Allied Approaches Archive (Page 5)

Working women and men need and deserve a Secretary of Labor—somebody who will look out for their interests, protect them from unscrupulous employers, set strong health and safety standards, and safeguard their retirement security.

Unfortunately, corporate lawyer Eugene Scalia, the man named by President Trump to be the next Secretary of Labor, is not that person.

Scalia, a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, is a partner at the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, where he specializes in labor and employment law and administrative law. He is an active participant in the activities of the Federalist Society—a right-wing legal group. Scalia was nominated in 2001 by President George W. Bush to be Solicitor of Labor, but his nomination was blocked because of opposition over his extreme views against worker health and safety protections. Bush circumvented the Senate and installed Scalia as Solicitor through a recess appointment. Scalia returned to his law firm at the beginning of 2003.

Scalia has built his career representing corporations, financial institutions, and other business organizations—and fighting worker protections like health and safety regulations, retirement security, and collective bargaining rights. Scalia’s reputation as the go-to lawyer for corporations wanting to avoid worker and consumer protections is so notorious that a headline in a Bloomberg Businessweek profile on Scalia read, “Suing the Government? Call Scalia.”1 Here are just a few examples of cases where Scalia, on behalf of corporations and trade associations, has attacked worker and consumer protections:

Worker Health and Safety

Scalia led the fight on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce against regulations to protect workers from injuries caused by unsafe workplace design—known as ergonomics rules. According to Labor Department experts, the rules would have prevented 600,000 injuries a year. Scalia ridiculed the extensive science underlying the rules as “junk science par excellence”2and “quackery,”3 and suggested that unions supported the rules as a ploy to increase membership.4 The rules were adopted by the Labor Department in 2000 but were overturned by a Republican Congress after Bush was elected president in 2000.

Elections have consequences. In Nevada, it’s led to a different type of sweep: From 0-for-20 to 20-for-20 on labor-backed legislation in the state capital.

And it helps that 19 of the 63 state lawmakers (30%) are unionists, a record, and that new Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak, son of an Auto Worker from Milwaukee, knows who put him in office. It also helps that the Silver State’s legislature is the first ever in U.S. history to be majority-female.

The win in Nevada was one of many nationwide in 2018. Other victories included putting union members, both Teachers, in governors’ chairs in Minnesota (Tim Walz) and Michigan (Gretchen Whitmer) and ousting rabid anti-worker anti-union GOP governors Scott Walker in Wisconsin and Bruce Rauner in Illinois in favor of pro-worker Democratic nominees.

But Nevada stood out because the GOP governor stood in the way, even after workers and their allies gained clout in Carson City, in the 2016 election. Nevada also stood out because, with a rabidly anti-worker administration in Washington, D.C., unions and workers find themselves increasingly turning to the states for support and for progressive policies.

“The tens of thousands of phone calls and doors knocked are what we have to do across the country to elect pro-union candidates,” Sisolak told the Communications Workers convention, meeting in Las Vegas.

Members of Unite Here, the Communications Workers, AFSCME and the Teamsters led the 2018 Nevada sweep. Unite Here’s largest local, in Las Vegas, has more than 50,000 members alone, concentrated in the hotels and casinos in the burgeoning Las Vegas casino-hotel Strip.

It took a lot of effort to produce those wins and create that new climate, CWA Local 9413 President Liz Henderson, who is also Nevada AFL-CIO president, told the 2,000 delegates.

Fifty unions joined together in the mass mobilization, putting 2,500 volunteers on the streets. The volunteers knocked on half a million doors and held 125,000 one-on-one conversations. The numbers rose two years later. Union turnout was so huge that in 2018 that 17% of early ballots were from union members, and one-fifth of all Clark County (Las Vegas) voters were unionists.

President Donald Trump on Thursday tweeted that he would apply 10% tariffs on  $300 billion worth of Chinese imports.

“Trade talks are continuing, and… during the talks the U.S. will start, on September 1st, putting a small additional Tariff of 10% on the remaining 300 Billion Dollars of goods and products coming from China into our Country. This does not include the 250 Billion Dollars already Tariffed at 25%” the president wrote in a series of tweets.

But while the White House described this week’s trade talks between the U.S. and China as “constructive,” little progress was made.

Earlier in the day, the president tweeted that countries such as Iran and China, both embroiled in heated diplomatic contretemps with the U.S. (Iran, over the nuclear deal Trump violated and the sanctions he subsequently imposed, and China, over trade) are hoping he doesn’t get reelected in 2020:

China, Iran & other foreign countries are looking at the Democrat Candidates and “drooling” over the small prospect that they could be dealing with them in the not too distant future. They would be able to rip off our beloved USA like never before. With President Trump, NO WAY!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 1, 2019

The U.S. unemployment rate stayed at 3.7% in July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. In a separate survey, businesses claimed to create 148,000 new jobs that month, while governments added 16,000, with 11,700 of them, seasonally adjusted, in local schools.

The number of unemployed was 6.063 million, up 88,000 from June, BLS said. But add together the jobless, those who toil part-time when they really want full-time work and people so discouraged they’ve dropped out of the job market, and you get one of every 14 workers.

“Wage growth continues to fall short of what we’d expect in an economy that has had historically low unemployment,” tweeted Economic Policy Institute analyst Elise Gould after BLS reported wages grew at a 3.2% annual rate. “The unemployment rate has been at (or below) 4% for the past 17 months” and economists believe such a tight labor market should prompt businesses to compete for scarce workers by offering better pay. They aren’t.

