News Stories for December 4, 2011
The Hill's Congress Blog
The recently approved resolution by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to update the union election process stands to enhance greatly the freedom of workers to exercise their rights. The current system allows management to impede union elections almost indefinitely with bureaucratic loopholes that promote excessive delays and endless appeals.
Thankfully, the NLRB’s commonsense rule changes will modernize an archaic system. The old adage is true—justice delayed is justice denied—and the Board is finally taking steps toward fairer elections.
But for months, GOP legislators have reduced themselves to puppets of their corporate backers and right-wing pundits by interfering with the Board’s ability to protect labor rights. Republican lawmakers have sent threatening letters to the NLRB, convened endless hearings to undermine the agency’s authority, and introduced a string of legislation intended to undermine the Board’s ability to pursue justice for Americans whose rights are violated on the job. Just this week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that, rather than addressing the choke points in the current union election process, would mandate a delay—making it even easier for unscrupulous employers to stand in the way of workers getting a vote on whether to form a union.
Why are Republicans so aggressively opposed? It’s unionbusting, plain and simple.
Read the source story here.
Daily Kos
Because inserting an attempt to undermine unions in the air industry into an FAA reauthorization bill isn't enough for Republicans, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair John Mica (R-FL) is throwing another anti-union measure into the mix. Mica previously led the summer's partial shutdown of the FAA in an attempt to return airline unions to an old system in which workers who did not vote in union representation elections were counted as having voted "no." That, of course, is an anti-democratic standard under which there would be zero members of Congress.
Now, in addition to making it harder to join a union, Mica wants to make it easier to dissolve one. He's introduced a bill that would lower the requirement for the number of signatures required to initiate a decertification vote below the current 50 percent trigger, because fewer than 50 percent of workers' signatures are needed to trigger a vote to join a union. So basically, his argument is that, after workers have not only gotten enough signatures to hold an election, and after a majority vote in favor of a union, a minority should be able to force a whole election any old time. And of course, remember that in Mica's dream system, people who didn't vote would be counted as opposing the union.
Note also that Mica's grave concern that it's too hard to dissolve a union is only coming up now, after months of obstructing FAA reauthorizations because of his grave concern that it was too easy to join one. At a certain point, even the most clueless and bewildered observer would have to conclude that Mica's grave concerns are not about workplace democracy, as he likes to claim, but about his bitter opposition to unions.Read the source story here.
The Progressive
Tents or no tents, the Occupy Movement is pushing ahead. Activists are planning bold moves in the next two weeks, and their spirits are high, despite the busting of many of their encampments.
That’s what I gathered from a Thursday conference call of activists from seven Occupy sites around the country: Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, LA, Oakland, and Washington, DC.
The call -- organized by the Media Consortium -- also shed some light on police tactics. “We had 300 arrests and people are being held on $5,000 bail for failure to disburse,” said Joan Donovan of Occupy LA about the crackdown this week. “Some are getting arraigned today. City Hall has been completely cleared out. They have set up ten-foot fences with concrete barriers in order to keep us out. They basically came into the raid with 1,400 police officers and completely overwhelmed the protesters. There were a few beanbag charges and some pepper spray used. One protester got a broken wrist. Some people who were in tents had their tents slashed. Some were actively chased by the police through the downtown area.”
Sam Abrahamson of Occupy Chicago noted that protesters in the Windy City “had to adopt a different strategy, since we haven’t been able to set up tents.” The idea, he said, is to have “a mobile presence” with “events all over the place.”
Occupy Wall Street in New York is planning on Friday to host “Occupy Broadway,” a “24-hour rolling performance throughout Manhattan,” said Han Shan. “People are less focused on one piece of real estate.” He added that OWS is changing “from a moment to a movement.”Read the source story here.
Teamster.org
Teamsters Joint Council 16 President George Miranda today called on Diana Taylor to resign as chair of the Hudson River Park Trust unless she immediately apologizes for attacking art handlers locked out of their jobs by Sotheby's. If she refuses, Miranda said, Gov. Andrew Cuomo should immediately replace her as chair of the HRPT, where she serves at the governor's pleasure.
