Labor & Employment Law

Coming Soon: High-Speed Rail and 750,000 New Jobs

Posted on April 02, 2010
       In the near future, we will be able to travel what is now a seven-hour trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles in just two-and-a-half hours in a high-speed train that eliminates the hassle of traffic and adds fewer emissions to pollute the atmosphere...

162,000 New Jobs in March. But Without Aid, Long-Term Job Growth Stalled

Posted on April 02, 2010
The nation added some 162,000 jobs in March, the second month to see job growth since the recession began in 2007, according to data out today by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The jobless rate remains unchanged from February at 9.7 percent, with 17 million U...

Trumka on MSNBC: Wall Street Can?t Go Back To Business as Usual

Posted on April 01, 2010
Wall Street executives destroyed 11 million jobs with their risky practices and now they must pay to create new jobs and not be allowed to return to business as usual, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said today.  In an interview on MSNBC, Trumka said: [Wall Street] gave $145 billion in bonuses last year that aren’t anywhere geared to performance or job creation...

Wall Street: You Broke It, Now Fix It

Posted on April 01, 2010
        Priscilla Luviano, communications coordinator for the Orange County Labor Federation, reports on how angry activists took on Big Banks at a recent Make Wall Street Pay rally. “You caused the recession, fix it,” shouted Carl Ritola, delegate for the Orange County Labor Federation from Plumbers and Pipe Fitters Local 582...

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West Virginia Workers: Verizon-Frontier Deal Would Be a Disaster

Posted on April 01, 2010
Nearly 200 workers from West Virginia, including members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the West Virginia AFL-CIO and community supporters rallied this afternoon at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in Washington, D...

NALC Says 5-Day Delivery Is the Wrong Way To Go

Posted on April 01, 2010
      The U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS’s) plan to end Saturday mail delivery would do more harm than good and it distracts from the real solution, which is eliminating the “crushing burden of a deeply flawed health benefits pre-funding policy,” according to the Letter Carriers (NALC)...

End the Denial. Label China a Currency Manipulator

Posted on April 01, 2010
America and China are publicly in denial about currency manipulation. Both officially state that China is not devaluing its currency. In mid-March, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao flatly denied that China deliberately suppresses the value of its currency against the dollar, a practice that decreases the price of its exports and increases the cost of American goods imported into China...

Facts About Health Care Reform

Posted on April 01, 2010
      Yesterday, we found out that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is set to spend $50 million in this fall’s election to (take your pick): 1. attack; 2. bend the truth; or 3. down right lie about the new health care reform law that President Obama put the finishing touches on Tuesday...

Temple Hospital Workers Strike

Posted on March 31, 2010
Nurses and health professionals demonstrate how Temple’s proposed “gag clause” would silence them. Today, 1,000 nurses and 500 health care workers at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia set up a picket line that eventually grew to more than 1,200 for a noon-time rally...

After 8 Years of Bush Neglect, Job Safety Gets New Boost from Obama, Solis

Posted on March 31, 2010
      A little more than a year after taking office, the Obama administration and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis have taken significant steps to repair the damage to workplace safety and health left behind after eight years of the Bush administration...

Trumka: Big Banks Must Pay to Create Jobs

Posted on March 31, 2010
Wall Street got $700 billion in our taxpayer bailout dollars after fueling an economic disaster that has left America’s workers without jobs and communities without hope, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka writes today at the Huffington Post. Now the financial industry is mounting a public relations campaign instead of supporting new rules for Wall Street to prevent a repeat of this disaster...

Tobacco Workers Demand Justice at R.J. Reynolds

Posted on March 31, 2010
       Members of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) and the Pilgrimage for Peace and Justice, a coalition of social justice groups, will walk through Winston-Salem, N.C., today to demand fair treatment for tobacco farm workers who suffer low wages and poor working conditions...

Facts About Health Care Reform

Posted on March 31, 2010
      Yesterday, we found out that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is set to spend $50 million in this fall’s election to (take your pick): 1. attack; 2. bend the truth; or 3. down right lie about the new health care reform law that President Obama put the finishing touches on Tuesday...

Coburn Can?t Take the Heat, Tries to Deflect Blame for Killing Jobless Aid

Posted on March 30, 2010
      Back home in Oklahoma, Republican Sen. Tom Coburn must really be feeling the heat from some of the millions of America’s jobless worked he shafted last week. Coburn, who blocked a short-term extension for unemployment insurance (UI), issued a press release making it look as though Senate Democrats blocked the extension and he was a helpless victim of the vote...

First Contract Arbitration Doesn?t Hurt Businesses

Posted on March 30, 2010
Contrary to what opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act claim, first contract arbitration does not endanger the survival of businesses, according to a new study. The study by the non-partisan Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows when an arbitrator decides a first contract, a business survives at about the same rate as any other...