Factories added 16,000 jobs, to 12.864 million in July, with the sole big gain in cars and parts (+7,200). Other gains and losses were small. Some 472,000 factory workers (3%) were jobless.

At the height of construction season, firms claimed to add only 4,000 jobs in July, to 7.505 million. That left 386,000 jobless building trades workers (3.8%), 53,000 more than in last July. And union leaders say the official stats understate joblessness there, as a worker who toils for one day during the survey week is counted as working all month. That’s often not the case in construction.

As usual, the lowest-paying service occupations led the way in job creation, the separate survey reported. Of the 133,000 jobs service firms claimed to create in July, 30,400 were in health care, 20,400 were in individual and family social services and day care, and 15,400 were in bars and restaurants. The number of jobless government workers rose by 72,000 in one year, to 816,000 (3.9%). Government now has more jobless workers than any other consolidated category.  

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Never piss off a coal miner, especially if you haven’t paid him for weeks – and then try to ship the last load of coal he dug out of the mountains.

That’s what Blackjewel Co. learned on July 30 in Harlan County, Ky. When the firm loaded the coal on train cars, the unpaid miners marched out to the tracks and sat down.

As of Aug, 2, they were still there. They vow to stay. They’re blocking a CSX coal train, at times forming a human chain to make sure it doesn’t move.

One miner wrote a sign in black marker on a used cardboard pizza box: "No pay we stay."

The miners are non-union, but that didn’t stop them from taking “protected concerted action,” in federal labor law’s language, to stand up for themselves. In this case, of course, it’s to stand up and get paid in one of the poorest regions of Appalachia.

The sit down is nothing new in Harlan County. It’s been the scene of bitter battles for years, as coal company bosses warred – often literally – against workers standing up for themselves.

The Blackjewel workers have had to stand up again, and most of the town of Cumberland, population 2,200, is supporting them one way or another since the sit down on the tracks started. A Chinese restaurant is sending over free meals, and people are bringing donations of food, blankets and tents for shelter from frequent thunderstorms. There are port-a-potties, too.

Blackjewel had been losing money. Its sudden bankruptcy filing on July 1 was disclosed by a pro-worker foundation. The company stopped paying the 400 Harlan County miners and at least 700 others at its other mines in Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia.

The first paychecks that arrived in July, for work performed during the last half of June, bounced. The miners never got others. By the end of the month, the Harlan County contingent had had it, especially when they learned about the CSX coal train – with their coal in it. Their mine was padlocked, too.

Weeks after yet again publicly shelving his long-delayed promise to repair the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, President Donald Trump claimed on Tuesday that action was just around the corner. His administration’s many stalled attempts to address the issue has become a national joke, as its promised “Infrastructure Week” became reminiscent of Groundhog Day.

Trump’s latest bluster came Tuesday morning as part of an effort to defend Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has drawn widespread bipartisan criticism for blocking election security legislation and virtually every other major bill since the start of the 116th Congress.

“Mitch McConnell loves our country,” Trump told reporters. “He’s done a great job. We are trying to pass an infrastructure bill. It’s being written up right now, for our highways, and our roadways.”

This news came as something of a surprise given that in May, Trump was adamant that he would not do anything on infrastructure because he was mad that Congress was fulfilling its constitutional duty to conduct oversight of his administration. After reaching a tentative agreement with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on the outlines of a $2 trillion infrastructure plan, anti-government activists in his own administration and congressional Republicans reportedly objected to the cost. Rather than stand up to his party, Trump called the Democratic leaders in for an ambush under the guise of a negotiation.

Well, we made it.

The second night of the second Democratic presidential debates is in the books, and some key manufacturing issues did make it into the spotlight on Wednesday night in Detroit, including trade.

Although this go-around lacked some of the passion featured on the first night — Sens. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) are the two candidates who have made trade one of their top issues, after all — nearly everybody did mention it at some point. 

But it was frontrunner Joe Biden who got the most attention. The former vice president and longtime senator has the most substantial policy record of anybody in the race, and his rivals on Wednesday didn't hesitate to attack him on it on all fronts, including trade. And Biden made news, announcing he would "renegotiate" the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, which President Trump pulled the United States out of on his first day in office. You'll recall, of course, that the TPP was negotiated under the Obama administration — which was when Biden served as vice president. So, Biden's flip-flop is a big f—ing deal.

Read on for more on what Biden said about trade and other manufacturing issues, as well as the remarks from all the other candidates who took part in Wednesday's debate.

Sen. Michael Bennet (Colo.): Moderator Dana Bash asked the Centennial State senator about technology's role in job displacement, and Bennet responded that the real issue is "how are we going to remain competitive? It's not just about trade... it's about whether we're going to invest in this country anymore." He then argued against the recent tax cuts and trillions of dollars spent in the Middle East, noting that "for all the money I've just described, we could have fixed every road and bridge in this country. We could have fixed every airport... We could have fixed not just Flint, but every water system in this country."

Former Vice President Joe Biden: On trade, Biden's record is mixed. As former President Barack Obama's vice president, he was a vocal supporter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), but on Wednesday he said the deal must be renegotiated. And in 1993, he voted for the passage of NAFTA. But Wednesday night, Biden dodged a question about the Trump administration's efforts toward a NAFTA renegotiation, and backtracked on his earlier advocacy for the TPP. That flip-flopping aside, it is clear Biden thinks the United States should remain open to trade.

The state of Michigan does not hold free and fair legislative elections. In 2018, Democratic state house and senate candidates received tens of thousands more votes than their Republican counterparts. Yet Republicans have solid majorities in both houses.

