This Labor Day, Build Esprit de Corps for Action
In These Times
Posted August 31, 2011
Celebrate Labor Day. Really, celebrate. It’s important.

Wear a t-shirt announcing to the world the name of your union and march in a parade, chanting and whooping it up about how glad you are to belong to an organization whose members are devoted to looking out for each other. If you’re among those without a union, proclaim your profession and declare your pride in the hard work you do. Make some happy noise. Infect your fellow marchers with your zeal.

Invite your most beleaguered neighbors, friends and co-workers over for a picnic. Raise a pint, braise some burgers and praise your companions for their skill, devotion and compassion. Recognize them for all they’ve persevered through since this relentless recession began in December of 2007. Build esprit de corps among your fellow workers.

This is one day devoted to labor, to the middle class, to the majority. One day out of 365. On this holiday, everyone gives an obligatory nod to workers. So don’t fret this Labor Day. Don’t waste it away in apathetic doldrums. Don’t let the minority rich and their purchased politicians take this celebration away from us too.
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Poll-itics: Approval of Labor Unions Steady at 52%
The Political Carnival
Posted August 31, 2011
A new Gallup poll shows support of labor unions remains steady:

In a year of contentious negotiations between state governments and public employee unions, 52% of Americans approve of labor unions, unchanged from 2010. At the same time, Republicans and Democrats are more sharply divided in their views than they have been over the past decade.

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Thousands of public employees laid off in 2010
Reuters
Posted August 31, 2011
According to the Census, local and state governments had 203,321 fewer full-time equivalent employees in 2010 than in 2009 and 27,567 fewer part-time employees.

Most local governments cut full-time jobs in 2010, with the biggest decline in Rhode Island, where the workforce shrank 7.7 percent. Those in North Dakota, one of few states to go through the 2007-09 recession unscathed, added jobs in 2010, with its full-time workforce growing 7.5 percent in 2010.

It was the second year local governments lost part-time employees, with cities, counties and authorities in California shedding the most, 47,620.

The job losses have continued this year. John Lonski, chief economist for Moody's Capital Markets Research told Reuters this month that "we are looking at the worst contraction of state and local government employment since 1981."
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Federal Health Insurance Subsidies For Laid-Off Workers End Today
Think Progress
Posted August 31, 2011
Kaiser Health News reports that federal subsidies to help laid-off workers continue their health care coverage — “one of the key consumer benefits of the federal stimulus package” — will end today. Millions of laid-off workers benefitted from federal subsidies for COBRA, a program that allows people who lose their jobs to keep employer-provided insurance, usually for 18 months, if they pay the entire premium and some part of the administrative fees. Congress extended the COBRA subsidy three times to cover workers who lost their jobs through May 2010, but increasing concern about the national deficit led them to decline another extension last year. Health care costs for the unemployed are expected to rise sharply and with them, concerns about how millions of families will cover those expenses.
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Trumka Announces New Jobs Plan, New Independent Political Voice for Workers
AFL-CIO Now Blog
Posted August 31, 2011
The nation’s ailing economy needs a prescription powerful enough to heal the jobs crisis and America’s working families need an independent political voice that’s not beholden to parties or politicians, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

At a Labor Day press conference this afternoon, Trumka unveiled a six-point “America Wants to Work” jobs and economy initiative “that is serious and reflects the scale of the crisis we face.”  The plan includes:

• Rebuilding the nation’s transportation and energy infrastructure;
• Reviving U.S. manufacturing and ending the exportation of U.S. jobs;
• Putting people to work in local communities;
• Helping states and local governments to prevent layoffs and cuts to public services;
• Extending unemployment insurance (UI) benefits and helping homeowners keep their homes; and
• Reforming Wall Street so it helps Main Street create jobs.

Click here for a detailed look.
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Good News, Bad News on Seattle Employment Report
The Stranger
Posted August 31, 2011
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics released July metropolitan employment data today, and the good news is that the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett area showed some of the strongest year-over-year gains in the nation, adding about 31,000 non-farm jobs since July of 2010. Yay!

The bad news is that month-to-month, the region actually lost a few thousand jobs between June and July of this year... though these are not seasonally adjusted numbers, so perhaps thats not too meaningful.

Interestingly, while the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett area is home to about 43 percent of Washington's civilian workforce, it accounted for 80 percent of the new jobs added statewide over the past 12 months. So as slow as the economy may be around here, it's downright bustling compared to most of the rest of the state.
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Michigan state senator proposes privatizing teachers
Daily Kos
Posted August 31, 2011
Michigan has already passed laws limiting collective bargaining for teachers and dropping the standard for teacher demotion from "reasonable and just cause" to anything short of "arbitrary and capricious" reasons. But Phil Pavlov, the head of the state Senate Education committee, wants to go well past that. Pavlov wants to privatize teachers:

"I look at it as offering options," Pavlov said. "If there is something out there that can offer school officials the same options at a lower cost, schools need to take a look at that. It needs to part of the conversation on reform."

