Blog

by Mike Hall
AFL-CIO Senior Writer

A new study shows that miners in unionized coal mines are far less likely to be killed or injured on the job than miners in nonunion operations. The independent study funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) found that “unionization predicts an 18-33 percent drop in traumatic injuries and a 27-68 percent drop in fatalities.”

The comprehensive study, conducted by Stanford University law professor Alison D. Morantz,  the John A. Wilson Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School, looked at coal mine fatality and injury statistics from 1993 to 2008.

Mine Workers (UMWA) President Cecil Roberts says the study “quantifies the profound differences in safety underground coal miners experience when working union versus working nonunion.” (more…)

Richard Trumka

By Richard Trumka
President, AFL-CIO

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka today issued a statement opposing the Korea–U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS). See the entire statement below. Also, read statements issued today from the United Steelworkers (USW) and Communications Workers of America CWA.

AFL-CIO President Trumka:

For more than a decade, the labor movement, environmental groups, development advocates and others have advocated for a new trade policy that is part of a more coordinated and coherent national economic strategy. The proposed U.S.-Korea trade deal does not live up to that model and does not contribute to a sustainable global future.  We believe we must move towards a more democratic, sustainable and fair global economy with broadly shared prosperity for working people around the world.  Reaching that goal will require deep-seated reforms in current trade policy, as well as in our own domestic labor laws and other policies.

We welcome the tremendous efforts by the Obama administration and particularly Ambassador Ron Kirk and his team to address the urgent concerns of autoworkers and auto companies with respect to market access, safeguard provisions and some non-tariff barriers.  Ways and Means Chairman Sander Levin and Ranking Member Dave Camp also pressed hard for key improvements in the auto provisions, and we appreciate their strong efforts. These newly negotiated provisions will give some much needed breathing room to the auto industry, and we appreciate the hard bargaining that was necessary to win these important changes.

However, the labor movement’s concerns about the Korea trade deal go beyond the auto assembly sector to a more fundamental question about what a fairer and more balanced trade policy should look like. In particular, the labor movement has consistently and for many years argued that the investment and government procurement provisions in the Korea deal will encourage offshoring.  And despite the progress made in improving the labor chapter in 2007, it is clear that in both the United States and South Korea, workers continue to face repeated challenges to their exercise of fundamental human rights on the job – especially freedom of association and the right to organize and bargain collectively. This deal does nothing to improve or strengthen the provisions negotiated by former President George W. Bush in these crucial areas.  It is essential that both countries bring their labor laws and practice fully into compliance with international standards prior to implementation of the agreement.  And for American workers to benefit from trade deals, we must strengthen U.S. labor law to harmonize social activity.   Going forward, we hope to work closely with the Obama administration to address all of these concerns in any future deals, particularly the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. (more…)

Mike Elk

By Mike Elk
Labor Journalist

Locked out workers at Honeywell’s Metropolis, Illinois uranium facility have been traveling all over the country to meet with Honeywell CEO David Cote to discuss ending the current lockout.

On June 28, Honeywell locked out its union workers during contract negotiations because the union, United Steelworkers (USW) Local 7-669, refused to accept the company proposal to eliminate retiree health care and pension plans for new hires and increase workers’ out-of-pocket health care to $8,500 a year. Good health care coverage for retirees is especially important to uranium workers who suffer rates of cancer 10 times higher than the general public due to their daily interaction with radioactive material; thus, the workers refused to give in to demands to cut their retiree health care coverage entirely.

In November, over 100 workers traveled a thousand miles to Honeywell’s Morristown, N.J., Headquarters hoping to meet with Cote, but Cote refused to meet with them. On Wednesday, two leaders of the five-month lockout were in the hearing room of the President’s Deficit Commission to confront CEO David Cote about his desire to threaten their job and retirement security. However, when workers rose to confront Cote, they were quickly escorted out by security.