Meanwhile, the state’s congressional districts are so aggressively gerrymandered that, in 2012, when President Obama won the state by over nine points, Republicans still captured nine of Michigan’s 14 U.S. House seats.

All of this is supposed to change, however, and soon. In 2018, voters approved a state constitutional amendment providing that future legislative maps will be drawn by an independent commission. The members of this commission are chosen largely at random from a pool of applicants, in order to minimize either party’s ability to capture the commission. People who recently served as partisan officials, party leaders, lobbyists, or other forms of political insiders may not serve on this commission.

That is, of course, unless the Republican Party gets its way in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday. The case is Daunt v. Benson.

Ignoring corruption

Daunt rests on two interlocking arguments. The first is novel but all-too-plausible in a world where cases like Citizens United v. FEC prevent election laws intended to fight corruption, except in truly egregious cases. The second argument, however, is both extraordinarily aggressive and reminiscent of the argument a Republican federal judge in Texas recently used to order the entire Affordable Care Act repealed.

On Tuesday night, 10 of the 24 Democratic candidates—Montana Gov. Steve Bullock; South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg; former Rep. John Delaney (Md.); former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper; Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.); former Rep. Beto O'Rourke (Texas); Rep. Tim Ryan (Ohio); Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.); Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.); and author Marianne Williamson—faced off in the third of many Democratic primary debates to come of the 2020 cycle.

The first debate saw sparse mentions of manufacturing, trade or China. The second? A little better, but not enough. With Motown as the backdrop last night, though, things were a little different.

Leading candidates Warren and Sanders both hit hard on trade, with Warren arguing that “for decades we have had a trade policy that has been written by giant multinational corporations to help giant multinational corporations. They have no loyalty to America.” She also came out against the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), arguing it will lead to higher drug prices.

For his part, Sanders pointed out he voted against the original NAFTA agreement and Permanent Normalized Trade Relations with China (PNTR), and said as president he would stop giving military contracts to companies that do not employ U.S. workers to manufacture their products.

“If anybody here thinks that corporate America gives one damn about the average American worker, you're mistaken,” he said. “If they can save 5 cents to Mexico or China or Vietnam, that's what they'll do.”

With strong union backing, the Democratic-run U.S. House passed a bill, HR397, to help financially ailing multi-employer pension plans. The 264-169 vote saw 29 Republicans defy the party line and vote for the workers and retirees, joining all 235 Democrats. But for Sam Ball and other disabled and ill retired coal miners, in his case stricken with black lung and barely able to walk, it may not be enough.

That’s because the measure would help two financially ailing miners’ pension plans only until 2020 – and there are so few contributing coal companies (one) active miners per retiree (also one) and so many retirees (30) for each plan – that both will run out of money before then.

And that leaves Ball, a retired coal miner from far Southwestern Virginia, part of the heart of the Appalachian coal country, broke, along with 1,200 other retirees or widows his former coal firm employer left behind, he told a House Energy subcommittee that deals with coal mine issues on July 24, the same day the House approved the wider bill.

“I have second-stage black lung in both lungs, but have been turned down for federal black lung benefits because the government says the coal dust has not yet crystallized in my lungs and I am not disabled enough to get those benefits yet,” Ball explained.  “My lung doctor says there is no reason I should be denied benefits, but the truth is what has happened to me is not unusual.

“Most people I know with black lung are denied benefits. I can tell you that I cannot walk across my yard without stopping, I do not have the breath for any activities, I sleep with an oxygen tube in my nose at night and I need a sleeping supplement to deal with that.”

After taxes, Ball’s pension from the Mine Workers is $475 a month, under a pension plan the government set up for UMWA members in 1947, the same year it set up the health care plan for retirees who gave their lives – and their health – toiling in dangerous underground mines.

A $5 per ton tax on coal, paid by the coal companies, funds the pension and health care plans. The pension fund and health care fund were fully funded until the 2008 Great Recession wiped out their assets and sent most of the coal companies into bankruptcy, where they could shed their pensions and health care, Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts explained.

We have a few ideas for what moderators should ask the candidates during this week's debates.

Unions worldwide face problems organizing workers due to “dismemberment of full-time employment” by firms from Silicon Valley and elsewhere creating the new “gig economy,” an anthropologist who recently finished a comprehensive book on it says.

Mary Gray brought that message and her book, Ghost Work, co-authored with a colleague from India, to the AFL-CIO’s “Ideas@Work” seminar on July 24. But – other than legislation in California empowering workers to organize and extending other rights – there are few solutions yet.

Grey and her colleague interviewed workers in the new economy of Silicon Valley in California and the Pacific Northwest, plus southern India, home now to dozens of call centers and other enterprises transferred from the U.S. The transfers occur because the firms can take advantage of low Indian wages and lax environmental laws.

But individual workers, such as Uber and Lyft drivers, also do much of the ghost work. They’re arbitrarily classified as “independent contractors” under U.S. labor law, and deprived of all rights. California’s AB5 reclassifies them as “employees” with the right to organize and other protections.

The problem unions face in organizing such ghost workers “is that our policies were built around assembly lines,” where organizers could find the workers to talk with, Gray explained.  The ghost workers aren’t on assembly lines. And nobody knows exactly how many of them there are, because reliable methods of counting them haven’t been developed.

The non-assembly line problem isn’t new, though. Even when Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act, “there were doctors, lawyers and other professionals” who were – and are – virtually still unorganized and unorganizable.

