Mike Hall Archive

Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R), whose attempt to strip tens of thousands of public employees of their bargaining rights in 2011 failed, lashed out last week at the state’s 10,000 child care and home care workers when he issued an executive order stripping them of their collective bargaining rights.

AFSCME Ohio Council 8 President John A. Lyall said:

Gov. Kasich has repeatedly targeted Ohio workers since taking office, and he’s continuing that pattern today. A loss of collective bargaining rights will mean lower-quality child care available to parents, and the loss of thousands of jobs that are largely held by women and minority workers now. This is another mean-spirited attack on working people that will hurt our families and our communities.

The child care workers provide home-based care for some 20,000 children. The home care workers who provide care for adults—including many seniors and people with disabilities—are members of SEIU 1199, and the union’s president Becky Williams said:

By stripping collective bargaining rights from home care and child care workers, Kasich is effectively attempting to silence thousands of low-wage workers, women and people of color from their ability to advocate for their clients and preserve quality care and services to the children, seniors and people with disabilities in our communities.

Valentine’s Day is Saturday and you can give sweets and other treats for your sweet that has a union label, and while there’s no price tag on love, there is a discount on flowers with Union Plus.

The iconic Necco candy Sweethearts conversation hearts are made by members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM). Several familiar sparkling libations such as J. Roget and Tott’s are produced by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). See the list at the bottom of the page compiled by our friends at Labor 411, the union business directory from the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, for more products made by union members.

Union members receive a 20% discount on all Teleflora flowers and GiftTree gift baskets when they browse arrangements and order online at UnionPlus.org/Flowers or call 1-888-667-7779.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would have been prevented from issuing timely guidelines on protecting health care workers and first responders from the Ebola virus and how to control the spread of the deadly virus to the public under a Republican bill the House is set to vote on this week.

The bill (H.R.185) would add dozens of new procedural and analytical roadblocks to any new enforceable rule such as workplace safety or consumer protection regulations and even to non-binding federal guidelines to protect workers and the public, such as the CDC’s Ebola guidelines issued last fall.

In a letter to the House, AFL-CIO Government Affairs Director Bill Samuel wrote that the Regulatory Accountability Act (RAA) “will not improve the regulatory process: it will cripple it,” and will add years to the process.

Some 1 million workers could lose their employer-provided health insurance under a Republican bill (H.R. 30) passed by the House (252-172, with 12 Democrats crossing the aisle) today. On top of stripping health care coverage from those workers, the bill also would add some $53.2 billion to the federal deficit over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The attack on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) comes just two days after Republicans approved legislation that could lead to cuts in Social Security disability and retirement benefits.

Under the ACA, large employers must provide health care coverage to employees who work 30 or more hours a week or they face a penalty. H.R. 30 kicks up the 30-hour threshold to 40 hours a week.

On the very first day that the new larger House Republican majority got to work, it made a move that could mean some 11 million people who receive Social Security disability benefits will see their lifeline benefits cut by 20% in 2016—or even cuts to Social Security retirement benefits for everyone.  

No, Republicans didn’t pass a bill or hold a lengthy debate on something so important. Instead, buried in a package of rule changes, they included a provision that the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM) says:

would allow a 20% benefit cut for millions of disabled Americans unless there are broader Social Security benefit cuts or tax increases improving the solvency of the combined trust funds.

It’s getting there, but it’s not too late yet to find that perfect holiday gift that carries a union label and is made in America. Below is a wide range of gift possibilities, from clothes to games to sports equipment and more, made by members of UNITE HERE, Boilermakers (IBB), Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM), Machinists (IAM), United Steelworkers (USW), Teamsters (IBT), UAW, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union/UFCW (RWDSU/UFCW) and United Farm Workers (UFW).

This list is compiled from the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor's resource site, Labor 411, Union Plus, the AFL-CIO Union Label and Service Trades Department and the BCTGM website. Check them out for even more gift ideas.

Walmart workers, many who earn poverty-level wages and have irregular and part-time hours, have mobilized for justice and fairness at Walmart over the past few years and now are calling on Walmart to end retaliation against workers who are asking for $15 an hour and full-time hours. Now, workers’ allies in communities around the nation are joining them in massive demonstrations on Black Friday (Nov. 28), the biggest shopping day of the year.

You can make your voice heard and show your support for Walmart workers by clicking here to sign a petition to the Walton family, who owns Walmart and who has the distinction of being the richest family in America. Tell the Waltons you stand with Walmart workers and you will join a Black Friday action near you.

