Machinists Call For Airline Re-regulation

Transportation GVP Robert Roach, Jr. testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and called for re-regulation of the airline industry.

Thu. June 17, 2010

“It is clear that airline deregulation has failed to deliver on its promises of a stable and profitable industry,” said Roach. “Airline business plans today focus on lowering standards, eliminating services and reducing ticket prices to the bone to put competitors out of business, making a profitable industry impossible.”

Roach cited Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that median ticket prices have dropped nearly 40 percent since 1980, while the costs of aircraft, airport leases and fuel have increased dramatically.

“Some industries are too critical to the United States to be allowed to regulate themselves,” said Roach. “The airline industry drives $1.4 trillion in economic activity and contributes $692 billion per year to the Gross Domestic Product. It is too vital to the nation’s commerce to be ignored, taken for granted or left to its own destructive ways.”

Alliance, IUPAT Members Ask Obama About Health Care Reform

by Mike Hall, Jun 15, 2010

Barbara Franklin was worried that under the new health care reform law, seniors who receive their Medicare coverage from the privately-run Medicare Advantage program would see their coverage and benefits reduced because the law eliminates some government subsidies the private insurers receive.

So she called President Obama.

Franklin, the president of Illinois chapter of the Alliance for Retired Americans, was one of several callers and in-person questioners who took part in last week’s tele-town hall meeting exploring the new law’s impact on seniors and Medicare. The Alliance hosted more than two dozen watch parties for the tele-town hall.

President Obama reassured Franklin that the law’s new rules for Medicare Advantage will protect seniors and ensure that Medicare Advantage is “not just a big giveaway to the insurance companies.”

Young Workers Call for More Communication, Larger Role in Unions

by James Parks, Jun 14, 2010

The more than 400 participants in the Next Up conference, the AFL-CIO’s first-ever Young Workers Summit, developed a game plan for the future that focuses on making sure young union leaders and activists are taken seriously and their ideas are heard at all levels of the union movement.

Following three days in workshops and breakouts, student activists, community allies, a couple of political comedians and professional athletes and young workers generated several key ideas on the best ways to reach younger workers and build the movement.

In reports to the conference’s closing session yesterday (see video), the breakout groups recommended and called for increased mentoring programs to help young union members grow into leadership roles and establishing a national youth mobilization effort as an AFL-CIO priority.

Protestors Demand Fair Deals at Hyatt Hotels

by James Parks, Jun 14, 2010

Hundreds of hotel workers and community allies protested in front of Hyatt’s first annual shareholder meeting last week in Chicago and in simultaneous demonstrations in Vancouver, Honolulu, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The protesters are outraged that despite increases in the hotel chain’s revenue and share prices, Hyatt is cutting staff and squeezing workers with more work and lower pay. All this at a time that Hyatt’s majority stockholders, the Pritzker family, cashed out more than $900 million as part of Hyatt’s initial public offering last November.

Four hundred workers at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco are out on strike and the protests in Chicago come just days after hundreds of workers at the Hyatt Regency Chicago walked off the job to draw attention to the worsening working conditions at Chicago’s largest downtown hotel. In the San Francisco area, more than 9,000 workers, members of UNITE HERE! have been working without a contract since August 2009 at several Hyatts.

Campaign Strategy: The Gay and Lesbian Vote

Submitted by David Hunt on June 10, 2010 - 8:58pm

Death, Taxes & Politics

A group called Stonewall Democrats is narrowing down which candidates to support in this year's election. The group identifies itself as a network of gay and lesbian Democratic activists.

Three of the 30 candidates to make the cut (10 will make the final cut for endorsements) are from Florida.

Here are their bios. Anyone interested in voicing which candidates would be best for the gay and lesbian community can do so on this website.

Building Star Can Create 185,000 Green Jobs This Year

by Mike Hall, Jun 13, 2010

In the current recession, no sector has been harder hit than the construction industry, which has lost more than 2 million jobs. The unemployment rate in the construction industry is a staggering 27 percent, almost triple the overall unemployment rate.

You can help put building and construction trades workers back on the job by contacting your senators and representatives and urging them to support Building Star-H.R. 5476 and S. 3079. The legislation would provide building owners rebates and low-cost financing options for energy-efficient renovations in existing buildings.

It would, says the Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA):

mobilize building owners, construction firms, the building trades and manufacturers and distributors of building supplies to create jobs NOW in 2010, not later. Building Star will put sheet metal workers back to work retrofitting existing buildings, and would do so fast.

Young Workers Summit: NFL Players Call for Union Solidarity

by James Parks, Jun 12, 2010

When an offensive or defensive line of a football team stands shoulder-to-shoulder, it is almost impossible to move it. Today, two National Football League (NFL) players came to the AFL-CIO Young Workers Summit to invite their fellow union members to stand with them in one of the toughest battles they face on or off the field.

The 32 super-rich owners of the NFL teams terminated the current collective bargaining agreement two years early because they say “it isn’t working for them,” Domonique Foxworth of the Baltimore Ravens and a member of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) executive committee, told the young union activists.

47 Years After Equal Pay Act, Women Still Paid Less Than Men

by James Parks, Jun 10, 2010

Forty-seven years after President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, women still are not being paid the same as men for equivalent work. On average, women earn about 78 cents for every dollar earned by men. For women of color, African American women and Latinas, the gap is even wider. According to the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median wages of full-time, year-round workers in 2008 stood at $35,745 for women and $46,367 for men. That’s $10,622 less per year for women and their families in a difficult economy.

The U.S. Senate is considering the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would give employees the tools they need to close the wage gap between men and women and provide the government with enforcement power to correct pay inequities. The U.S. House passed the bill last year. The advocacy group MomsRising has an action here to urge your senator to close the wage gap and back the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Minnesota Nurses Stage 24-Hour Strike for Patient Safety

Workday Minnesota editor Barb Kucera sends this account of yesterday’s one-day strike by 12,000 Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) nurses over patient care issues in contract negotiations. In California, a similar strike by some 13, 000 California Nurses Association (CNA) nurses was blocked by a court order. Click here for more. Both MNA and CNA are affiliated with National Nurse United (NNU).

Members of the Minnesota Nurses Association walked the picket lines at 14 Twin Cities hospitals, in the largest nurses’ strike in U.S. history.

Alliance for Retired Americans - Friday Alert, June 11, 2010

Obama Talks to Seniors, including the Illinois Alliance President, at Tele-Town Hall
The Alliance continues its involvement in the implementation process of the health care reform that President Obama signed into law in March. On Tuesday, the Alliance, along with several other organizations, helped the White House and President Obama organize a tele-town hall meeting to explain the new health care law to seniors. The president emphasized that his administration has already started to send out $250 rebate checks for those who fall into the Medicare Part D "doughnut hole" prescription drug coverage gap. Yesterday (Thursday, June 10th - three weeks earlier than initially scheduled), checks from the federal government began to go out to some 80,000 seniors who hit the doughnut hole earlier this year. The President went on to remind seniors that in 2011, those who fall in the doughnut hole will receive a 50 percent discount on brand name drugs, and that by 2020, the doughnut hole will be eliminated. Alliance members joined Obama in person at his Wheaton, Maryland forum.