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House Republicans voted (234-193) Wednesday to cut more than in half the number of weeks jobless workers can collect unemployment insurance (UI) benefits next year. The bill also cuts pay for public employees, cuts preventive health services, reduces premium assistance for low- and middle-income individuals buying health insurance and raises premiums for many Medicare beneficiaries.

A new report from the National Employment Law Project (NELP) says the legislation:

abandons millions of U.S. workers and those communities hardest hit by the most severe jobs crisis since the Great Depression.

While the legislation extends the federal UI program that is set to expire Dec. 31, the huge reduction in weeks of benefits and other changes in the UI program are “reckless and irresponsible,” says NELP Executive Director Christine Owens.

To jobseekers and states hit hard by long-term unemployment, this proposal offers a cold cynical shrug. Anyone serious about helping workers and businesses get going again needs to know that is neither a serious nor acceptable way forward. (more…)

A new study by a team of top economists finds that if the tax rate for the highest-income Americans was pegged at—drum roll please—83 percent—it wouldn’t impact anyone but the “mega-rich.”

When Ronald Reagan and his Republican successors began three decades of hacking away at the taxes the rich paid—once as high as 80 percent—they claimed it would spur unfettered, long-term uninterrupted economic growth for all. Great Britain’s Margaret Thatcher followed the same game plan. Well, say the authors:

Countries that made large cuts in top tax rates such as the United Kingdom or the United States have not grown significantly faster than countries that did not, such as Germany or Denmark.

Along with the tax cuts, the decades-long soaring level of executive pay, stock options and bonuses have given the top 1 percent an even greater share of the nation’s wealth. The authors say that share of the wealth has led to greater influence for the affluent and helped retain their impenetrable shield against tax increases. Even a tiny tax increase on the rich will crash the economy and kill jobs say the wealthy’s best friends—Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates. (more…)

You’ve heard all the reasons given for the economic implosion of 2008: the bursting of the housing bubble, the risky investments of financial firms, the use of incomprehensible financial instruments as get-rich-quick-schemes—all of them the result of a massive agenda of across-the-board deregulation pushed by Republican lawmakers since the 1980s.

But at the root of the behavior that led to the 2008 market crash that nearly took down the economy, according to experts who spoke yesterday at a conference at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., is the soaring level of executive pay at the nation’s giant corporations—a system of salary, stock options and bonuses that is not tied to a company’s long-term performance, but rather to the short-term profits that stand to enrich CEOs via the options and bonuses. Consequently, explained AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka at yesterday’s conference, ”Executive Pay and the Dodd-Frank Act,” excessive executive pay led to excessive risk-taking by CEOs and other top officials in corporations and financial institutions.

In 1980, Trumka said, executives at the nation’s largest companies earned about 42 times the level paid the average factory worker, according to an estimate by BusinessWeek magazine at the time. Today, he said, the average CEO at a corporation in the Standard & Poor’s 500 collects a payout that is some 343 times larger than the median paycheck received by the average worker. (more…)

Nick Hanauer is another multimillionaire who says its time to tax the rich. The venture capitalist, who has launched more than 20 companies and is an original investor in Amazon.com, says Republicans are completely wrong when they claim that raising taxes on the rich—the so-called job creators—would kill job growth because “Rich people like me don’t create jobs, middle-class consumers do.”

So let’s give a break to the true job creators. Let’s tax the rich like we once did and use that money to spur growth by putting purchasing power back in the hands of the middle class. And let’s remember that capitalists without customers are out of business.

Hanauer also points out that the 99 percent have not gotten a fair shake.

If the average American family still got the same share of income they earned in 1980, they would have an astounding $13,000 more in their pockets a year. It’s worth pausing to consider what our economy would be like today if middle-class consumers had that additional income to spend.

Click here to read his full column at Bloomberg.

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Re-Posted from the AFL-CIO Now Blog.

The weather in South Africa is beautiful — warm during the day, cool and breezy at night. This is a unique and fitting place to stage the United Nations Climate Change Conference, as South Africa prepares for the impacts of climate change.

The costs of adapting to climate change are not limited to South Africa or other countries that the UNFCCC framework considers “developing.” The cost is something that we in the United States deal with on a daily basis, even if there are still powerful “climate deniers” in Congress who aren’t willing to admit it. From the costs of increasingly severe weather events to the rising cost of food from climate-related droughts, Americans pay for global warming every day.

But the biggest cost that we pay is in lost opportunity. As it stands, the U.S. is failing to take advantage of the opportunities to create good jobs by addressing climate change. This makes less and less sense as our economy struggles to regain its footing, and as millions of Americans continue to search for work.

The BlueGreen Alliance is in Durban this week advocating for a framework to address climate change that spurs economic growth and job creation in the United States. The 15 partners of the BlueGreen Alliance — 11 of America’s largest labor unions and four of its most influential environmental organizations — released a statement this week, “Fighting Climate Change, Creating Jobs,” which advocates international climate action grounded in science-based greenhouse gas reduction targets, urging the U.S. to pursue emissions reductions as aggressively as possible by taking all feasible steps to meet current near term targets. This can be achieved through investments and policies that will build a strong clean energy economy, create new jobs for American workers and improve U.S. competitiveness in the global economy.