“But now there’s been this notable quiet shift to information services work” worldwide. That makes organizing problems even worse, as many workers toil one by one, out of their homes, when they feel like it and on their own, Gray explained. “Much of that work is done in supply chains” for larger firms.

Their employment is precarious, though. “Nobody has a sense of where their paycheck is coming from,” Gray noted.

Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore may have a world-class reputation for medical research and care, but it’s anything but world-class in the way it treats its nurses and its neighbors.

And that contrast between reputation and reality brought almost 1,000 people to a mass demonstration in front of Hopkins’ original building, now its administrative offices, northeast of Baltimore’s downtown in 95-degree heat and humidity on July 20.

“Their cause is our cause,” Metro Baltimore AFL-CIO President Jermaine Jones told the crowd, which included members of AFSCME, the Auto Workers, the Letter Carriers, the Communications Workers, the Service Employees, Unite Here, the Government Employees, the Teachers (AFT), the Food and Commercial Workers and the Electrical Workers.

Led by National Nurses United and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler, the crowd demanded Hopkins stop waging all-out union-busting against NNU. Hopkins nurses want their union “so they can advocate for their patients,” NNU Executive Director Bonnie Castillo, an RN from California, said. NNU members from New York, Philadelphia and D.C. also showed up in solidarity.

Speakers also demanded Hopkins stop using nasty collection agencies and low-road tactics to grab money from its low-income former patients – 85% of them African-American – for small unpaid medical bills.

“We are here to take a stand for what’s right,” declared Castillo. “We want to send a message to Hopkins management: People before profits.”

Hopkins’s 1,500 nurses approached NNU last year about joining the union, fed up with low pay, immense overtime, short-staffing which caused constant turnover and, most importantly, harms to care for patients the hospital serves.

“We do the best we can, but we could do a better job if conditions were better,” nurse Derek Jannarone told Press Associates Union News Service.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and fellow Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul announced a bill on Wednesday to provide special corporate tax advantages for liquor distillers.

A look at McConnell’s campaign finance history may offer a big clue as to why: hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from the alcoholic beverages sector.

The Advancing Growth in the Economy through Distilled Spirits Act would renew an expiring provision from President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cut bill that allows for the deduction of interest expenses related to bourbon inventory when the expenses are paid, rather then when the bourbon is bottled and sold. In a joint press release, Paul said the bill would “preserve Kentucky’s signature Bourbon industry by boosting job creation and maintaining a level playing field between Bourbon and whiskey producers at home and their competitors abroad.”

But back in 2010, an examination by the non-partisan Center for Public Integrity calculated the largest individual donors to McConnell over his decades-long tenure in Congress. Of the top five largest career donors, three had ties to the Kentucky-based Brown-Forman Corporation. Brown-Forman’s products include Jack Daniel’s whiskey and Old Forester bourbon.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, in 2014 — the last time McConnell was up for re-election — he also received more in donations from the beer, wine, and liquor sector than any other senator. The total for that campaign alone: $144,950.

So far this year, McConnell has received $5,000 from Brown-Forman’s corporate PAC and $10,000 from the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America.

As majority leader, McConnell has spent most of the 116th Congress ensuring no lawmaking happens. He has boasted of being the “grim reaper” who blocks legislationfrom even coming to the floor and has so stanched the flow of bills that even his Republican colleagues have publicly complained. He has introduced little legislation, aside from housekeeping resolutions required to organize the Senate. So when the Kentucky Republican announces he will push for a bill, it is unusual.

While Paul is in just his second term in the Senate, he too has received tens of thousands in contributions from the alcohol industry.

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Reposted from ThinkProgress

New United Auto Workers President Gary Jones kicked off bargaining with the “Detroit 3” car companies by saying that after years of worker sacrifices, followed by record profits at GM, Ford and FiatChrysler, it’s time for the firms to invest in their workers.

The talks, which started July 15, featured almost-identical remarks by Jones to the leaders of the car firms, except that he slammed GM for moving production to Mexico and told all three, but FiatChrysler in particular, that the eight-year progression from part-time work to the top of the pay scale must end.

That progression is common to all three car companies and it’s the biggest problem the UAW members at the firms discuss with union reps off the plant floor.

Jones repeated that message, including UAW’s determination to convert more part-timers to full-time employment, to all three firms. The union represents the 158,000 workers at the three car companies, which combined for $15 billion in net profits last year.

“We’re seeing record profit for our American companies, but it’s sad to say those gains aren’t really translating to our members,” Jones told the execs of all three firms. “Despite record profits, we’ve been watching a race to the bottom over the past several years for working men and women in this country.”

That “race” includes GM’s closure of plants in Ohio, Michigan and Maryland and shipment of the jobs to Mexico, he pointedly noted. One union goal is to get the firm to reopen those plants to make more in-demand vehicles, not keep them closed and offer the workers GM jobs elsewhere.

The firm offers “cuts in benefits, retirement security in jeopardy, job loss, wage loss, more and more temporary workers, shipping our jobs to Mexico and China. And outsourcing our good General Motors jobs to other companies paying lower wages in the United States,” Jones said.

“So, what I want to say today and what I want GM’s leadership to hear is: With this year’s negotiations, we will halt that race to the bottom,” Jones said. He repeated those lines to FiatChrysler and Ford execs, just changing firms. “We will protect this workforce, their jobs and their way of life.”

Relations between the car companies and the UAW have a nationwide impact. Car companies – both the Detroit 3 and foreign “transplants” – plus parts suppliers account for one of every 20 U.S. jobs. And those workers in turn support millions more in their communities.