Taylor serves on the board of Sotheby's, which has refused to negotiate in good faith with 43 workers and threw them out of work on Aug. 1. Sotheby's has held record-breaking auctions in recent weeks and reaped a record profit of $680 million in 2010.
At an HRPT meeting last night, Taylor told Teamsters art handlers she'd resign from Sotheby's board of directors if the auction house gave them back their jobs.
Read the source story here.
Teamster.org
From Brooklyn, N.Y., to San Diego, Teamsters are telling 7-Eleven customers today that the price they pay for fuel is too high. The nationwide demonstration is in support of tankhaul drivers of Teamsters Local Union 986 in South El Monte, Calif. which has been negotiating a first contract with KAG West. KAG West supplies gasoline to 7-Eleven stores.
“We are fighting for a Teamster contract so that we can have respect, fair pay and benefits,” said Avery Scott, a tankhaul driver for the past nine years. “Having support from brother and sister Teamsters in other parts of California and on the East Coast is a big boost for us.”
More than 380 tankhaul drivers working for KAG West are represented by Teamsters Local 986. The union and the company have been bargaining to achieve a first contract for over 14 months, but the company continues to stall negotiations.Read the source story here.
AFL-CIO Now Blog
The nation’s unemployment rate in November fell to 8.6 percent down from October’s 9 percent and the lowest since March 2009. The economy added 120,000 jobs last month, according to the latest figures released this morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Economists say the nation needs 130,000-150,000 new jobs each month to keep up with the growth of the workforce, and the large drop in the unemployment rate also is the result of some 315,000 workers dropping out of the labor force. The jobless rate counts only people who are actively looking for work.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says the drop in the jobless rate is welcome but closing “the 11 million jobs gap opened by the Great Recession will require far more aggressive growth.”Read the source story here.
The Washington Post
We’ve already seen a number of reasons to believe that weak consumer demand — rather than taxes or regulatory uncertainty — is the main thing holding back the U.S. economy right now. Here’s another. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the length of the average workweek has been holding steady at 34.3 hours per week for several months now, up just slightly from 34.2 weeks last November.
Why is this telling? The Economic Policy Institute’s Heidi Shierholz explains: “This underscores that the lack of hiring right now results from a lack of demand, not businesses’ concerns about regulatory burdens or other issues. If businesses needed workers to meet demand but were reluctant to hire because of some other reason, we would see them strongly ramping up the hours of the workers they have. As it is, there are currently 5.6 million workers who want full-time work but who can only get part-time hours at their job because there is not enough work for them to do.”
Read the source story here.
Daily Kos
We're often told that, sure, there may be a lot of income inequality, but that the economy is fair anyway, because in this great nation of ours, anyone can become wealthy due to enormous income mobility. Except that as it turns out, income mobility is declining.
A new paper by Federal Reserve economist Katharine Bradbury clearly documents a statistically significant decline in the rate of mobility. The slowdown isn’t dramatic; Bradbury accurately labels it “slight.” But it’s there.
Read the source story here.
Think Progress
Under a new policy unveiled late this week by the Walker administration, protesters who apply for permits to protest outside government buildings in Wisconsin may be charged for clean-up costs and the presence of police officers. “Gov. Scott Walker now wants to charge protesters for the time that the police that will monitor them and presumably pepper spray them,” Current TV’s Keith Olbermann observed last night.
Read the source story here.
AFL-CIO Now Blog
It wasn’t enough for presidential wanna-be Newt Gingrich to push child labor by proposing that poor kids clean schools. Now he says children from low-income families only work when the “job” is illegal. This from CBS News:
“Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works,” the former House speaker said at a campaign event at the Nationwide Insurance offices. “So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash,’ unless it’s illegal.”As talk show host Stephanie Miller said last night on ”The Ed Schultz Show,” the corporate media has focused a lot on Gingrich’s odious personal behavior. But what hasn’t been given enough attention—and what clearly needs to be—is Gingrich’s extremist policy agenda, one that includes child labor.
Read the source story here.
Crooks and Liars
Aaaaand, the fuse has been lit. Insurers are not happy. Not even a little bit. What they feared most about the Affordable Care Act -- more than insuring people with pre-existing conditions, more than leaving children on their parents' policies until age 26, more than having to lift lifetime caps, more than any of those things -- was the limited Medical Loss Ratio (MLR).