[...]

The privatization piece would require teachers from a private firm to have all of the same qualifications as current instructors. The difference would be that school districts could take bids for instructional services once an existing contract expires.

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The elderly are already taking a hit
The Progressive
Posted August 31, 2011
While national politicians argue about cuts to Social Security and Medicare down the road, cash-strapped state governments are cutting vital services for elderly Americans today. Those suffering most are often those with the least.

[...] The human misery that these cuts inflict doesn't fall equally. One of the dirty little secrets of our supposedly "post-racial" society is that elderly African-Americans, Asian-Americans and Latinos are far less likely than whites to have the resources needed for a reasonably secure retirement.
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Feds target 'aggressive' picketing at Port of Longview
The Longview Daily News
Posted August 31, 2011
Accusing the local longshore union of unfair labor practices, a federal board is seeking an order to end "aggressive" picketing at the Port of Longview and allow trains to make deliveries to the new EGT grain export terminal.

If the National Labor Relations Board complaint is upheld, it could strike a huge blow against the union and allow EGT to end a eight-month labor dispute over the $200 million facility, which has yet to export its first bushel.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe stopped all rail shipments to EGT on July 14 for safety reasons during the labor dispute, and the NLRB is asking the International Longshore and Warehouse Union to write a letter to the railroad stating its members won't block another shipment.

Union officials in the ILWU's San Francisco headquarters vowed Tuesday to fight the NLRB, blasting the accuracy of the allegations and blaming EGT for inciting violence at the terminal gates. The NLRB complaint will be heard by an administrative law judge Oct. 11 in Portland. The NLRB became involved as a result of complaints filed by EGT in July and August.
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Transportation Infrastructure Bill Boosts Jobs and Planet, Says BlueGreen Alliance
AFL-CIO Now Blog
Posted August 31, 2011
The BlueGreen Alliance says that reauthorizing the fully funded Surface Transportation bill that President Obama today urged Congress to extend is “an incredibly important step in achieving our number one national priority: putting America to work.”BlueGreen Alliance Executive Director David Foster says the bill will not only create badly needed jobs, but it also will have a major positive environmental impact.

Currently, the U.S. spends approximately $1 billion a day on foreign oil, while transportation accounts for nearly one-third of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. Investing in American-made cleaner vehicles, roads, bridges, tunnels, rail, transit, and better biking and walking can create millions of jobs in infrastructure, manufacturing, and operations.

A cleaner, safer, more efficient 21st century transportation system will reduce pollution and our dependence on foreign oil, create new jobs and opportunity for workers across the nation, and ensure America remains competitive in the global economy.

But House Republicans want to cut transportation and transit infrastructure funding so deeply that it would cost half a million jobs next year alone and send the nation’s highways, bridges and transit systems into even deeper disrepair.
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CEOs Rake in More than Their Corporations Pay in Taxes
Think Progress
Posted August 31, 2011
Of last year’s 100 highest-paid U.S. corporate chief executives, 25 took home more in CEO pay than their company paid in 2010 federal corporate income taxes, according to a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).

As IPS puts it:

Corporations don’t dodge taxes, the people who run corporations do. And these CEOs are reaping awesomely lavish rewards for the tax dodging they have their corporations do.

“Executive Excess 2011: The Massive CEO Rewards for Tax Dodging“ shows the 25 tax-dodging CEOs the IPS report spotlights averaged $16.7 million in pay last year, well above the $10.8 million Standard & Poor’s 500 CEO average. Most of their companies registered substantial profits. Yet these same companies actually came out ahead at tax time. They collected, on average, $413 million in refunds from the IRS.
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Anti-Union Laws reach Pennsylvania
Daily Kos
Posted August 31, 2011
In about a month the Pennsylvania house and senate will return to Harrisburg and the fall session will begin. At this very time there are 4 bills stuck in committee, 3 in the house, 1 in the senate. These bills, if they pass will strike at the very heart of labor rights in Pennsylvania. Modeled after Ohio's SB5, Wisconsin's budget repair bill, and other union striping bills which are being produced by Republican controlled legislative bodies throughout the country, the rights of workers are being attacked under the guise of so called right to work laws.

These laws do little to create jobs, or shore up the middle class.  These laws exist in states more likely to have a lower median income. 10 of the 14 states with right to work legislation have a median income of 45,000 or less; national average is 50,271. (us news world report 10/5/10. Only two of 13 states with median incomes of 55,000 or more are right to work states; Utah and Virginia. Pennsylvania is at the cusp of the low average, with a median income of 47,000 we should be looking for ways to push income levels up. These laws are blatant attacks against unions, not job creation measures.
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Ohio Referendum on Union Restrictions Is a Go After Kasich's Gambit Fails
Bloomberg
Posted August 31, 2011
Ohio voters will decide whether to keep a law limiting collective bargaining for public employees after efforts by Ohio Governor John Kasich to strike a deal to get the measure off the ballot failed.