Working people accepted the challenge of Janus v. AFSCME and used this test to reignite our solidarity and prove that we are stronger than any corporation, politician or high court. It takes more than a court case to tear down a century and a half of grit and gumption. 

Together, union members from communities across the country reclaimed our power and redefined this past year with a historic movement of collective action.

Teachers captured the country's attention, walking off the job for the fair treatment they deserve in states where collective bargaining is illegal. Workers at Marriott hotels in eight major cities across the country won groundbreaking protections against harassment and assault and a voice in how technology impacts their work. Grocery store employees throughout New England won better wages and respect after a massive strike that garnered support from workers and communities across America. Now, airline catering workers voted to authorize a strike and demand that “One Job Should Be Enough.”

But, it’s not just union members calling for a fair return on work.

This week, Wayfair employees embraced the power of collective action when they walked out of their workplace to protest the immoral abuse of migrants in detention centers at the border. 

Google workers worldwide staged massive protests last fall, demanding an end to workplace harassment. 

And, video game developers are joining together to fight for a voice at work.  

GOP President Donald Trump has nominated right-wing lawyer Antonin – whoops, Eugene -- Scalia to be Secretary of Labor. If confirmed, he would succeed Alexander Acosta, who was forced to resign.

Eugene Scalia is best-identified as a son of the late and conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia. But Eugene Scalia’s spent his career advocating big business causes and cases, both before and after a brief temporary stint as DOL’s Solicitor, its top attorney.

“He’s as bad as his dad,” one pro-worker labor lawyer said of Eugene Scalia. “This guy will be full steam ahead” on pro-business deregulation. Top Trump officials dressed down Acosta as too slow on that cause.

Right-wingers hail Scalia, according to several legal analyses, as the “father” of killing the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s ergonomics rule. “Under the proposed rule, employers’ obligations would be triggered by ‘symptoms’ of musculoskeletal disorders, which OSHA defines to include ‘pain,’ ‘numbness’ and ‘tingling,’” Scalia wrote.

Then, Scalia claimed, firms must decide if the jobs are “reasonably likely” to be ergonomically hazardous. “If they are, employers are to implement draconian abatement measures, such as reducing assembly line speeds and redesigning equipment, until the ‘hazard’ is gone.”

“This vague and subjective rule would afford little benefit to workers because it is based on thoroughly unreliable science.”

His views were symbolized in an Op-Ed he authored for the Wall Street Journal on Jan. 5, 2000, entitled “Gore, Unions invite OSHA to your home.”

Scalia denounced OSHA’s “advisory” that It start to inspect and if necessary regulate home offices. He then charged the agency might force employers to pay for home improvements to make such home offices safer.

Several media report Scalia is a favorite of Trump’s evangelical right base, and that Trump got to know Scalia well when considering successors to the seat left vacant when Scalia’s father died.

And when the Maryland enacted legislation in 2006 ordering firms that employed at least 10,000 workers in the state to spend at least 8% of payroll on health insurance for their workers, Scalia was the lawyer who shot it down in the state’s top court. He spoke for the law’s target, notorious anti-worker pinchpenny Walmart.

The federal minimum wage would rise to $15 an hour under historic legislation passed Thursday by the House of Representatives.

Three Republicans jumped the aisle to support the Democratic-led measure. Six Democrats defected to vote no. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and President Donald Trump can now give tens of millions of working people a raise any time they want.

The bill would double the national pay floor in a plan that would roll out gradually, ticking up from the current $7.25 over a six-year period. The measure also permanently pegs the minimum wage to inflation, automating future increases to break a vicious political and economic cycle that’s become the norm over the past half-century.

Congress has not raised the wage floor in a decade. That hike, too, followed a decade of stagnation. So did its predecessor legislation in the 1990s. The government has slipped into a pattern of ignoring wage policy for long stretches as costs of living rise and erode the earning power of the lowest-paid workers in the country.

That cycle has helped fuel the massive economic inequality that’s ravaged the country for decades, through recessions and economic expansions alike. Today’s $7.25 is worth less than the minimum wage of the 1970s in inflation-adjusted terms.

The $15 wage floor wouldn’t just catch workers up for all that lost time and buying power the way past wage hikes have, though: It seeks to establish a higher standard of living for low-wage workers than the previous record high, set in the 1960s. Nearly 20 million workers would see their pay increased by the measure, and an estimated 1.3 million people would be lifted out of poverty.

The sheer magnitude of the hike — more than doubling the pay floor nationwide — has dismayed even some economists who are typically supportive of minimum wage raises in general. Supporters shrug off those worries, noting that the current wage system is heavily subsidized by taxpayers, who are left to make up the difference between corporate poverty wages and what it costs to keep a family alive in the 21^st century.

From the AAM

Apprenticeships are often touted as key to preparing the next generation of Americans for work in advanced manufacturing. While employers have hired about 536,000 apprentices since Jan. 1, 2017, it’s clear more can be done to strengthen these programs in the United States and attract more young people to careers in the skilled trades.

Other countries can offer a few lessons.

The House Committee on Education and Labor’s subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Investment held a hearing on Tuesday on apprenticeship programs in other countries to see what the United States can learn when trying to improve apprenticeship programs here.

Witnesses included Tim Bradley, the minister counsellor for Industry, Science, and Education at the Australian Embassy to the United States; Dr. Silvia Annen, a senior researcher at the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training in Bonn, Germany; and Dr. Simon Marti, who the head of office for Swiss Core in Brussels, Belgium. Below are 8 takeaways from apprenticeship programs in Australia, Switzerland, and Germany.

