Lawmakers Find Republican Budget Draws Big Heat Back Home

by Mike Hall, Apr 29, 2011

Republican lawmakers have gotten a broad and angry response this congressional recess as they meet with constituents back home irate over a Republican federal budget proposal that would make senior’s Medicare costs explode by forcing them to buy coverage from greedy insurance companies. The Republican budget also would cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy, slash education funding, repeal health care reform and decimate up to 2 million jobs.

As this video compilation, courtesy of Think Progress, shows, it’s been damn tough to defend. Jeff Spross writes the budget crafted by Rep. Paul Ryan “has laid the Republicans’ values out in the open for all to see.”

Everyday Americans at town hall meetings across the country are reacting with outrage at the perverse priorities of the Ryan budget. And this latest manifestation of the burgeoning Main Street Movement against the right’s economic agenda has only grown in intensity since both Think Progress (and even some mainstream media outlets) began reporting on the phenomenon.

Take a look.

Job Safety Laws Must Not Go Backward

by Mike Hall, Apr 29, 2011

In Michigan yesterday, workers not only honored those killed and injured on the job as part of Workers Memorial Day ceremonies at the state Capitol in Lansing, they warned that plans to dismantle the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA) and repeal the state’s workplace safety law would put workers at risk.

UAW Region1C Director Norwood Jewell said:

We remember those that are injured and it brings to light the fact they are talking about defunding MIOSHA. We still have people dying in workplaces. We have come too far to go backwards.

Michigan AFL-CIO Health and Safety Director Derrick Quinney says, “Even in a common-sense topic like public safety, our Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation in Michigan that will repeal the Michigan Occupational and Safety Health Act in favor of a federal OSHA program.”

Instead of stripping away our law that we know works, why not update it with further rules and regulations to keep our workers safe on the job?

The real goal of our Republican legislature is to take away workers’ rights and weaken the role of protecting workers in the public. These are the same coordinated attacks that are happening in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio. This isn’t about the budget—these attacks threaten the economic security and safety of all workers.

Read more here.

Elsewhere on Workers Memorial Day, Mike Staley of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 649, offered a prayer during services at Laborers (LIUNA) Local 538 in Galesburg, Ill.

Every worker killed on a job is a mother or father, son or daughter, brother or sister…They were all part of our communities, part of our lives.

Tom Lowey of the Galesburg Register Mail notes:

Finding a worker who knew of a fatal accident in the workplace wasn’t hard. Randy Bryan, a member of the Operators 649 Local out of Peoria, knew a crane operator killed two years ago. The message delivered Thursday was that workplace safety is a very real issue.

Click here for his full story.

Cheryl Rouse, a member of Machinist Local 1005 and chair of the safety committee at the Daimler truck plant in Portland Ore., says all workers feel the emotional sting when a co-worker is hurt or killed. She told Public News Service:

Most of us here have had children, become grandparents and everything else. So, when somebody gets hurt, it affects everybody, kind of personally, because that’s the person you’ve worked next to for 20 years.

At a Salem Workers Memorial Day event she and others read the names of the 34 Oregon workers killed in 2010. Says Oregon AFL-CIO President Tom Chamberlain:

As our economy picks back up it is crucial that Oregon employers continue to prioritize safety at the workplace—anything else would be unacceptable and undermine the years of work we all have put in to strengthening protections at the workplace.

AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Liz Shuler told a National Labor College (NLC) audience in Silver Spring. Md., that the labor movement was instrumental in winning landmark job safety laws and “and the progress we’ve made has been tremendous—worth celebrating. But our job is not done.”

The simple truth is that our jobs are still terribly dangerous. Some data suggest that deaths from workplace chemical exposure and cancer are actually on the rise. Immigrant workers are still getting sick picking vegetables and they’re getting hurt and killed by falling off of roofs and ladders. And millions of office workers are injured or in pain because of poor ergonomics

We will never forget those who died in the workplace or while trying to organize workers. We remember them every day, with the work we do to improve the safety and health of all working people… and to gain and safeguard for all working people the basic human right to form unions to bargain for a better life.