The PPACA limits the "padding" between actual claims paid and premium collections to 15% for large groups and 20% for individuals and small groups. Any excess the insurer has must be refunded to insureds by the end of the year for which the MLR is determined. Everyone scoffed at the time over these limits, figuring the regulations would be broad and wide enough for insurers to run through the loopholes.
But no. Final rules were issued last week and insurers didn't get anything they wanted. Via Rick Ungar at Forbes:
This is the true ‘bomb’ contained in Obamacare and the one item that will have more impact on the future of how medical care is paid for in this country than anything we’ve seen in quite some time. Indeed, it is this aspect of the law that represents the true ‘death panel’ found in Obamacare—but not one that is going to lead to the death of American consumers. Rather, the medical loss ratio will, ultimately, lead to the death of large parts of the private, for-profit health insurance industry.Read the source story here.
Why? Because there is absolutely no way for-profit health insurers are going to be able to learn how to get by and still make a profit while being forced to spend at least 80 percent of their receipts providing their customers with the coverage for which they paid. If they could, we likely would never have seen the extraordinary efforts made by these companies to avoid paying benefits to their customers at the very moment they need it the most.
The New York Times
The unemployment rate dropped to 8.6 percent in November from 9 percent in October in the jobs report released Friday. The economy added 120,000 jobs and job growth was revised upward in September and October.
That’s better than rising unemployment and falling payrolls. Yet, properly understood, the new figures reveal more about the depth of distress in the job market than about real improvement in job prospects.
Most of the decline in November’s unemployment rate was not because jobless people found new work. Rather, it is because 315,000 people dropped out of the work force, a reflection of extraordinarily weak demand by employers for new workers. It is also a sign of socioeconomic decline, of wasted resources and untapped potential, the human equivalent of boarded-up Main Streets and shuttered factories.
The job growth numbers also come with caveats. More jobs were created than economists expected, but with the job market so weak for so long, that is a low bar. It would take nearly 11 million new jobs to replace the ones that were lost during the recession and to keep up with the growth in the working-age population in the last four years. To fill that gap would require 275,000 new jobs a month for the next five years. That’s not in the cards. Even with the better-than-expected job growth in the past three months, the economy added only 143,000 jobs on average.Read the source story here.
The Sydney Morning Herald
James Hoffa, son of the legendary American union boss Jimmy Hoffa, has led a rally outside Australian transport company Toll Holdings' Los Angeles facility to protest what he says was the sacking of 26 US truck drivers.
Mr Hoffa, who is liaising closely with Australia's Transport Workers Union, said Toll had "exploited" the LA-based drivers and forced them to work in deplorable conditions that would not be acceptable in Australia.
"We want justice for these people," Mr Hoffa, who was recently re-elected president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the same powerful union position his father held from 1958 to 1971, told AAP on Thursday.
The truck drivers claimed they were sacked by Toll in October in retaliation for attempting to form a union and after requesting better working conditions, including access to cleaner toilet facilities.Read the source story here.
In These Times
The marketplace has always been at the heart of India--exuberant bazaars brimming with local hawkers and traditional wares and foods. But the country’s old-fashioned markets may soon be eclipsed by the towering “free market” of globalization, as multinational superstores push the government to open the gates.
The India Cabinet wants to enable businesses with 51-percent foreign direct investment to enter India's retail sector--basically inviting in big box behemoths like Wal-Mart under the banner of efficiency and consumer choice. But many Indians aren’t buying it. This week, UNI Global Union reports that shops went on strike.
Read the source story here.
Las Vegas Sun
A conservative think tank filed a lawsuit today with the ultimate goal of preventing public employees from serving in the Nevada Legislature.
The Nevada Policy Research Institute’s lawsuit focuses on state Sen. Mo Denis, D-Las Vegas, who works as a computer technician for the Nevada Public Utilities Commission, which is under the executive branch of state government. He also serves in the Legislature, which passes budgets and sets policy for state government.