Here are some of the takeaways.

1. Increased Federal Budget 

Switzerland spends 1 percent of its GDP on apprenticeships. That’s equivalent to $20 billion, or roughly two times the entire discretionary budget for the Labor Department. If the U.S wants to improve its apprenticeship program, it needs to allocate more money to this cause.

2. More Occupational Routes 

In Switzerland, apprentices can choose from roughly 230 different occupations, which cover all sectors of their economy.

3. Dual-System Program 

In Germany, apprentices can work on their craft in addition to a 4-year institution, or instead ofit. This creates a company and school-based system, leading to the lowest youth unemployment rate in the European Union.

Top unions representing federal workers are pondering their next moves after a three-judge panel of the key federal appeals court involved upheld GOP President Donald Trump’s anti-union, anti-worker executive orders.

The practical effect of the 3-0 vote on July 16 by judges of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for D.C. – whose judges decide most cases involving federal agencies – is to reinstate Trump’s edicts, for now, at all federal agencies. A lower court judge had overturned them almost a year ago.

Trump’s chiefs at the departments of Education and Veterans Affairs defied the lower court and implemented Trump’s anti-worker ukases anyway.

Trump’s executive orders are part of his, and the GOP’s, constant war on workers in general and the two million federal workers – most of them women, people of color, or both – in particular.

His war includes a pay freeze, a target of getting rid of 10% of all federal workers, arbitrary moves of agencies out of D.C. – giving workers a sudden choice of move or quit, and abolishing the government’s personnel system to reinstitute the graft-ridden corrupt spoils system of the Gilded Age.

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest and lead union in the case, and the other unions could still try to stop Trump by going to the full appeals court and then the U.S. Supreme Court. AFGE President J. David Cox called the judges’ ruling “terrible” and said it upholds Trump’s “union-busting.” He vowed his union would “use every tool available” to fight it.

The judges said the unions followed the wrong path in the first place, by taking the case to U.S. District Court, where Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson ruled for them almost a year ago. She said Trump’s edicts violated federal worker-management law and, because they prevented workers from contacting Congress, the U.S. Constitution, too.

The appeals panel said Jackson shouldn’t have heard the case in the first place. It ruled federal worker-management relations law orders them to take their complaint to the Federal Labor Relations Authority – the federal government’s equivalent of the National Labor Relations Board – first. If they lost there, the unions could then go straight to appeals court.

“Within constitutional bounds, Congress decides what cases the federal courts have jurisdiction to consider,” the judges said. “Congress may preclude district court jurisdiction by establishing an alternative statutory scheme for administrative and judicial review.”

The eyes of the world were on Shakopee, Minn., on July 15, where 30-50 workers at the vast Amazon fulfillment center staged a one-day strike to protest working conditions. The workers’ picket line was joined by a throng of supporters from the local labor movement and other community supporters.

Semi-trailer trucks trying to enter or leave the Amazon property were forced to wait until the 200-plus picketers moved to the sides of the entrances to let them pass. A few truck drivers chose to not cross the picket line and drove away.

Planned by Amazon workers organizing with the Awood Center, the action came on Amazon’s much-hyped “Prime Day,” a day of discounts to encourage shoppers to buy something from the online retailer. A Facebook meme countered: “I don’t know who needs to hear this… but you don’t need anything from Amazon today.”

The low prices and quick delivery from Amazon come at a high cost to the workers at a fast-paced Amazon fulfillment center, the crowd learned from workers, many of whom wore t-shirts proclaiming, “We are Humans, Not Robots!”

“We are striking… because we are humans — we are not robots,” said Sahro Sharif, the emcee of the rally on the picket line, who has worked for a year at Amazon’s Shakopee fulfillment center as an order picker. “We are tired of Amazon workers being hurt on the job… Keeping up with increased workloads is just too much.”

Injured Amazon worker Meg Brady reported how the fast-paced demands of the work took a toll on her health and her co-workers. When she started working at Amazon 18 months ago, she said, she was part of a group of 70 new staff. Only five people from that group remained, Brady reported. Some people left injured, some couldn’t keep up with the required work pace, some couldn’t bear the stress, quitting because staying “just wasn’t worth it any longer.”

Brady stayed, she said, “to make it better for me and all my co-workers.” She explained: “If you want to see change, you just don’t go — you stay and you fight… Amazon can do better. Amazon must do better. Management demands the best from their workers. Now we want their best.”

The crowd also heard from Weston Fribley, an Amazon software engineer from Seattle who is an activist with Amazon Employees for Climate Justice. He read a few of what he said were 100 support letters collected in one day from Amazon tech workers in Seattle. “We stand with you,” Fribley said. “Thank you for having the courage to do this.”

New research shows that communities in coal country are at an increased risk of fiscal collapse. The data is the latest blow to President Donald Trump’s ongoing but faltering efforts to rescue the industry and its workers.

Local governments dependent on coal are failing to account for the financial implications of the industry’s demise, according to new findings from Columbia University and the Brookings Institution. That trend is likely to worsen should the federal government take action to curb carbon emissions, which would be likely if a Democrat were to triumph in 2020.

Released Monday, the new report looks at 26 counties in 10 states, all in Appalachia or the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming. Those areas are all classified as “coal-mining dependent,” meaning that the industry is a major employer there, with some 53,000 workers noted by the study.