Read her full address here.

Patient Safety: Saving Lives and Saving Money

This is a crosspost from LMPartnership.org by John August, Executive Director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions.

Unions that are seeking to transform the role of frontline workers in health care organizations know that real change will take more than a high level of employee engagement. It will also take a different type of relationship between managers, physicians and workers. Real, sustainable change will require union members, managers and physicians to commit themselves to a social dialogue that creates more value for the patients and communities we serve.

This past week, the president of the United States announced a new partnership. Here’s a summary from healthcare.gov:

Doctors, nurses and other health care providers in America work incredibly hard to deliver the best care possible to their patients. Unfortunately, an alarming number of patients are harmed by medical mistakes in the health care system and far too many die prematurely as a result.

The Obama Administration has launched the Partnership for Patients: Better Care, Lower Costs, a new public-private partnership that will help improve the quality, safety, and affordability of health care for all Americans. The Partnership for Patients brings together leaders of major hospitals, employers, physicians, nurses, and patient advocates along with state and federal governments in a shared effort to make hospital care safer, more reliable, and less costly.

The two goals of this new partnership are to:

•Keep patients from getting injured or sicker. By the end of 2013, preventable hospital-acquired conditions would decrease by 40percent compared to 2010. Achieving this goal would mean approximately 1.8 million fewer injuries to patients with more than 60,000 lives saved over three years.
•Help patients heal without complication. By the end of 2013, preventable complications during a transition from one care setting to another would be decreased so that all hospital readmissions would be reduced by 20percent compared to 2010. Achieving this goal would mean more than 1.6 million patients would recover from illness without suffering a preventable complication requiring re-hospitalization within 30 days of discharge.

This effort will save lives, prevent injuries and can save up to $35 billion dollars across the health care system, including up to $10 billion in Medicare savings, over the next three years. Over the next 10 years, it could reduce costs to Medicare by about $50 billion and result in billions more in Medicaid savings.

The initiative is part of the new health care reform law and represents the kind of challenge that the Kaiser Permanente Labor Management Partnership and our unit-based teams (jointly led teams that operate within each department) are uniquely positioned to take on. And as we do, we also advance the new workplace relationships that can serve as a model for others in this country.

We can show the American people that successful practices in patient safety are an important contribution to deficit reduction. We can show that a new dialogue in the workplace, based on outcomes for the benefit of the community, is essential to our country’s future. The relationship of this outcome-oriented approach to labor-management relations has enormous possibility.

The ongoing debates about deficit reduction, taxes and the protection of essential services to our people must continue.

But the possibilities for frontline strategies for performance improvement are endless – not just in health care, but in many other sectors of an economy that must be rebuilt if we are to ensure good and sustainable employment for the tens of millions of people in this country who want to work.

Frontline workers can show the policymakers the way to rebuild our nation.

In the coming months, you will be hearing more about how our Labor Management Partnership, through unit-based teams, is advancing patient safety as part of our improvement efforts at Kaiser Permanente and within the context of the president’s call to action.

As we put forward this new model of partnership, we will be acting on our Union Coalition legacy statement: that unionized workers help create the means for affordable universal health care. We’ll embolden the instincts of most Americans who believe in the essential role of collective bargaining and union. And we’ll show the unions’ role in delivering better outcomes for everyone in our society.

Sixth Republican Senator Faces Wisconsin Recall

by Mike Hall, Apr 28, 2011

Wisconsin activists today filed more than 26,000 signatures today to recall the sixth Republican state senator—Robert Cowles of Green Bay—who voted for Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) bill to eliminate collective bargaining rights of public employees.

All the petitions have carried far more signatures than the minimum needed to qualify, which must equal 25 percent of the total vote for governor in November’s election in each Senate district. The Cowles petition needed just 15,960 signatures and the 26,524 represents 166 percent of the requirement.

Along with Cowles, recall petitions have been filed for Alberta Darling of River Hills, Shelia Harsdof of River Falls, Luther Olsen of Ripon, Dan Kapanke of La Crosse and Randy Hopper of Fond du Lac. Democrats need to win three seats to take control of the Senate.