To put the workers’ demands in context, income inequality is the highest it’s been since 1928. Corporate profits are at an all-time high. Meanwhile, wages are at the lowest point since 1948—even as productivity increases.

Before you put together your Thanksgiving dinner shopping list, check our list of union-made in America food and other items that are essential to a traditional family Thanksgiving feast. Speaking of thanks, a big “thank you” to the Union Label and Service Trades Department (ULSTD), Union Plus and the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor's resource site, Labor 411, for compiling their extensive catalogs of union-made products.

Here are some of the best union-made Thanksgiving eats and cookware from the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM); Glass, Molders, Pottery, Plastics and Allied Workers (GMP); Machinists (IAM); United Steelworkers (USW); and United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW).

Appetizers

Kraft/Nabisco crackers—BCTGM

Nabisco (Mondelez) crackers—BCTGM

Keebler (Kellogg) crackers—BCTGM

The AFL-CIO and its member unions launched a unique “station domination” ad campaign aimed at stopping possible congressional action on “Fast Track” trade authority legislation in the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress.

The ads run throughout Capitol South Metro station, the main Capitol Hill stop and one of the busiest stations on Washington, D.C.’s Metro system. The ads convey the too often hidden but always dramatic stakes in trade negotiations for working people.

One ad features Marcos V., a Texas refinery worker and member of the United Steelworkers (USW). He says that the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement that could be considered under Fast Track could be:

Devastating to the oil industry and the manufacturing industry it supports by off-shoring jobs, chipping away at our wages and risking the safety and environmental protections our unions have brought us for decades. The TPP could threaten our rights to organize and collectively bargain.

In an election night that was rather bleak for working families and their candidates, one bright spot was the success of several state ballot initiatives dealing with some core worker issues, including wages, equal pay, education and paid sick leave. Here’s a quick look:  

• Voters approved increases to the minimum wage in Alaska, Arkansas, Illinois, Nebraska and South Dakota, as well as Oakland and San Francisco, Calif.
• In victories for working women and families, voters in Oregon approved the Equal Pay Measure and in Massachusetts a measure calling for up to 40 hours a year of paid sick leave for employees was approved. Paid sick leave measures in Oakland, Calif., Montclair and Trenton, N.J., also won. 
• Measures to strengthen voting rights were approved in Missouri, Montana and Illinois.
• New York voters passed Proposal 3, an education funding initiative, and in Missouri, Amendment 3, which would have weakened due process for teachers and would take local control of schools away from parents, teachers and school districts, was defeated.

On Election Day, some 300,000 registered voters in Wisconsin could have their voices silenced. And that’s exactly what Gov. Scott Walker (R), the Republican-majority state legislature and their corporate and extremist backers had in mind when they passed the restrictive voter photo ID law in 2011.

Why would Walker and his cohorts want to disenfranchise nearly 10% of Wisconsin’s registered voters? Take a look at who, according to a University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee study, doesn't have a state-issued photo ID:

• 23% of elderly Wisconsinites older than 65.
• 17% of white men and women.
• 55% of African American males and 49% of African American women.
• 46% of Hispanic men and 59% of Hispanic women.
• 78% of African American males ages 18 to 24 and 66% of African American women age 18.

We’ve been reporting on the fight for justice for Southern California Carwash workers—and their Community, Labor, Environmental, Action Network (CLEAN) Carwash campaign's many victories—since the carwasheros launched their campaign. Now with a new website, you can keep up with the latest developments in the workers’ campaign.

Here are some of the new features:

• There’s the “A Better Carwash” map of union carwashes, which is constantly updated as we have more victories for workers. This way, you’ll always know where the latest carwashes are that have fair wages and working conditions throughout California.
• There’s also an Action Center that gives people more ways to help carwash workers beyond “Like” us on Facebook (which is cool, too, but sometimes we want to do more, right?).

The economy added 142,000 jobs in August, down from July’s increase of 209,000 new jobs, but the unemployment rate dipped slightly to 6.1% compared to July’s 6.2%, according to figures released this morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Over the past year, the unemployment rate has dropped by 1.1 percentage points and the number of jobless workers has decreased by 1.7 million.

While the improved jobs numbers over the past several months show the economy is beginning to recover, job growth is still not robust enough to provide jobs for the millions who remain out of work or to boost wages for most Americans.