Speaking outside a Carson City courthouse, Andy Matthews, president of the institute, said: “The same person should not be judging policy in the Legislature and executing it in the executive branch." Having that much power concentrated in one person’s hands “leads to oppressive power.”
While the suit focuses on Denis, who is in line to lead Senate Democrats, the implications could be much larger, said Joseph Becker, chief legal officer and director of the think tank’s Center for Justice and Constitutional Litigation, which is the entity filing the suit.Read the source story here.
Center for American Progress
Kim Bobo is the executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice in Chicago. A widely quoted advocate for worker-justice issues, she has written two books, Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Working Americans Are Not Getting Paid And What We Can Do About It and Lives Matter: A Handbook for Christian Organizing. She also co-authored the best-selling Organizing for Social Change. She founded the Chicago Interfaith Committee on Worker Issues in 1991 and was named one of “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World” by Utne Reader in 2009.
Recently she sat down with Sally Steenland, Director of the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress, to discuss how to fight wage theft, stand up for workers' rights, and channel the energy of Occupy Wall Street into victories for the 99 percent.
Read the source story here.
The Washington Post
Wall Street executives have been quite open about the fact that they really, really don’t want to see Elizabeth Warren get anywhere near the Senate. And it looks like they’re about to ratchet up their efforts to help Scott Brown prevent it from happening — including the influential U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The Center for Public Integrity reports today that Wall Street and K Street lobbyists are firing up the fundraising on behalf of Brown in a big way. The report quoted multiple big finance types saying Brown’s reelection campaign is crucial, and it noted — without sourcing — that the U.S. Chamber “will be engaged early and heavily in Massachusetts with ads.”
Read the source story here.
Think Progress
Rick Santorum sounded like a representative from the health insurance industry when he addressed a small group of high school students in Merrimack, New Hampshire this morning. The former Pennsylvania senator not only defended insurers for denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, he also argued that individuals who are sick should pay higher premiums because they cost more money to insure:
SANTORUM: I had insurance under my employer. And when I decided to run for president, I left my job, I lost my insurance, I had to go out and buy insurance on the open market. We have a child who has a pre-existing condition and we went out and we said, we like this plan…we have to pay more because she has a pre-existing condition. Well, we should pay more. She’s going to be very expensive to the insurance company and, you know, that cost is passed along to us…I’m okay with that.Read the source story here.
- Teamster.org:
CBS Early Show: How Some Employers Skirt Paying Benefits - AFL-CIO Now Blog:
Unions Take Up White House $4 Billion 'Better Buildings Challenge' - The Seattle PI:
WEA Backs Inslee After McKenna Bails - The Stranger:
City Has Spent Over $500,000 on Occupy Seattle Expenses - The Wall Street Journal:
Board Scales Back Union-Vote Plan - The Washington Post:
Why are people dropping out of the labor force? - CBS News:
Bloomberg: If I Had It My Way I'd Dump Half Of NYC's Teachers - Firedog Lake:
The profits on the secret $7.7 trillion loans to TBTF banks - AFL-CIO Now Blog:
Boeing Decision on 737 Spurred by Union, Industry, State Effort - The Washington Post:
122 Comments Campaign 2012, White House The politics of the unemployment rate — in one chart! - Think Progress:
GOP Supercommittee Member Admits Bush Tax Cuts Didn't Create Jobs, Can't Explain Why - Daily Kos:
Trucking industry spokesman slips up and admits 'independent contractors' are employees - The Stranger:
Occupiers Take Capitol Rotunda! - The Raw Story:
Bachmann: Occupy's goal is 'having other people pay for their stuff' - Think Progess:
Rick Perry Fails Govt 101: Claims Executive Orders Can Repeal Laws Passed By Congress - AFL-CIO Now Blog:
APALA Members Join in Solidarity with Restaurant Workers - The Washington Post:
Gingrich presidential run inspires fear and loathing in top GOP circles - In These Times:
Steelworkers Union: Cooper Locked Us Out After We Boosted Company Profits - Labor Notes:
Strike Wave in China Puts Heat On Official Union - Wonkette:
Jackass NYPD Pigs Throw Protesters In Jail And Eat All Their Food - Talking Union:
Restrictive voting laws on rise across country