News Stories for April 10, 2012
Dallas Business journal
Executive compensation at Irving-based Hostess Brands Inc ., is being cut in the aftermath of creditor accusations that the company may have increased management salaries in the months ahead of Hostess' January Chapter 11 bankruptcy in an effort to get around bankruptcy rules, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
Gregory F. Rayburn, who took over as CEO at Hostess last month, told the Journal that the company's top four executives working under him had agreed to have their salaries cut to $1 a year until Hostess emerges from bankruptcy or Dec. 31, whichever occurs first.
According to the Journal, creditors alleged that the four executives -- John Stewart, Davide Loeser, Gary Wandschneider and Richard Seban -- had received salary increases of 75 to 80 percent in July when the company already had hired restructuring lawyers.Read the source story here.
Teamster Nation
They're like the Energizer bunny, those Teamsters art handlers from Local 814. They've been locked out since August 1, and they're still fighting hard against the greed of the 1 percent.
To get a sense of the energy, listen to a radio news report here about a recent action:
Organizer Julian Tysh does his usual great job of telling it like it is. He explains why the art handlers are refusing to bow to Sotheby's demands that the union be gradually dissolved:
We have to suffer now to preserve good jobs for the future.And he describes what Sotheby's is all about:
This is where the 1 percent does its shopping... (CEO) Bill Ruprecht makes $60,000 a day...there's no economic need for what they're asking from us. They're trying to assert themselves anyway. They're trying to take advantage of what they thought was an antiuunion climate. I've got news for them: That climate has changed...Read the source story here.
Corporate greed in this country is out of control and it's wrecked too many communities and too many neighborhoods and too many good jobs.
Huffington Post
Major corporations are making certain they get their money's worth out of each individual employee.
S&P 500 companies made an average $420,000 in revenue per employee last year, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Yet even though that's a full ninth more than in 2007, companies remain hesitant to hire new workers.
With roughly four unemployed workers for every job opening, many Americans have felt the pressure to worker harder and prove their worth. Those millions of unemployed people have additionally given some employers less of a reason to raise worker wages, as economists told HuffPost earlier this year.
Indeed, inflation-adjusted wages fell about 2 percent in 2011. And that downward trend has yet to end, with personal income falling again in February, once adjusted for inflation. For many, wages are stuck, or effectively falling when inflation is taken into account. The percentage of workers reporting no wage change is at its highest level in 30 years, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.Read the source story here.
PoliticusUSA
If you’re wondering who Mitt Romney is, good luck. If you’re wondering what he’d do as President, you need only look to George W Bush’s policies and take away the compassion.
Yes, that’s right. Bush had compassion, relatively speaking.
If you’re now wondering what on earth I could mean by that, come with me to Michigan where “Moderate” Republican Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s tax policy cuts corporation income taxes by 83 percent, while increasing taxes by 23 percent for actual humans (now known as the peasant class).
[....] Now, if you really want a get the whole picture, you have to realize that at the same time, Michigan’s Department of Human Services has reduced services to the poor, disabled, and other vulnerable members of society. NPR reported, “Eleven thousand Michigan families were cut from welfare cash assistance late last year. Cash assistance is the $500 a month or so that helps the poorest families pay their bills and rent. The Department of Human Services says the state can’t afford the cost.” NPR concluded with, “A circuit court judge has now ruled the agency exceeded its authority. The people who run the Department of Human Services are appealing that judge’s ruling.”Read the source story here.
AFL-CIO Now
This week, some 100,000 activists from unions and community, faith and other progressive groups are in 99% Spring training sessions around the country, learning how to take back the economy from the 1%. Their first big round of actions is set for Tax Day, April 17.
Click here to find a Tax Day action near you. Click here to find a training session near you.
In demonstrations around the nation, working families will raise their voices to demand that the 1% and corporations pay their fair share. The wealthiest Americans—like Mitt Romney—pay a far lower percentage of their income in taxes than do average working people—and some multibillion-dollar corporations don’t pay a cent.
On the Tax Wealth Not Work National Day of Action, activists will demand that the 1% pay their fair share and that we overhaul the tax code to reflect the needs and values of the majority of Americans.Read the source story here.
The New York Times, editorial
Hundreds of thousands of unemployed people are desperate for new skills to pull them back into the job market, but when they visit a job-training center, they are often turned away. As Motoko Rich reported in The Times on Monday, Seattle’s seven centers had money to train only 5 percent of the 120,000 people who came in last year seeking new skills, and the numbers are similar elsewhere.