Republicans targeted eight Democratic senators for recall, but filed petitions for just three and those have yet to be verified. They fell short and missed the deadline for four others. They still have a few days to file against their last target.

People’s Budget Outperforms Republican Plan

by Mike Hall, Apr 28, 2011

Congress is back in town next week and the budget battle will take top billing. Republicans are standing solidly behind their Paul Ryan-crafted House plan that forces seniors to pay more for health care by replacing Medicare with underfunded vouchers, cuts taxes for corporations and the wealthy, cuts Medicaid funding, repeals health care reform and slashes up to 2 million jobs.

They claim their fiscal plan is the centerpiece of the deficit-reduction strategy, but with $4.3 trillion in spending cuts and $4.2 trillion in tax giveaways, mostly to the wealthy and corporations, that’s not much of down payment on the deficit.

Today the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released a Snapshot of the 10-year deficit-reduction projections for the Republican plan, the budget framework outlined by President Obama and the “People’s Budget” developed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. While the Republican and Obama plans do achieve a reduction in the deficit over the next decade, the People’s Budget goes a step further by creating a budget surplus by 2021.

EPI says the Ryan plan’s savings come mostly from domestic spending cuts, cuts in Medicaid and Medicare. Obama’s framework cuts the deficit through some domestic spending cuts and slight reductions in defense spending, and saves money through health care reform and broad-based tax reform.

In contrast, the People’s Budget achieves deficit reduction mainly by shifting the tax burden more fairly to high-income individuals and corporations: Its proposals include rolling back the Bush tax cuts, taxing capital gains as ordinary income, raising the payroll tax cap and enacting a financial transactions tax. The plan also cuts defense spending, enacts a public option for health care coverage and makes room for $1.4 trillion in vital investments in infrastructure, education and innovation over the next decade.

Click here for the full Snapshot and here for the AFL-CIO Principles for the FY 2012 Budget.

Fix the Hazards; Don’t Blame the Workers

by Leo W. Gerard, Apr 28, 2011

The Clearwater Paper Corp. in Lewistown, Idaho, chose the king cobra to symbolize its workplace safety program. A cobra. One of the deadliest snakes on the planet.

Every day on his way to and from work at Clearwater, John Bergen III drove past a billboard in the company parking lot sporting a picture of a king cobra and the explanation that it represented the company’s behavior-based safety program – Changing Our Behavior Reduces Accidents – COBRA.

Bergen, a devoted father, a gifted artist and a conscientious worker who urged everyone to observe safety rules, died last summer after inadvertently stepping through a gaping opening in the floor of the Clearwater Paper mill.

Behavior-based workplace safety programs like COBRA are attempts by corporations to shirk responsibility to eliminate hazards by blaming workers instead. When workers die, behavior-based programs disrespect the deceased by blaming them for their own deaths. These safety programs say to Bergen’s young son, “Your daddy’s dead because he wasn’t careful enough.”

These programs are cruel. They don’t work. And they must stop. This Workers Memorial Day, a day on which we honor those killed in the workplace and recommit ourselves to ending the slaughter, workers and their families across America demand an end to “blame the worker” safety programs.

Last year, among those killed on the job were 44 members of my union, the United Steelworkers (USW), which represents industrial workers including those in the paper sector. That is nearly one a week. Bergen was among them. His friends Jesse and Nigell Hutson wrote after his death:

Such a tragic loss for everyone. He will be missed more than words can say. We love you, John.

Over the past 18 years, the number of Steelworkers who died on the job has remained tragically constant, at about one every 10 to 12 days. So far this year, 11 Steelworkers died at work.

The stubborn consistency of the death toll demonstrates that the corporate-favored behavior-based safety programs achieve nothing.

The premise of behavior-based safety is that employees can work around hazards if they are just careful enough — if they are ever vigilant. “You are looking at the person responsible for your safety,” these programs proclaim on stickers attached to workplace mirrors. One behavior-based safety consultant actually counseled that if there were an opening in the shop floor, the employer should leave it there because repairing it would give workers a false sense of security.