Coal also serves as a major contributor to local governments in those places. Despite that dependency, however, the report finds that those areas, already hard-hit by coal’s decline, are not prepared for the implications of potential climate policies.

Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour will be hugely beneficial to low-income Americans, according to a new report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

At the same time, the analysis forecasts the loss of around 1.3 million jobs. There are good reasons not to take this prediction seriously, as I explain below. But even taking CBO’s findings at face value, an overwhelming share of low-wage workers would benefit from the minimum wage increase.

The main takeaway from the CBO’s report is the estimate that a $15 minimum wage by 2025 would raise wages of up to 27.3 million low-wage workers, decrease income inequality, and reduce the number of families in poverty by 1.3 million. Overall, CBO found that low-wage workers as a group would benefit enormously from the minimum wage increase. According to CBO’s own findings, the increase to $15 would raise total annual earnings for low-wage workers by $44 billion.

CBO estimated that up to 27.3 million workers would see wage increases as a result of the policy. About 17.0 million of these low-wage workers would receive direct wage increases because they would otherwise earn less than $15 per hour in 2025, and up to an additional 10.3 million, who would already earn slightly above $15, would also experience some wage increases due to spillover or “ripple” effects.

Taking CBO’s job loss estimates as given implies 95.5 percent of all directly and indirectly affected workers would remain employed and receive a sizable wage increase, and only 4.5 percent would experience job loss. Moreover, as CBO acknowledged, many of those experiencing “job loss” would not be out of work the entire year and may in fact come out even or ahead on an annual basis when they work fewer hours throughout the year but earn higher wages when they do work. Even after accounting for these predicted employment losses, CBO’s findings imply that annual earnings would rise by more than $1,500 for the average directly or indirectly affected low-wage worker.

Just using a conventional cost-benefit framework, it is hard to argue with a policy that reduces poverty and inequality where about 27 million workers would see sizable wage increases and where less than five percent of the affected workforce might see negative effects.

Rep. Andy Levin, D-Mich., has an unusual retirement gift for departing Steelworkers President Leo Gerard: No new NAFTA without strong and enforceable worker rights in all three of its countries: The U.S., Canada and especially Mexico.

Of course, Levin knows Gerard better than almost any other lawmaker does: After a long career as an union organizer, capped by a stint as deputy AFL-CIO Organizing Director, the first-termer from Michigan succeeded his pro-worker father Sandy in the U.S. House.

Gerard, president of USW starting in 2001, retired effective July 15, which led Levin to laud him that day in a short House floor speech. Levin called Gerard “a great leader of workers throughout North America and, indeed, the world. Leo rose through the ranks and was a dynamic leader of the Steelworkers for 40 years, and he was president for the last 18 years. He led on so many issues.”

“He was a fierce negotiator for his members, but he was also a leader for all workers. For example, he brought the environmental movement and the labor movement together to tackle tough issues about keeping our water and air clean for everyone and for future generations, while protecting our jobs.”

“But one thing I think stands out. I want to pledge to Leo Gerard on his retirement that we are not going to pass a replacement NAFTA unless it honors the workers of Mexico, Canada, and the United States.  What a great champion for workers in North America. I assure Leo we are going to carry on his work. God bless him.”

***

At a hearing packed with hundreds of workers, lawmakers on the key committee handling pension issues approved  legislation to establish federal loans for troubled multi-employer pension plans.

The measure, HR397, named for Ohio unionist Butch Lewis, who died of a stroke four years ago, would set up a bureau in the Treasury Department to judge applications from the troubled plans. Lewis’s multi-employer plan went broke, and his widow’s pension payout collapsed.

Those plans which can show federal loans would be used to both become solvent and to keep benefits level for current retirees – or their families and survivors – would get the loan funds, repayable after 30 years. The money would come from selling U.S. Treasury bonds.

“We are in the homestretch” of passing HR397, Teamsters President Jim Hoffa said at an outdoor press conference an hour before the July 12 House Ways and Means Committee work session on it. “This is a battle for dignity and for keeping the promises made” to millions of workers. But workers “have to walk the halls” to ensure it passes, he warned.

The multi-employer pension plan problem now affects more than 100 plans serving one million retirees and survivors. Multi-employer plans cover 10 million people overall. They’re common in industries such as trucking, bakeries and confectionery firms, construction, food processing and coal mining.

Joint labor-management boards run the plans, with all employers contributing to the workers’ pensions.

But corporate consolidations, bankruptcies and the plummet in pension values during the 2008 Great Recession put multi-employer plans into the “red zone” of financial danger, where they could go broke within months or years.

The Mine Workers’ two pension plans, which the federal government virtually chartered 72 years ago, are in the most-immediate danger. The biggest threat is the Teamsters’ giant Central and Southern States pension plan.

And the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s (PBGC) fund to cover takeovers of broke multi-employer plans – which would pay out far less than what was promised to workers by their multi-employer plans – is running out of cash, too. The result is huge benefit cuts for workers, like Butch Lewis, who sacrificed pay hikes for a decent pension, his widow, Rita, said.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) blocked an attempt by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) on Wednesday to fast-track a bill that would extend compensation for victims of the September 11th attacks.

Paul expressed concerns that Gillibrand’s attempt to pass the measure using unanimous consent — meaning a bill is approved so long as no senator objects — did not take into consideration the need to offset that funding elsewhere.

In short, he argued, funding shouldn’t be distributed to 9/11 first responders without a discussion about where the money was coming from — concerns that didn’t stop him from voting for President Donald Trump’s massive tax cuts for the rich back in 2017.