The reason: drastic cuts to federal spending on training over the last six years, including $1 billion since the 2010 fiscal year. Even though training programs are already harder to get into than Ivy League universities, Republicans in the House want to put them even further out of reach.
Last month, the House passed a 2013 budget written by Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin that would reduce spending in the category of Education, Training, Employment and Social Services by $16 billion from the previous year, or 22 percent, on top of all the cuts forced by Republicans over several years. The cut in that category is typical of a budget that savages precisely the kind of domestic spending, like job training and Pell grants, needed to help people get off social-safety-net programs, while slicing open the net itself, through big reductions in Medicaid and food stamps (all while generously lowering taxes for the rich).Read the source story here.
Crooks and Liars
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) introduced legislation that would raise the minimum wage by 35 percent, among other things, and would index it to rises in cost of living. CREDO Action launched a petition Friday in support of the proposal. Harkin's bill would raise the national minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.80 over two years.
The bill would also require employers to offer their workers paid sick days, make more white-collar workers eligible for overtime pay that they're currently exempted from, and give more workers the right to join a union.Read the source story here.
In short, Harkin's bill, pitched as a prescription to rebuild the American middle class, hits all the right notes for worker advocates who say low- and middle-income earners are falling behind. The package was quickly praised by groups such as the AFL-CIO federation of labor unions; the National Employment Law Project, which advocates for low-wage workers; and the Restaurant Opportunities Center United, a national group representing restaurant employees.
David Brooks, New York Times columnist
[T]here are two interrelated American economies. On the one hand, there is the globalized tradable sector — companies that have to compete with everybody everywhere. These companies, with the sword of foreign competition hanging over them, have become relentlessly dynamic and very (sometimes brutally) efficient.
On the other hand, there is a large sector of the economy that does not face this global competition — health care, education and government. Leaders in this economy try to improve productivity and use new technologies, but they are not compelled by do-or-die pressure, and their pace of change is slower.
A rift is opening up. The first, globalized sector is producing a lot of the productivity gains, but it is not producing a lot of the jobs. The second more protected sector is producing more jobs, but not as many productivity gains. The hypercompetitive globalized economy generates enormous profits, while the second, less tradable economy is where more Americans actually live.
In politics, we are beginning to see conflicts between those who live in Economy I and those who live in Economy II.Read the source story here.
Statesman Journal
Oregon is one of the top states in the country when it comes to union membership, with more people joining unions here each year, according to figures recently released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Experts say efforts by Service Employees International Union Local 503 — the largest union in the state — account for much of that success in the face of national apathy, if not outright hostility, toward organized labor.
Union members represent 17.1 percent of all workers in Oregon, making it the state with the seventh-highest union participation in the nation. Average union membership in the United States is 11.8 percent.[Washington is 19 percent, according to statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.]
Read the source story here.
WISH TV 8
Indiana's new right-to-work law should be struck down because it infringes upon unions' free speech rights by depriving them of the dues that fund their political speech, attorneys for a union challenging the law contend, citing the U.S. Supreme Court's so-called Citizens United ruling that eased restrictions on corporate campaign spending.
Attorneys for the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 argue in a court brief that Indiana's new law, which allows workers to not pay union dues even if a union bargains on their behalf, interferes with the union's free speech rights and "impinges on this fundamental right of union membership."
The argument is just one of many tucked into the hefty 45-page brief the union filed in federal court late last month in response to the state's motion to dismiss the lawsuit. A hearing on the state's motion is scheduled for April 26 in U.S. District Court in Hammond.
Along with other arguments based on state and federal constitutions and federal labor law, the union cites the 2010 Citizens United decision, which struck down on free-speech grounds restrictions on corporations' and union spending on advertising endorsing or opposing certain candidates.
The Indiana union's lawyers contend that the right-to-work law interferes with the union's free speech rights by stifling the collection of money that helps pay for its political speech.Read the source story here.
We Party Patriots
About 40,000 union workers in the AT&T landline division have agreed to continue working this week without a contract in hopes of accelerating negotiations. The workers, who are represented by the Communication Workers of America (CWA), had authorized the union to strike if a new deal could not be worked out before their previous deal expired at midnight on April 8th. Issues of contention include everything from weekend hours to healthcare costs, but at the heart of the matter is AT&T’s desire to shed costs despite posting $4 billion in profits last year.
According to the Associated Press, both sides are looking to resolve the issue.
Read the source story here.
AFL-CIO Now
What’s the “job creation" centerpiece of the Romney/Ryan/Republican budget?
Cutting those burdensome, job-killing corporate taxes. American firms, according to Romney and friends, are being bled dry by the oppressive U.S. corporate tax rate. That might be good rhetoric, but it’s nowhere close to the truth.