Will Public Workers and Immigrants March Together on May Day?

On May Day in 2007, immigrants and their supporters marched through the streets of Kennett Square, Pa.

In this cross-post from “In These Times,” photojournalist and author David Bacon says immigrant workers and public service workers have a lot in common this May Day.

One sign carried in almost every May Day march of the last few years says it all: “We are Workers, not Criminals!” Often it was held in the calloused hands of men and women who looked as though they’d just come from work in a factory, cleaning an office building, or picking grapes.

The sign stated an obvious truth. Millions of people have come to the United States to work, not to break its laws. Some have come with visas, and others without them. But they are all contributors to the society they’ve found here.

This year, those marchers will be joined by the public service workers we saw in the Wisconsin state capitol in Madison, whose message was the same: we all work, we all contribute to our communities and we all have the right to a job, a union and a decent life. Past May Day protests have responded to a wave of draconian proposals to criminalize immigration status, and work itself, for undocumented people. The defenders of these proposals have used a brutal logic: if people cannot legally work, they will leave.

But undocumented people are part of the communities they live in. They cannot simply go, nor should they. They seek the same goals of equality and opportunity that working people in the United States have historically fought to achieve. In addition, for most immigrants, there are no jobs to return to in the countries from which they’ve come. The North American Free Trade Agreement alone deepened poverty in Mexico so greatly that, since it took effect, 6 million people came to the United States to work because they had no alternative.

Instead of recognizing this reality, the U.S. government has attempted to make holding a job a criminal act. Thousands of workers have already been fired, with many more to come. We have seen workers sent to prison for inventing a Social Security number just to get a job. Yet they stole nothing and the money they’ve paid into Social Security funds now subsidizes every Social Security pension or disability payment.

Undocumented workers deserve legal status because of that labor-their inherent contribution to society. Past years’ marches have supported legalization for the 12 million undocumented people in the United States. In addition, immigrants, unions and community groups have called for repealing the law making work a crime, ending guest worker programs, and guaranteeing human rights in communities along the U.S./Mexico border.

The truth is that undocumented workers and public workers in Wisconsin have a lot in common. In this year’s May Day marches, they could all hold the same signs. With unemployment at almost 9 percent, all working families need the federal government to set up jobs programs, like those Franklin Roosevelt pushed through Congress in the 1930s. If General Electric alone paid its fair share of taxes, and if the troops came home from Iraq and Afghanistan, we could put to work every person wanting a job. Our roads, schools, hospitals and communities would all benefit.

At the same time, immigrants and public workers need strong unions that can push wages up, and guarantee pensions for seniors and health care for the sick and disabled. A street cleaner whose job is outsourced, and an undocumented worker fired from a fast food restaurant both need protection for their right to work and support their families.

Instead, some states like Arizona, and now Georgia, have passed measures allowing police to stop any “foreign looking” person on the street, and question their immigration status. Arizona passed a law requiring employers to fire workers whose names are flagged by Social Security. In Mississippi an undocumented worker accused of holding a job can get jail time of 1-5 years, and fines of up to $10,000.

The states and politicians that go after immigrants are the same ones calling for firing public workers and eliminating their union rights. Now a teacher educating our children has no more secure future in her job than an immigrant cleaning an office building at night. The difference between their problems is just one of degree.
But going after workers has produced a huge popular response. We saw it in Madison in the capitol building. We saw it in the May Day marches when millions of immigrants walked peacefully through the streets. Working people are not asleep. Helped by networks like May Day United, they remember that this holiday itself was born in the fight for the eight-hour day in Chicago more than a century ago.

In those tumultuous events, immigrants and the native born saw they needed the same thing, and reached out to each other. This May Day, will we see them walking together in the streets again?

For information about where May Day marches are scheduled to take place this Sunday, visit the May Day United website here.

Case Against Boeing Draws National Attention

Thu. April 28, 2011

The nation’s largest newspapers are weighing in on last week’s complaint by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) charging Boeing with multiple violations of federal labor law.