“It has long been my feeling that we need to address our massive debt in this country,” Paul said in voicing his objection on Wednesday. “Any new spending that we are approaching — any new program that’s going to have the longevity of 70, 80 years — should be offset by cutting spending that’s less valuable. We need to at the very least have this debate.”

The House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis – a special Congressional panel established in 2019 with the mandate of exploring ways to address climate change – held a hearing on Tuesday that caught our eye.

Now, astute readers of this blog know that the Alliance for American Manufacturing is supportive of efforts to clean up our environment.

We think manufacturers can and should do their part to lower greenhouse gas emissions, and thankfully many already are stepping up to the plate. And we’ve also sounded the alarm about the link between trade and climate change, pointing out that when we depend countries like China for products big and small, we essentially are importing our pollution.

But anyway, back to the hearing, which examined how heavy-duty public transportation impacts the environment.

We were excited to see that Ryan Popple, the president and CEO of zero-emission battery-electric bus maker Proterra, Inc., was among the panelists. Founded in Colorado in 2004, Proterra is now headquartered in Silicon Valley and manufactures its buses at factories in the City of Industry, Calif., and Greenville, S.C. Proterra employs more than 500 people, and has made buses for communities in 36 states, the District of Columbia and even two Canadian provinces.

Proterra is an example of an American manufacturer that is tackling a problem head-on, working to reduce carbon emissions while also supporting job growth and local economic development. But that’s not what got our attention.

What did were the opening remarks from ranking member Garrett Graves. The Louisiana Republican echoed Chair Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who said America “can lead the world with well-paying jobs as we transition to clean energy.”

And Graves also pointed out what we shouldn’t be doing:

“We had hearings in the transportation committee, where I also serve, where BYD, a Chinese bus manufacturer, was coming in -- and it appears to be a state-owned enterprise -- coming in and knocking out domestic bus manufacturers, and being subsidized by the Chinese government. Coming in and assembling buses in California, in some of our own communities, only to undercut price, knock out domestic production of those same types of vehicles, therefore giving China an advantage.”

AAM President Scott Paul testified at that hearing, and he noted that BYD’s business model is to assemble its buses in the United States, but heavily rely on imported parts and components. (Compare that to Proterra, which sources more than 75 percent of its materials in the United States, supporting jobs up and down the transportation supply chain.)

BYD now has set its sights on dominating world auto sales by 2025, which as Scott Paul noted “would threaten over 5,600 parts suppliers spread across the nation, employing 871,000 workers, the very heart of American Manufacturing.”

A big step in the right direction.

The House of Representatives on Friday passed the annual spending bill for the Defense Department, and the legislation included language to block federal transit dollars from being spent on electric rail cars made by Chinese state-owned companies.

The provision included in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed by the House prohibits federal tax dollars from being used to award a contract or subcontract for the procurement of rail cars to be used in public transportation by state-owned or controlled companies from non-market economies like China.  

Although the NDAA passed on party lines, this specific legislation enjoyed bipartisan support, as it was originally sponsored by Reps. Harley Rouda (D-Calif.), Rick Crawford (R-Ark.), Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Kay Granger (R-Texas), Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), Randy Weber (R-Texas) and John Garamendi (D-Calif.).

The NDAA now heads to conference with the Senate, which previously passed its version of the defense authorization bill that included a similar provision that applied to both rail and buses. Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) served as the original sponsors of the Transit Infrastructure Vehicle Security Act in that chamber.

Here at the Alliance for American Manufacturing, we encourage lawmakers to put forth a final NDAA conference report that includes the Senate version of this provision, as it applies to both types of public transit.

Just over 11 years ago, on May 14, 2008, Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, after toiling in excessive heat for three straight days picking grapes and hauling huge crates of them in the farm fields near Lodi, Calif., collapsed.

The pregnant 90-pound girl was earning money there to send back to her poverty-stricken family in Oaxaca, Mexico, says retired United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez. There was no water spigot for her to drink from, no shelter to retreat to when temperatures soared into the 90s and above, and no shade in the fields, even when she had time for lunch. She often didn’t. 

Jimenez paid for her devotion with her life. And, this July 11, her death came to mean something on Capitol Hill.

“She fell to the ground because of the heat,” Rodriguez told Press Associates Union News Service the day before a House hearing on a bill to try to prevent future heat deaths among farm workers, roofers, construction workers, highway crew workers and any other worker forced to toil under the hot summer sun.

“The foreman left her on the ground, then put her in the back of a hot flatbed truck,” Rodriguez continued. The foreman first planned to take Jimenez home, but her fiancée finally convinced him to take her to a nearby clinic instead. It was too late.

“She died the next day. Her body temperature was over 100 degrees. The doctors told us her organs were cooked,” Rodriguez said.

Jimenez died even though California, after lobbying by the Farm Workers and a long campaign by then-State Sen. Judy Chu (D), had the nation’s first-ever regulations on the books, since 2005, ordering growers and all other employers to protect workers against heat-related injuries and deaths.

Firms could protect the workers by such simple measures as providing shade, water, shelter and even cooling scarves workers could use to sponge their necks and hands – measures demonstrated at a July 10 outdoor press conference in D.C.’s sunny 90-degree heat.

But the farm labor contractor who brought Jimenez to those fields broke the state’s protective rules. The contractor later lost its license, but not before Jimenez’s death led UFW into another long campaign to enforce the regulations, including a 6-day march from Lodi to Sacramento, and a lawsuit.