Workers say that Cote’s treatment of Honeywell’s workers is symbolic of his treatment of workers across the country. Darrell Lillie, USW Local 7-669 President representing 230 workers at the Honeywell uranium processing plant in Illinois Workers said that Cote’s call to continue the Bush tax cuts while cutting Social Security epitomizes the greedy self-interested behavior of Cote as CEO of Honeywell. Lillie cited a report released Monday by U.S. Chamber Watch, a non-profit research group that he says reveals Cote would personally stand to gain $1.2 million from the tax cut extension being promoted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. (more…)

James Parks

By James Parks
AFL-CIO Senior Writer

President Obama showed he is not willing to settle for an inadequate trade deal with Korea that “doesn’t address the very real concerns of working people and small business,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said yesterday.

South Korea and the United States were unable to jump-start the long-stalled U.S.–Korea free trade agreement and will keep negotiating. South Korea was unwilling to address the non-tariff barriers that currently prevent American products—especially autos—from entering the South Korean market fairly. Obama has insisted that the agreement, which was negotiated during the Bush administration, should be more fair and balanced.

In a statement, Trumka said:

Given the precarious state of our economy, President Obama is exactly right in holding out for a deal that puts working people’s interests first. President Obama should keep fighting for a balanced and workable trade deal that will protect the interests of American and Korean workers.

Read Trumka’s statement here. (more…)

James Parks

By James Parks
AFL-CIO Senior Writer

The economy and jobs are the top issues in the Nov. 2 elections. But with all the rhetoric and hot air filling the airways, it’s hard to get the straight facts.

U.S. unemployment is high. But at the same time, more private-sector jobs have been created this year alone than in all eight years of the Bush administration.

And over the past four years, Republicans have voted 11 times to preserve loopholes that encourage American companies to ship jobs overseas.

These facts bear out what AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told the Global Progressive Forum earlier this week:

We in the United States now face an election where we must choose between the humane, progressive, unifying vision of our President, Barack Obama, and the policies that caused this economic crisis, cloaked in the rhetoric of hatred and division.

Here’s another fact. Obama’s economic policies have been a big help for women. A new  report, released yesterday by the White House’s National Economic Council, described scores of policies that have promoted women’s economic security, including: (more…)

James Parks

By James Parks
AFL-CIO Senior Writer

By rebuilding our nation’s transportation infrastructure, we could create 3.7 million jobs, 600,000 alone in manufacturing, according to a new action plan released today by the Apollo Alliance.

The Clean Transportation Manufacturing Action Plan (TMAP) calls for an investment of $40 billion a year over the next six years to modernize and shore up our nation’s roads, bridges, mass transportation and advanced vehicles. The plan was developed by a bipartisan group of union members, business owners, environmental and community activists and political leaders.

For decades, the United States has all but ignored mass transit. In fact, since 2005, U.S. companies and governments have spent more than $10 billion to purchase rail cars, tracks and other mass transit equipment overseas, United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard said during a telephone press conference today. That $10 billion is money that should have been spent here.

Today, existing U.S. public transit bus, rail vehicle and clean truck supply chains support some 40,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs. There are more than 375 existing companies that could scale up to meet expanded demand if Congress is willing to put TMAP into action, Gerard says.

This is an opportunity to rebuild the important transportation infrastructure of this country….The benefit we get from this—the triple bottom line—is that we get to create good, family supporting jobs, we get to spend dollars in a way that’s going to grow the economy, we take carbon out of the air.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said on a conference call that the nation risks losing middle-class jobs and weakening our national defense if we don’t have a national manufacturing strategy, with rebuilding transportation as a key part of the plans.

Gerard pointed out that those who are concerned about the deficit should back this plan:

The best way to eliminate the deficit is to put people back to work [so that] they’re contributing to the system that we’ve got. [And we have] employers who are producing something that can be sold and create some real wealth as opposed to importing stuff we used to make that is now being made in China and then borrowing money from China to pay for what we used to make.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka urges President Obama and Congress to use the TMAP blueprint as a blueprint for rebuilding our infrastructure “and get America back to work.”

TMAP will transform the legacy of our past into a practical vision and plan for the 21st century. Their plan will foster innovation and new technology while creating good jobs and ensuring that our manufacturing sector is competitive in a dynamic global economy.

