Labor & Employment Law

A Collective Solution to a ?Personal Problem??Unions Fight for Paid Sick Days

Posted on July 31, 2010
Jenya Cassidy, with the Labor Project for Working Families, sends us this cross-post from MomsRising. When my son was almost 10, I found out I was pregnant with twin girls. I was excited but a little intimidated. I remembered one newborn being a lot of work?what would two be like? I mentally prepared for double the amount of diaper changes, laundry, bottles and child care costs...

Tell Your Senator to Support State Aid to Save Essential Jobs

Posted on July 30, 2010
The Senate  on Monday will make one more attempt to overcome a Republican filibuster of aid to state and local governments that would save or create nearly a million jobs for teachers, public employees, police officers, firefighters and others. Without such funding, the states that are facing huge budget shortfalls will be forced to begin massive layoffs that could cost nearly a million workers their jobs...

CWA: Let the Senate Breathe and Work, End Republican Filibuster Stranglehold

Posted on July 30, 2010
Long gone are the days of U.S. senators standing on the floor of the Senate as hours turned to days while they filibustered legislation they hoped they could talk to death because they didn?t have the votes to kill it outright. Senate rules no longer require filibustering senators to stay on the floor and speak while all Senate business grinds to a halt, as in the iconic scene in ?Mr...

New Health Care Law Gives Medicare Lots to Celebrate at 45

Posted on July 30, 2010
      Medicare turns 45 today?and as Dr. Don Berwick, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, points out: “Before Medicare, millions of the nation’s seniors were uninsured. Since then, Medicare has been the bedrock of the nation’s health care system...

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UAW: U.S. Cars on the Road to Success

Posted on July 30, 2010
Higher profits and new fuel-efficient models have put American-made cars back on the road again?with the help of taxpayers and the workers who have worked closely with the Big Three automakers to ensure their success. In July, Ford posted a stronger-than-expected quarterly profit of $2...

Medicare at 45: Health Reform Means New Benefits for Seniors

Posted on July 30, 2010
Barbara Easterling is the president of the Alliance for Retired Americans and former secretary-treasurer of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the AFL-CIO. She began her union career 36 years ago as a telephone operator and local union officer in Akron, Ohio...

House Republicans Block Medical Help for 9/11 Heroes

Posted on July 30, 2010
House Republicans last night blocked a bill that would provide long-term medical care and monitoring for the nearly 60,000 Sept. 11 rescue and recovery workers and community members whose health is at serious risk from their exposure to the contaminated and toxic rubble at Ground Zero of the World Trade Center...

Better Access to WARN Act Information Needed for Workers, Communities

Posted on July 29, 2010
Last year, more than 2.8 million workers were victims of mass layoffs or plant closings that should have fallen under the 1988 WARN Act, which requires employers to give workers and communities advance notice before shutting down. But, as a new AFL-CIO report reveals, the plant closing ?has proven severely flawed...

Coalition Launches Drive to Fight Social Security Cuts

Posted on July 29, 2010
AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow Jennifer Angarita contributed to this report. As Social Security turns 75 years old Aug. 14, the nation’s most successful social program likely will be under attack by the federal budget deficit commission, which, by all accounts, is considering benefits cuts and raising the retirement age...

Businessweek Profiles CNA/NNU?s DeMoro

Posted on July 29, 2010
In a major profile of Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA/NNU), Bloomberg Businessweek writes: DeMoro is expert at dishing out political pain with a flourish, a talent that has endeared her to her 86,000 constituents in the California Nurses Association...

Judge Blocks Major Parts of Arizona?s Anti-Immigrant Law

Posted on July 28, 2010
Just hours before Arizona?s controversial anti-immigrant law was to go into effect, a federal judge today blocked one of its most contentious provisions?the requirement that police stop and question anyone they have ?reasonable suspicion? is undocumented...

Health Insurers Mull Secret Donor Election Front Group

Posted on July 28, 2010
Yesterday we reported that the nation?s biggest health insurers are ?sparing no expense to weaken? the new health care reform law by lobbying the state regulators who are writing new regulations to ensure consumers? premium dollars are spent on real medical care...

?The Horror! The Horror!??McConnell Stars in AFSCME Guerilla Video

Posted on July 28, 2010
      It?s not quite as scary as looking up and seeing Godzilla lurking over the city skyline, but a two-story-tall Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) staring down from the side of a downtown Louisville office building caused a few surprised gasps Monday night...

House OKs Funds to Halt Mine Operators? Safety End Run

Posted on July 28, 2010
Mine operators around the country, like Massey Energy, owner of the deadly Upper Big Branch coal mine where 29 miners were killed in April, routinely escape tougher enforcement by appealing serious safety violations to a federal agency that’s bogged down with a 17,000-case backlog...

Failing to Kill Health Care Reform, Insurers Now Fight to Weaken It

Posted on July 27, 2010
After spending tens of millions trying to kill the new health care reform law, the nation?s big health insurance companies now, says Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), are: sparing no expense to weaken this new law and the protection it promises to America?s consumers...