Temple Nurses Won?t be Silenced

Posted on March 30, 2010
Tomorrow, 1,000 RNs and 500 health care workers at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia are set to go on strike. The members of Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP) have been without a contract since September...

Student Labor Action Week Highlights Jobs, Affordable Education

Posted on March 30, 2010
      The Jobs with Justice annual Student Labor Week of Action starts today, and Carlos Jimenez, coordinator for the JwJ Young Worker Project, tells us what it’s all about. This week, students across the country will honor the legacy of Dr...

Don?t Listen to Sarkozy: U.S. Tanker Contract Should Create U.S. Jobs

Posted on March 30, 2010
Today French President Sarkozy reportedly is lobbying President Obama to delay the U.S. government’s decision to award its $35 billion contract for the Air Force’s new refueling tanker. Sarkozy wants the contract for Northrop-EADS, a heavily subsidized French defense firm that recently pulled its proposal from the bidding process...

In Quick Retreat, Insurers Say They?ll Cover Sick Kids After All

Posted on March 30, 2010
      Arrogance allows you to do just about anything and think you can get away with it. For years, health insurers have swaggered about, callously raising premiums through the roof, dropping sick people from coverage and refusing to cover folks with pre-existing conditions...

Big Health Insurance to Sick Kids: Suffer

Posted on March 29, 2010
It didn’t take long for Big Insurance to look for loopholes in the health care reform law. Just days after it was signed by President Obama, insurance companies are trying to weasel out of provisions designed to end the abuse and outrageous practices the insurance industry has inflicted on consumers and patients for years...

Steelworkers Blast Blanche Lincoln?s Claim She Saved Jobs

Posted on March 29, 2010
       Justin Nickels, AFSCME’s state coordinator, is working with the Arkansas AFL-CIO for a few weeks and reports on Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s misleading and downright dirty political ad against her Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter...

17,000 San Francisco Workers Reach Tentative Pact, and More Bargaining News

Posted on March 29, 2010
17,000 San Francisco city employees reach tentative contract, 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 1,200 subscribers...

Obama Uses Recess Appointments for NLRB and Other Blocked Nominations

Posted on March 29, 2010
President Obama announced on Saturday he will use recess appointments to fill 15 important positions that Republican senators have blocked for an average of 214 days. Two of those appointments are Craig Becker and Mark Pearce to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)...

ITUC Launches Global Youth Campaign

Posted on March 28, 2010
       To reach a new generation of young people, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), in recent days, launched a new global campaign to help global unions combine their day-to-day work and help young people join unions. The Youth Campaign involves a range of tools, including video, social networking, posters and websites, as well as a special campaign guide...

Wall Street?s Russian Roulette Isn?t the American Way

Posted on March 27, 2010
  Last week, after AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka led 2,000 people on a march to a Philadelphia Bank of America branch as part of the Good Jobs Make Wall Street Pay mobilization, Dan Pedrotty, director of the AFL-CIO Office of Investments, told the national syndicated radio show “Building Bridges“: We really sensed that was the beginning of something...

New Report: Unions Raise Immigrant Workers? Wages, Benefits

Posted on March 26, 2010
      Immigrant workers who belong to unions have a large wage and benefit advantage over their nonunion counterparts, according to a new study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). The report, released yesterday, shows that, on average, joining a union raises immigrants’ wages by 17 percent?about $2 per hour?compared with nonunion immigrant workers...

UNITEHERE! Calls for Boycott of 7 Hotels

Posted on March 26, 2010
Fed up with their employer paying off its high debt on the backs of workers, employees of Columbia Sussex Corp. rallied around the country this week and called on customers to boycott seven hotels owned by the company. In the past few years, workers represented by UNITEHERE! at four hotels owned by Columbia Sussex have been laid off, seen their benefits reduced and their pay frozen and been forced to pay higher health care premiums as the company scrambles to pay off more than $1 billion in debt in securities it borrowed to buy 14 hotels in 2005...

Union, Community Rallies for Whirlpool Workers Punching Clock for the Last Time

Posted on March 26, 2010
    Doris Nevill, a Whirlpool worker, says she cried all day about losing her job at the Evansville plant.         Braving a chilly and dreary rain yesterday, several dozen union and community activists rallied outside the gates of Whirlpool’s Evansville, Ind...

Ruling a Major Win for UAW American Axle Workers

Posted on March 26, 2010
An arbitrator has ruled that American Axle and Manufacturing violated the job security clause in its agreement with the UAW and must make whole the workers affected by its decision last year to move work to Mexico. The ruling, issued earlier this week by umpire Paul Glendon, found the company violated the terms of its 2008 National Agreement with the union when it moved its 8...

Senate Republican Coburn Blocks Aid to America?s Jobless

Posted on March 26, 2010
The Party of “No” gets ready to strike once more against working families. As Congress considers much-needed relief for America’s jobless workers and debates proposals to jump-start the economy, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) blocked a stopgap bill to extend jobless benefits, saying its $9 billion cost should not be added to the national debt...

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