We can accomplish these goals through smart policies and strategic investments in building a truly 21st century American economy. Growing the production of clean energy in the United States while making our transportation systems, industries, building stock, transmission and communications systems more efficient will both create jobs and ensure that America is competitive in an increasingly efficient global economy. (more…)

Terry Maile’s supervisor called her into a conference room with all of her co-workers to hear the news: It was their last day of employment at Level 3 Communications in Pittsburgh.

That was it. The jobs were gone to India.

“I couldn’t stop crying,” said Maile, a divorced mother of one, who until that moment had spent her professional life as a telecommunications worker before being laid off first by Verizon and then by Level 3.

Even then, Maile said, she still believed in the American Dream.

You’ve got to work hard… work hard.

Maile owned her own home. Although she had been forced to liquidate her retirement after the Verizon layoff, she had begun to build it back up. Then came the Level 3 layoff. It shook her to her core. (more…)

If you’re getting ready to board a plane home after Thanksgiving or still fretting about safety in the crowded holiday skies for the upcoming holidays, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA)—the people who guide you home—offer five reasons to feel better about air travel.

Here they are in a nutshell, and click here for more details.

• There are more controllers on the job, nearly a 4 percent increase of fully certified controllers.

• Runways are safer than ever, with the number of serious runway incursions having dropped by 50 percent between 2009 and 2010 after falling by 52 percent the year before.
• Major steps have been taken to reduce controller fatigue this year, including staffing that ensures at least two controllers are on duty at all times.

• The aviation community is collaborating to mitigate delays with pilots, aircraft dispatchers, airport operators and other members of the aviation community and the system wide delays are decreasing, especially around the holidays.
• The aviation safety culture is at its strongest with NATCA and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) committed to improving the safety of the air traffic control system, including a voluntary safety reporting program, the Air Traffic Safety Action Program.

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This entry originally appeared at the AFL-CIO Now Blog.

 

The labor movement and its allies scored a major victory with the repeal of Ohio Senate Bill 5 (SB5), a piece of anti-union legislation signed by Republican Gov. John Kasich. In a referendum that gave voters a chance to speak on the issue, Ohioans resoundingly rejected the law, which would have gutted the bargaining rights of 350,000 public-sector workers. In a landmark defeat for Republicans, voters turned out in large numbers and voted 61 percent to 39 percent to strike down SB5.

To understand how progressives pulled off this remarkable win, I spoke with Paul Booth, one of the chief strategists behind the campaign to repeal SB5. Currently, Booth is executive assistant to Gerald McEntee, the longtime president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). But he is also an organizing legend outside of the labor movement. In the 1960s, Booth served as national secretary and vice president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and in the 1970s he was a prominent figure at the Midwest Academy, an influential training ground for organizers. He has worked for AFSCME since 1974.

Delving into the Ohio victory, I opened with a simple question: “Why did we win?”

“The people of Ohio decided that this was as a power grab by the governor and his people,” Booth said. “They decided public service workers’ rights were worth preserving.”

(more…)

Conventional wisdom says don’t talk politics at big family gatherings, especially with Uncle Earl. But our friends at Working America are offering a unique guide on how to talk about today’s biggest political topic, the Occupy Wall Street/99 Percent movement, without sending Uncle Earl into one of his legendary fits.

Working America’s Turkey Talk Guide is designed to help you continue the national dialogue on economic fairness sparked by the Occupy movement and help you draw out the real issues behind the massive protests against inequality and injustice taking place in Ohio, Wisconsin and across the country.

It offer tips, facts and responses to myths and spin, as well as online resources to people at their homes and online. Says Working America Executive Director Karen Nussbaum:

We want to help ordinary Americans have productive conversations, and avoid picking fights with the uncle who thinks the Department of Education should be abolished. So many people are not able or willing to occupy parks to protest the vast inequality in this country, but they want to do something. We’re bridging the gap between the tent cities where the protesters are, and the neighborhoods where people might have family members who aren’t normally receptive to these ideas.

(more…)

A while back I was writing about the Republican threat of a government-wide shutdown, and the two-week Federal Aviation Administration shutdown (and Delta Airlines’ anti-union role in that). The shutdown threat was used to force the government to give even more favors and bucks to the 1% and even less to We, the People.

Guess what? The shutdown threats are back.

Last Time

Earlier this year, and then again in September, the Republicans threatened to block the budget from passing and to just let the government shut down. In exchange for allowing the government to continue to operate they wanted favors for the 1% and their corporations, including gutting environmental regulations, gutting healthcare (especially women’s healthcare), and generally gutting the things We, the People do for each other.

They largely got their way. They even shut down the FAA, stopping construction projects in an attempt to gut union organizing. Four thousand FAA workers and about 90,000 construction workers were laid off, and the shutdown cost the government about $30 million a day.

Which Was Which?

The Republican threat of shutting down the government is not to be confused with the debt-ceiling hostage-taking debacle that was engineered by Republicans.

The debt-ceiling hostage-taking involved Republicans threatening to let the government default on its obligations, sending the world’s economy into a tailspin, unless We, the People dramatically roll back the things we do for each other. They got their way, resulting in big cuts plus the “super committee” of the 1% that is currently working on cutting things for the 99%. (The secretive committee is actually talking about cutting Medicare and cutting top tax rates, and calling it “pro-growth.”) (more…)