The case, which has implications for union members in all 50 states, centers on a decision by Boeing to open a 787 assembly line in South Carolina. According to the board, the decision was crafted primarily to retaliate against Boeing workers who have in the past, or may in the future, exercise their lawful right to concerted activity.

While the facts and the law in the case are undisputed, newspaper editorials are all over the map. The New York Times describes the NLRB complaint as “a welcome effort to defend workers’ right to collective bargaining.” Meanwhile, the Seattle Times came out against the NLRB ruling, saying Boeing’s decision to move should not be reversed by the federal government.

Another view of the issue came from Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein, who applauded the decision by the board and cited the 1935 law protecting workers’ rights and the NLRB’s obligation to enforce it.

“If Boeing or the Chamber of Commerce or the South Carolina political establishment wants to change or repeal the law, it is certainly within their rights to try,” wrote Pearlstein. “After 75 years, it would be a useful debate for the country to have again. But given the further consolidation of corporate power and two decades of stagnant wages, I’m not sure they’ll like how it turns out.”

The next step in the process will be a hearing before an NLRB administrative law judge in Seattle, set for June 14, when all parties will have an opportunity to present evidence and arguments.

Global Anti-Regulation Agenda Threatens Health and Safety at Work

by James Parks, Apr 28, 2011

On Workers Memorial Day, the global union movement is warning that more lives will be lost at work if business groups and companies around the world succeed in reducing legal protections against hazardous jobs. In the United States, Big Business and congressional Republicans have launched campaigns to turn back health and safety regulations, claiming they hinder competitiveness.

Workers Memorial Day is observed by trade unions around the globe and today there are observances in more than 50 countries. To find out what’s going on around the world for Workers Memorial Day, click here.

Trade unions are challenging the rigged statistics and bogus arguments being used by business interests that care more about profit than the lives of the people who work for them, said Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

“Consider the devastation wrought a year ago by the Deepwater Horizon disaster,” Burrow says.

Eleven lives lost, environmental devastation and economic costs to the economy in the billions—all down to an appalling disregard for safety aided and abetted by an absence of effective regulation and official oversight. Lessons from this and other disasters like the Fukushima complex in Japan show how critically important regulation and enforcement is. Added to this, “slow burn” disasters like asbestos mean today’s failures to regulate can have a deadly legacy spanning two generations and killing millions.

The AFL-CIO “Death on the Jobs” report, released yesterday, showed that in 2009 (the latest figures available), 4,340 workers were killed on the job in the United States—an average of 12 workers a day—and an estimated 50,000 died of occupational diseases. More than 4.1 million workplace injuries and illnesses were reported in private and state and local workplaces. But the report says the 4.1 million “understates the problem,” and the actual number is more likely 8 million to 12 million. Click here for the full report.

The report also backs the ITUC call for strong health and safety regulations:

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

While accidents at work kill hundreds of thousands each year around the globe, this total is dwarfed by the number of deaths from occupational diseases such as work-related cancers. The World Health Organization estimates the annual toll from asbestos-related diseases alone at 107,000 deaths a year. Burrow says:

There is plenty of evidence to show the importance and value of proper regulation and enforcement. Lives are saved, and the huge economic costs of occupational accidents and disease are reduced. Studies indicate that possibly more than 20 per cent of major killers worldwide, including cancers, heart and respiratory disease, are related to work. All these are preventable.

Vibrant unions, tough regulation and effective enforcement can ensure safer workplaces, Burrow says.

Harnessing the on-the-ground knowledge of workers, backed by their unions, is crucial for preventing death and illness. Protection, including through respect for workers’ rights to trade union representation, should be expanded and not curtailed in an outbreak of deregulatory fever. Removing or weakening regulations, and depriving workers of union protection costs lives.

Flight Attendant Webcast Available for Viewing

Thu. April 28, 2011

The IAM is inviting all United, Continental and Continental Micronesia Flight Attendants to view an IAM Virtual Road Show. The show, which was broadcast live over the Internet, features United and Continental Flight Attendants answering questions and providing information about the United/Continental merger, the upcoming representation election and the negotiations that will follow.

Click here to view the broadcast and for additional information about the campaign.