BP?s Hayward Follows Wall Street?s ?Fail Big, Win Big? Pattern

Posted on July 27, 2010
  BP CEO got a golden parachute. These Gulf pelicans weren’t so lucky.       When most of us screw up big time, we pay for it, instead of getting paid for it. If it was the other way around, I?d be a rich man, sort of like ousted BP CEO Tony Hayward who is finally getting his life back...

Republican Blockade of Medicaid Worsens States? Budget Crises

Posted on July 27, 2010
A new report from the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) warns that if Congress does not extend Medicaid assistance to help states operate the low-income health care program, the states? budget crises and budget gaps will grow even larger...

Peinovich Named President of National Labor College

Posted on July 26, 2010
Dr. Paula Peinovich has been appointed president of the National Labor College (NLC). She has served as interim president since January and will serve a three-year-term as head of the nation?s only fully accredited institution devoted to educating working families and labor activists...

Blankenship Knows No Shame

Posted on July 26, 2010
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank discovered what those of us who watched Massey Energy CEO Donald Blankenship operate over the years have known for some time. Blankenship, who has made a career of busting unions, violating mine safety laws, attacking environmentalists and shilling for the far right and corporate America, has no shame...

Union Members Help Keep Daimler Plant Open?and More Bargaining News

Posted on July 26, 2010
Union members negotiate a contract that keeps an Oregon Daimler Trucks plant from closing, and more news from the “Bargaining Digest Weekly.” The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily, bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 1,300 subscribers...

Trumka at Netroots Nation: New Industrial Policy for a Globalized World

Posted on July 24, 2010
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka laid out a 21st century U.S. economic policy at today’s lunchtime keynote session at Netroots Nation before a diverse crowd of more than  1,000 progressive political activists. Restoring the nation’s middle class in part means returning  to a “real economy”–one  in which we make things, rather than move around complex financial products, Trumka said...

Weingarten Condemns Firing of 241 D.C. Teachers

Posted on July 23, 2010
The announcement today that 241 District of Columbia public school teachers would be fired under the school system?s new evaluation process raises questions about D.C. School Chancellor Michelle Rhee?s ?penchant for firing teachers rather than providing supports to develop their skills,? AFT President Randi Weingarten said...

Netroots Nation: Young Workers?Taking Charge of Our Future

Posted on July 23, 2010
The nation’s economic crisis, lack of jobs and inability to pay for higher education are key issues for today’s young workers–and unions must focus on reaching out to them, panelists said today at the AFL-CIO panel, ”Young Workers: Taking Charge of Our Future...

Netroots Nation: Strengthening Social Security

Posted on July 23, 2010
      One attendee of the Netroots Nation panel provocatively titled “Obama’s Social Security ‘Death Panel’” later told me he had gone into the panel dubious that there is any real threat to Social Security. “But I left mad,” he said, questioning how such an important part of America’s social fabric could be threatened...

Ensuring Workers? Voices Are Heard in State Legislatures

Posted on July 23, 2010
Across the country, states are confronting a vast array of critical working family issues, from budget crises and health care to job creation and workers? rights. This weekend in Louisville, Ky., some 150 union activists and leaders from central labor councils, state federations, affiliate unions and allied organizations are mapping a state legislative battle plan...

Report: Unions Must Open Up Opportunities for Women, Young Workers

Posted on July 23, 2010
      All the growth in union membership since 2000 has been among women, Latinos and part-time employees, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. So how can the union movement attract the next generation of working women and younger workers? A new report says unions must become more diverse and open up more opportunities for young workers and women in leadership or they will move on to other social justice organizations...

Netroots Nation: Immigration Reform?s Strange Bedfellows

Posted on July 23, 2010
Earlier this week in Washington, D.C., AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka joined Labor Secretary Hilda Solis for a remarkable discussion on the importance of immigration reform. On Thursday, panelists speaking on ”Immigration Reform’s Strange Bedfellows” at the Netroots Nation conference in Las Vegas amplified President Trumka and Secretary Solis’ call to action...

Netroots Nation: Freelance Workers of the World Unite

Posted on July 22, 2010
“Electronic sweatshops”–in which workers are expected to put in 16 hour days–are just one part of what independent professional workers endure today, and the union movement needs to create new models to reach out to this rapidly growing workforce...

After Long Battle with Republican Obstruction Obama Signs Long-Term Jobless Aid

Posted on July 22, 2010
President Obama this evening signed the unemployment insurance extension bill. The legislation will get jobless benefits flowing once again to more than 2.5 million long-term jobless workers who were cut off after Republican Senate filibusters derailed the program...

Workers Protest Mistreatment by Hyatt

Posted on July 22, 2010
Thousands of hotel workers in 15 cities across North America have been taking to the streets today to protest the practices of Hyatt and its billionaire owners?the politically influential Pritzker family. The hotel industry has rebounded quickly from the recession but hotel workers have not shared in the profits they helped create...

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