Inspired by the Apollo space program, the Apollo Alliance is a coalition of labor, business, environmental and community leaders working to start a clean energy revolution that will put millions of Americans to work in a new generation of high-quality, green-collar jobs.

Check out the TMAP plan here.

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Re-posted from the AFL-CIO Now Blog

Richard Trumka

By Richard Trumka
President, AFL-CIO

Stacia Haley in Seattle worked all her life and raised a child as a single parent. Yet she has no retirement income other than Social Security.

[Social Security] is all many of us will have, if we live long enough to retire.

Stacia is right. Some 64 percent of America’s retirees rely on Social Security for 50 percent or more of their income.

Yet the man Wall Street wants to make speaker of the House supports raising the retirement age for Social Security, lowering the hammer even more on low- and middle-income Americans, who die earlier than the rich. (And what about that income gap? Well, never mind.)

This is just one of the extreme positions John Boehner holds while he salivates in the wings as House minority leader, angling for a Republican takeover of Congress bought and paid for by corporate America.

By now there should be no question that if Boehner becomes speaker, corporations will call the shots — and the insurance companies, drug manufacturers and Wall Street firms have been busy paying big time for the privilege. Boehner’s campaign to date has collected nearly $7.1 million. Putting that sum in perspective, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has received $2.9 million. Meanwhile, the “Boehner for Speaker” fundraising committee has racked up another $2 million. (more…)

James Parks

By James Parks
AFL-CIO Senior Writer

It’s no secret that the Chinese government’s currency manipulation policy has caused the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs. But the question is whether the federal government has the will to act “to level the playing field and provide the support and assistance that millions of American workers and their communities expect and deserve,” United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo W. Gerard said this week.

Testifying before the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, Gerard said passing the Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act (H.R. 2378) would be a vital first step to begin the process of economic recovery. The bill would give the U.S. Treasury Department new tools to combat currency manipulation.

Over the past 10 years, the Chinese government’s policy of deliberately devaluing its currency has caused the U.S. trade deficit with China to balloon from $84 billion in 2001 to $227 billion in 2009. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimates that the growth in the U.S. trade deficit with China since 2001 cost 2.4 million U.S. jobs between 2001 and 2008.

In a letter to House members yesterday, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said:

Immediate action on currency manipulation is the single most important step the U.S. government can take to create jobs at no cost to taxpayers. H.R. 2378…is urgently needed to address a serious and ongoing problem for American workers and manufacturing. (more…)

--------- Tula Connell --------- Photo by Joe Kekeris

By Tula Connell
AFL-CIO Managing Editor

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka yesterday described the upcoming elections this way:

This election is about economic patriots, and it’s also about corporate traitors.

Economic patriotism resonates among working people and the millions of America’s jobless workers–and corporate traitors is an all-too apt description of many in Big Business, such as anti-patriotic corporations moving jobs out of this country.  A paragraph buried in a New York Times article on Wall Street this week hit me hard:

Just last week, Paul S. Otellini, chief executive of Intel, said at a dinner at the Aspen Forum of the Technology Policy Institute that “the next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here.”

Mr. Otellini has overseen two big acquisitions in the last two weeks — the $7.7 billion takeover of the security software maker McAfee and the $1.4 billion deal for the wireless chip unit of Infineon Technologies. If he is true to his word, those deals will most likely lead to job cuts in the United States, not job creation.

Otellini is not an outlier. Reports this week say Citigroup–which received $45 billion in taxpayer bailout funds–now is creating 12,000 jobs. In China.

Also this week, a new report shows that between November 2008 and April 2010, the CEOs of the top 50 job-cutting companies made $598 million in compensation. The top 50 layoff firms reported a 44 percent average profit increase for 2009, the Institute for Policy Studies report said.

Calling out such behaviors and casting them for what they are–unpatriotic, anti-American–can help us take back the ground grabbed by reactionaries for so long, with the Tea Party just the latest manifestation of such warped usage of the red, white and blue.

Patriotism means more than lip service. It means taking action to ensure that working families have the good jobs they need to support their families–creating an environment that’s worthy of our American Dream.

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Re-posted from the AFL-CIO Blog