Last week a federal judge upheld what North Carolina State AFL-CIO President James Andrews says is, “The most restrictive voting rights law in the country.” North Carolina is one of 22 states that since 2010 have enacted new laws restricting the right to vote. Click here to add your name to a petition to demand lawmakers protect our right to vote in North Carolina and across the country.

The 2013 North Carolina law was pushed by extremist lawmakers, including House Speaker and current U.S. Senate candidate Thom Tillis and Gov. Pat McCrory (R). It directly targets the voting power of working people by shortening early voting periods, imposing restrictive voter ID requirements in 2016 and eliminating same-day voter registration.

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) recently got a firsthand look at deplorable working and living conditions that thousands of tobacco farm workers in North Carolina endure. She was part of a delegation that included two members of Britain’s Parliament, Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) President Baldemar Velasquez, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Tefere Gebre and several AFL-CIO Union Summer interns who are taking part in FLOC's "Respect, Recognition, Raise" campaign and fight for a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work, respect in the workplace and union recognition. Kaptur wrote about her findings in a column for The Nation. Here’s an excerpt:

During my visit, I found workers who labor eleven hours a day under grueling conditions at high season for $7.25 an hour. As many as twelve men sleep jammed inside ramshackle, dilapidated trailers or barracks. There is no hot water, no decent laundry facilities, no air-conditioning, substandard electrical and gas wiring, and flush toilets are a luxury. I saw injured workers, including one man who had lost part of his index finger in a work accident, who lacked basic protections and health care. I heard women testify of the sexual abuse they face to secure work and pay, but still they and their children live in squalor in the richest nation in the world.

Since the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) took effect Aug. 5, 1993, the groundbreaking law has been used 100 million times and has helped 36 million workers keep their health insurance and jobs while taking care of a newborn child, themselves or a family member during a serious illness.

First introduced in Congress in 1984, it took nearly 10 years to overcome a well-funded campaign against the legislation by corporations and two successful vetoes by President George H.W. Bush before President Bill Clinton signed it into law.

The FMLA’s unpaid leave with job protections was a good first step. But today, there are millions of workers who can’t afford to take time off for their own or a loved one’s illnesses. Forty percent all private-sector workers don’t have any paid sick days and that doubles to 80% for low-wage workers.

A federal judge granted an injunction Wednesday ordering the Kellogg Company to end its lockout of 226 workers—members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Local 252G—at its Memphis cereal plant and reinstate them to their jobs within five days. The lockout began Oct. 22.

Judge Samuel H. Mays Jr., of the Western District of Tennessee, also ordered Kellogg to bargain with the union in good faith; offer reinstatement to every worker to their former or equivalent positions; re-establish the same terms and conditions of employment prior to the company’s last/best offer; and submit to the court details of its compliance with the order within 20 days.

The recent revelations of long waiting lists for military veterans seeking treatment at Veterans Affairs (VA) health care facilities and of management cover-ups has prompted AFGE to again call on Congress to fully staff the VA in order to provide the health care veterans deserve.

In this new video, AFGE says:

We can’t heal the VA until we fill thousands of vacant positions, reopen hospital beds and increase resources or patient care.

Soon we’ll be gathering with families and friends for the nation’s birthday, July 4. Many of us will celebrate with a barbecue. We can keep the red, white and blue in the holiday with this made-in-America, union label backyard barbecue checklist, compiled from the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM), the LA Labor 411's website, Union Plus and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW).

Before we get into the menu, if you want to wave that flag wide and high, American flags from Annin Flagmakers and Artflag carry the union label. In the photo above, UFCW members Tanya Mounts and Jackie Darr add the grommets to a large American flag at Annin’s Coshocton, Ohio, plant.

If Congress doesn’t act soon, more than 700,000 middle class jobs building the nation’s highways, bridges and transit systems will be at risk.

While the legislation authorizing the spending for those vital projects doesn’t expire until Sept. 30, the Highway Trust Fund that helps states pay for transportation construction and upkeep is running out of money and layoffs could begin later next month.

Gary, of Bordentown, N.J., is supporting his disabled wife and their 11-year-old sons by racking up high-interest credit card debt and depleting their life savings. He is one of the more than 3 million workers who have been cut off from unemployment insurance since House Republicans allowed emergency help for jobless workers to expire at the end of last year. 

Gary is on the job search, but his voice was heard Wednesday on Capitol Hill when AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Liz Shuler shared his story as part of the continuing initiative to give a voice to the jobless through “Witness Wednesday.” 