A new report shows that most of the 30 Fortune 500 companies that paid no federal income tax from 2008 through 2010 were able to keep up their tax dodge two-step in 2011. Those nimble firms include Verizon, G.E., Boeing, Wells Fargo, Tenet Health Care and more.
The report by Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy shows that 26 maintained their negative federal tax rate—with tax breaks and loopholes, they actually made more money after taxes than before.
Don't feel bad for the other four. Their effective tax rate was less than 4 percent.Read the source story here.
Penninsula Daily News
Employees at Angeles Composite Technologies Inc. in Port Angeles have voted to join the International Association of Machinists.
The decision at an employee meeting last week was overwhelming — 78 employees voted to join the union and six abstained out of 84 eligible employees, said Bob Wilson, director of IAM Lodge W24, on Thursday.
“We’re not there to try to break the company,” Wilson said.
The union is there to make sure that rules are applied equally to all workers and that rules and hours don’t change daily, he said.
Mike Rauch, president and CEO of ACTI, said Friday he had no comment on the vote at that time and was not aware of the issues Wilson referred to.
Read the source story here.
The New York Times
GIVEN the very real possibility that the Supreme Court will overturn the Affordable Care Act, liberals are concerned that the right-wing tilt of five justices and lifelong appointments ensure a decades-long assault on the power of Congress. This is especially likely given the relative youth of the bloc’s conservative members: an average of 66 years old, when the last 10 justices to retire did so at an average age of 78.
The situation brings to mind a proposal voiced most prominently by Gov. Rick Perry during his run for the Republican presidential nomination: judicial term limits.
The idea isn’t new. High-ranking judges in all major nations, and all 50 states, are subject to age or term limits. The power to invalidate legislation is, in a sense, the ultimate political power, and mortals who exercise it need constraint. So why not the highest court in the land?Read the source story here.
AFL-CIO Now
MIT's Paul Osterman has a provocative piece in the Boston Review about some myths standing in the way of turning lousy, low-wage jobs into good jobs. The conventional wisdom, he says, is "to let the economy generate jobs of whatever quality firms choose and then, if necessary, compensate by enabling people to avoid the bad ones or by shoring up people who are stuck. The nature of available jobs is a given." His arguments bolster the union movement's case that we need direct intervention in the labor market to make bad jobs into good jobs through collective bargaining, labor standards, public-sector leadership, training and career ladders and more.The first myth he busts is the "rising tide lifts all boats" saw.
Just as we can’t expect aggregate growth to improve jobs by itself, we can’t expect low-wage workers to move up without changes in policy. There is considerable evidence that U.S. adults remain confined in low-wage jobs over the course of their working lives.
The second myth is that good-jobs policies hurt the economy. In fact, he says, U.S. poverty rates are higher and key employment rates are lower than in European countries similar to ours because the European nations have "higher minimum wages, stronger unions and more egalitarian social norms.Read the source story here.
- AlterNet:
Rare Rolling Sympathy Strike Beats Garbage Company That Tries to Trash Its Promise - Newser:
Supreme Court Agrees to Reconsider Citizens United - Mother Jones:
McDonald's Dumps ALEC, Too - Publicola:
Transit Bill Looks Dead in Final Days of Special Session - Think Progress:
Wisconsin State Senator Says Women Are Paid Less Because 'Money Is More Important For Men' - Houston Chronicle:
Hostess execs find their paychecks have less filling - Labor Notes:
Unions Seek to Regain Foothold at GE - Talking Points Memo:
Amazing Map Shows America's Wind Resources in Real Time - News Hounds:
The Dumbing Down Of FOX Viewers Can Now Be Scientifically Proven - Think Progress:
Number Of Workers In Poverty Reached 20-Year High In 2010 - Huffington Post:
Thom Hartmann: The Jobless Are Screwed - Rolling Stone:
Why the Obama JOBS Act Could Not Suck Worse - Mother Jones:
Sad about being in the 1%? There's a Therapist for that - Daily Kos:
Teachers union pushes to fund education by closing corporate tax loopholes - Talking Union:
A Third Jobs Relapse Underway? - Crooks and Liars:
Gates Foundation Announces It Will Withdraw Funding From ALEC - AlterNet:
Some Red States Are Already Running Out Of Water - The Washington Post:
Karl Rove and company are losing the argument over inequality - The Progressive:
Why the Mining Companies Got Beat in Wisconsin - The Economist:
It's the end of the world as we know it - Huffington Post:
Right-Wing Republicans Gorge Themselves at the Public Trough, While Telling the Rest of Us to Suck It Up