began–even though the dangers of exposure to silica dust and the crippling and fatal lung disease it causes have been known for decades.Meanwhile, dust explosions from grain silos and sugar factories continue to kill and maim.

Tom Ward, a Michigan Bricklayer (BAC) knows firsthand about the dangers of silica. His father died of silicosis when Ward was just 13. He told the committee:

In his twenties he worked as a sandblaster for five or six years…then just a few years into his new job he started getting short of breath. We got the official diagnosis—silicosis—when he was 34 years-old. It took five years for of silicosis to kill him. It was a slow and painful process. (more…)

The AFL-CIO this week launched the 2012 Executive PayWatch site—now called CEO Pay and the 99%—which includes the most comprehensive data accessible on 2011 executive pay. All of the data available is searchable by industry, by state and by the top 100 highest-paid CEOs. Check it and help us share it widely.

CEO Pay and the 99% shows that a CEO of a company in the S&P 500 Index, on average, received $12.9 million in total compensation in 2011. That’s a 14 percent raise over the previous year. And that’s on top of a 23 percent increase in 2010.

In stark contrast, the average wage for workers hovered at $34,000 in 2011. Median household income fell $3,700 over the past decade. And those who are employed received an average 2.8 percent raise—barely keeping up with inflation.

The new site also features data on:

Swelling corporate cash stockpiles. Corporations have a record $2.2 trillion in cash on their balance sheets, according to the Federal Reserve. But rather than reinvest this capital to grow our economy and create jobs, CEOs are not deploying these resources.

The widening gap between CEO-to-worker pay. Last year, this ratio of CEO-to-worker pay had widened to an astonishing 380 times. In 1980, CEOs of large U.S. companies made 42 times the average wages of workers.

Mutual funds’ votes on executive pay. Mutual funds wield enormous clout on CEO pay issues in part because of the new “say-on-pay” requirement that shareholders cast an advisory vote on CEO pay. In this new section, investors can look up how their mutual funds voted and ask their mutual funds to vote against runaway CEO pay levels.

The shady world of private equity, which Mitt Romney’s candidacy has brought to light.

You also can take action to rein in out-of-control CEO pay: Send an e-mail to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and urge it to implement the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act’s requirement that public companies disclose their ratio of CEO-to-worker pay.

***

This has been reposted from AFL-CIO.

The extremist American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has announced it is disbanding its task force that developed and pushed the rash of voter suppression and “stand your ground ” laws passed in recent years by Republican-controlled state legislatures. But don’t believe that ALEC is backing off its attacks on workers, their wages and their unions. Meanwhile, the group continues to lose key members, with two more major companies severing ties with the right-wing group.

Although groups have been fighting ALEC’s radical agenda for some, ALEC’s involvement with the “Stand Your Ground” law in Florida, now at the center of the Trayvon Martin killing in Florida, sharply focused the spotlight the ALEC. So far, 10 large corporations have dropped their ALEC memberships.

ALEC claims it is disbanding its Public Safety and Elections Task Force to concentrate on “free market” and economic issues. But writes The Nation’s John Nichols:

The disbanding of the “Public Safety and Elections” task force looks in every sense to be a desperate attempt to slow an exodus of high-profile corporations from the group’s membership roll. It cannot be seen as anything other than a response to the pressure the group has felt as high-profile corporate members have been quitting it on an almost daily basis. (more…)

In yet another move to put power in the hands of the 1 percent, House Republicans have introduced legislation to hand over the nation’s publicly-administered job training and workforce development system to the corporate sector.

Their bill, the “Workforce Investment Improvement Act of 2012” (H.R. 4297), would impose a new requirement that two-thirds of the state and local boards, which govern the job training system, be selected from private-sector businesses and corporations. The legislation would overturn legal mandates that the boards include at least two worker representatives nominated by unions and labor federations. The bill also eliminates the requirement that labor organizations have the opportunity to comment on the state and local plans that outline the services.

The details of this drive for a corporate takeover of the system will be spotlighted today when the House Education and the Workforce Committee holds a hearing on the Republican bill.

The move comes as Congress takes up reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (WIA), the federal law that authorizes funding for a national network of some 2,800 One-Stop Career Centers in local areas. These centers served 9.8 million dislocated workers, disadvantaged persons and unemployed workers between Oct. 1, 2010 and Sept. 30, 2011. The Republicans’ bill would consolidate 27 job training programs and allow governors to cut programs that serve dislocated workers, seniors, farmworkers, Native Americans, young persons in the Jobs Corps and unemployed workers who receive career counseling through the Employment Services. It also would reduce the amount of job training services delivered to low-income individuals. (more…)

While anti-worker bills in state capitols across the country still threaten middle-class families, Republican state legislatures are beginning to second guess whether to continue pursuing their extreme agenda attacking working families.

Yesterday morning, the Republican-controlled New Hampshire Senate tabled HB 1677, the so-called “right to work” bill. This bill is the pet of Speaker Bill O’Brien, dubbed by a recent Concord Monitor editorial as a “self-drawn caricature of vindictiveness and power run [amok].” “Right to work” failed last year, and so far this year it has failed to muster a veto-proof majority.

Although the bill is still alive, this is a symbolic victory that makes it clear that Senate Republicans are tired of Speaker O’Brien’s antics and his extreme agenda. New Hampshire AFL-CIO President Mark MacKenzie said of the vote:

The Senate took a step in the right direction today in voting to indefinitely table HB 1677….Their vote confirms what we hear each and every day: People are tired of right to work for less dominating the discussion in Concord.

And last night in Maine, the public employee “right to work” bill, LD 309, was tabled on the floor of the House, after working families–from both the public and private sectors–urged a bipartisan coalition of senators to preserve safe communities and working conditions. (more…)

This week, some 100,000 activists from unions and community, faith and other progressive groups are in 99% Spring training sessions around the country, learning how to take back the economy from the 1%. Their first big round of actions is set for Tax Day, April 17.

Click here to find a Tax Day action near you. Click here to find a training session near you.

In demonstrations around the nation, working families will raise their voices to demand that the 1% and corporations pay their fair share. The wealthiest Americans—like Mitt Romney—pay a far lower percentage of their income in taxes than do average working people—and some multibillion-dollar corporations don’t pay a cent.

Under the Romney-Paul Ryan budget, millionaires and huge corporations would be given even more tax breaks, while essential programs and services for working families, military service personnel, students, veterans, seniors and the poor would be cut drastically and thousands of workers laid off.

An analysis of the Romney/Ryan budget by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center finds that people earning more than $1 million a year would receive $265,000 apiece in new tax cuts, on average, on top of the $129,000 they would receive from the budget’s extension of President George W. Bush’s tax cuts.

On the Tax Wealth Not Work National Day of Action, activists will demand that the 1% pay their fair share and that we overhaul the tax code to reflect the needs and values of the majority of Americans.

***

This has been reposted from AFL-CIO.