The Obama administration issued on Friday a new report outlining new chemical safety and security regulations and policies that—if enacted—could help protect the more than 130 million people who live nearby or work in the nearly 3,400 U.S. facilities that manufacture chemicals, refine petroleum, generate electric power and others that use or store hazardous chemicals.  

After last year’s massive explosion that killed 15 people and destroyed homes and businesses in a wide swath around a largely unregulated West, Texas, fertilizer plant, President Barack Obama issued an executive order to federal agencies to develop new rules to address the handling and storage of industrial chemicals, such as the ammonium nitrate fertilizer in the Texas explosion.

More than 1,000 United Steelworkers (USW) members, their families, allies, lawmakers and U.S. Steel Corp. officials rallied Monday outside the company’s Lone Star, Texas, plant to spotlight the dumping by foreign manufacturers of specialty steel products vital to energy production and to urge the U.S. Commerce Department to enforce the nation’s anti-dumping trade laws.

Failing to fully enforce our trade laws puts more than 500,000 American jobs on the line and risks outsourcing the benefits of America’s energy boom.

Steve Korotko, Chad Cramer and Mike Grillo (above), all have served full tours of duty in the military and now they are United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1219 members and serve as safety reps at the United States Steel Corp.'s Braddock, Pa., plant.

After serving our country in various branches of the armed forces, now they need our help fighting for their jobs.

At a time of high demand for Oil Country Tubular Goods (OCTG) the U.S. industry is being squeezed by dumped imports from South Korea and other nations.

Collective bargaining is one of the best solutions for gender pay discrimination, Connecticut AFL-CIO Executive Secretary-Treasurer Lori Pelletier told a U.S. Senate hearing on the economic security of working women on Tuesday.

Unions today continue to be critical to the economic security of working women and their families, who still face an uphill battle in the workplace…a union contract sets standard rates for different positions. As a result, the gender pay gap for workers covered by a union contract is much smaller—91 cents on the dollar—than for nonunion workers.

Dozens of Walmart workers who the National Labor Relations Board alleges were fired or disciplined last year for protesting workplace conditions and wages are a step closer to justice after the NLRB began its case against the retail giant Monday.

The hearing in Oakland, Calif., is the first of five that will be held in different cities across the country. More than 60 Walmart supervisors and one corporate officer in 13 states are named in the NLRB complaint.

If Walmart is found liable, workers could be awarded back pay, reinstatement and the reversal of disciplinary actions through the decision. Walmart also could be required to inform and educate all employees about their legally protected rights.

The United States lags far behind other nations in protecting workers’ rights, according to a new survey from the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). The rankings are based on 97 internationally recognized indicators and standards to assess where workers’ rights are best protected, in law and in practice.

ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow said:

Countries such as Denmark and Uruguay led the way through their strong labor laws, but perhaps surprisingly, the likes of Greece, the United States and Hong Kong, lagged behind. A country’s level of development proved to be a poor indicator of whether it respected basic rights to bargain collectively, strike for decent conditions or simply join a union at all.

New rules passed by the extremist Republicans in control of the North Carolina legislature aimed at silencing Moral Monday protesters didn’t stop nearly 5,000 civil rights, labor, faith, environmental and other activists from turning out for the first Moral Monday action of the new legislative session Monday night.

According to the new rules governing protests, any group inside the legislative building—where many of the protesters gather for Moral Monday actions—making enough noise to interfere with conversation at normal conversational levels is creating a “disturbance” and can be ordered to leave the building or be arrested if they refuse to do so.

Despite significant advancements in workplace health and safety over the past four decades, 150 people will be killed on the job or die from job-related illnesses and diseases today, reports the 2014 edition of the AFL-CIO’s annual Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect, released this morning.

And that daily death toll, which has remained steady for the past several years, plus the 11.4 million work-related injuries and illnesses a year show:

The nation must renew the commitment to protect workers from injury, disease and death and make this a high priority. We must demand that employers meet their responsibilities to protect workers and hold them accountable if they put workers in danger. Only then can the promise of safe jobs for all of America’s workers be fulfilled.

The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that lifted limits on campaign contributions from the wealthy, showed, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka writes in an Op-Ed column in today’s Washington Post, “The 1 percent is undertaking a serious effort to buy elections.” How will working people respond in this fall’s midterm elections? They will, writes Trumka:

Turn out for candidates who tell the truth about what is happening in our country: candidates who speak clearly about falling wages and the concentration of wealth and income, and about the astounding tilt in our economy and politics toward global corporations and the very rich.