Midnight yesterday was the deadline to remove the referendum from the Nov. 8 ballot, and no action was taken, Matt McClellan, a spokesman for Secretary of State Jon Husted, said by telephone from Columbus today. The campaign is on, Kasich said.

“We’re just going to go to November, and it’ll be a robust campaign on both sides, I’m sure,” Kasich, 59, a first-term Republican, said during an interview that aired today on Bloomberg Television’s “InBusiness with Margaret Brennan.”

We Are Ohio, a coalition of labor officials and Democrats, is ready for the fight to kill the measure, said the spokeswoman, Melissa Fazekas.
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At N.L.R.B., Flurry of Acts for Unions as Chief Exits
The New York Times
Posted August 31, 2011
The National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday released a decision that would make it easier to unionize nursing home workers.

It is the latest in a flurry of moves favorable to unions that the board completed before the term of its chairwoman, Wilma B. Liebman, expired on Sunday. The board released two other pro-union decisions on Tuesday, both reversing decisions issued under President George W. Bush.
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Report: Corporate Offshore Profits Tripled Since Last Tax Amnesty
AFL-CIO Now Blog
Posted August 31, 2011
A loophole in our nation’s tax laws allows multinational companies and hedge funds to shelter enormous sums of money from taxes by creating offshore identities and using tax-haven banks.

Corporate executives claim that if they are allowed to bring the cash into the United States without paying taxes on it, they can use the money to create badly needed jobs. But a new report shows a tax amnesty would only be an incentive to stash even more money away overseas.   

The study by the nonpartisan Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) shows the 20 companies that brought the most offshore profits to the United States after Congress approved a tax amnesty in 2004 have almost tripled the amount of profits parked overseas as they did at the end of 2005. 

These corporations, which include well-known companies like Pfizer, Merck, Hewlett-Packard, Coca-Cola, Citigroup, McDonald’s and many others, collectively had $269.6 billion in “permanently reinvested earnings” parked offshore largely in tax havens at the end of 2004. This offshore hoard shrank as expected in 2005, to $152 billion, after these companies repatriated most of it in response to the tax amnesty. But their offshore hoard immediately climbed to new highs in the years afterward, reaching $426.5 billion in 2010.

This practice costs nearly $100 billion in taxes each year, according to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
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Report: top corporations spent millions on politics, paid no federal taxes
The American Independent
Posted August 31, 2011
Five top U.S. corporations racked up millions in profits last year and paid no federal taxes. They spent money instead on political campaigns and it was money well spent. Over the last decade, Bank of America, Boeing, Chevron, ExxonMobil and General Electric handed out $78.7 million to state political campaigns and $45.3 million to federal campaigns, according to a report released Wednesday by the National Institute for Money in State Politics. In return, the corporations in 2009 won $3.7 billion in tax breaks overall and paid $0 in federal taxes. They enjoyed a combined profit of $77.16 billion in 2010.

Any Americans who paid taxes last year– employed, semi-employed, unemployed, between gigs, recession-rattled Republicans, Democrats or independents– any American who paid taxes last year paid more than did all of the five corporations in the study, combined.
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WI Labor Council backs down on Labor Day parade
Teamster nation
Posted August 31, 2011
Late Tuesday night, the Marathon County Labor Council reversed itself and announced that Republican politicians would be allowed in the Wausau Labor Day parade. One of those Republicans is U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy, featured in the above video whining about his meager $174,000-a-year salary.

The mayor of Wausau, Jim Tipple, had said the city wouldn't help pay for the parade if Republicans were excluded.

Randy Radtke, president of the Labor Council, put out this statement:

Labor Day is meant to celebrate the accomplishments of labor for the citizens of our country: things like better workplace safety, some retirement security through Social Security, higher pay, and some time off so workers can spend it with their families. These things have raised workplace conditions at union and non-union companies alike, and collective bargaining helps keep them strong.

We didn't start this fight in Wisconsin, but were responding to anti-worker positions and policies supported by local Republican politicians, including those who have complained about not being invited. With the track records that Pam Galloway, Sean Duffy, Scott Walker, and Jerry Petrowski have all put together this year, they should be ashamed to even show their faces at a Labor Day parade.

Just like we'd hoped, our decision has stimulated a great debate in our community about the meaning of Labor Day. But because we don't want to wind up having community groups and school bands affected in the process, we will let everyone march and hope these Republican politicians finally take away some lessons about what Labor Day really means. We know their actions and voting records speak more loudly than waving at any parade.

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This is what we union thugs did 31 years ago in Poland
Teamster Nation
Posted August 31, 2011


We brought down communism.

History.com tells us on Aug. 31, 1980,

...representatives of the communist government of Poland agree to the demands of striking shipyard workers in the city of Gdansk. Former electrician Lech Walesa led the striking workers, who went on to form Solidarity, the first independent labor union to develop in a Soviet bloc nation.

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