Views and Opinions

How the Empire State Building Was Constructed
How Far We've Come!

You can bet there were a lot of casualties during the construction of the Empire State Building because you don't see one piece of safety equipment at all. It took a lot of people and effort to get this turned around so that workers have the job site protections that are in place these days. If you enjoy these photos, take a look at the complete PowerPoint Presentation here.

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Workers Memorial Day– 2010
Death, Injury & Illness: America’s Shameful Legacy of Workplace Dangers
By Shel Samuels, AFL-CIO Metal Trades Special Representative
(April 25, 2010) Washington, DC - The global threats of Weapons of Mass Destruction share more than a set of initials with Workers’ Memorial Day: WMD. As this was written, eleven workers were missing and 17 injured in an exploding and sinking oil drilling rig in American waters of the Gulf of Mexico, owned by a Swiss company, leased to a British multinational oil company, and built in South Korea. The same day, the President of the United States delivered a eulogy for 29 miners killed in a West Virginia coal mine disaster to satisfy the insatiable production demands for coal. On April 28, 1971—almost four decades ago—the Occupational Safety and Health Act went into effect, opening what we hoped would be a new chapter in the struggle to protect ourselves against death, injury and illness at work.

Like the Texas City refinery disaster preceding the passage of the OSHAct in 1970, the disasters in the Gulf and West Virginia are fast-running scenes from films that spur legislation, but slower motion scenes depict death from chronic work-associated disease for hundreds of thousands of other workers easier too easily ignored, for whom the eulogy is mumbled with closed eyes. 

From the first day of enactment, the law was corrupted by the historic failures of the workers’ compensation systems. There are no accurate actual counts of death and disease generated in the American workplace. The first— and last [1972]— honest estimate published by the government, was calculated by its top biometrician, Bill Lloyd: 100,000 excess deaths per year. The size of the great pandemic of death in the workplace in America was greeted with corporate derision, governmental inaction and bi-partisan political orders for official silence!

The First Line of Defense: Prevention
Affiliates of the Metal Trades Department went to court to force the slow process of setting OSHA standards, beginning with asbestos. About 125 million people worldwide are still exposed to asbestos even though it is ostensibly banned in 52 countries—including the European Union. Some two-thirds of the nations of the World Health Organization (WHO) continue to sell and use asbestos. WHO estimates between 100,000 and 140,000 asbestos-related deaths from cancer alone (ANNUALLY???). Professor Joseph LaDou of the University of California-San Francisco estimates that “the asbestos cancer pandemic may take as many as 10 million lives before asbestos is banned worldwide and all exposure is brought to an end.”

The MTD and its affiliates—in partnership with labor’s doctor, Dr. Irving J. Selikoff of the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, began the equally slow and difficult work of clinical intervention, the second line of defense for worker’s health. Dr. Selikoff, whose work ultimately focused the world’s conscience on the full effects of asbestos, and his team began with the screening of asbestos-exposed workers in the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. With what we learned in the shipyards and in other industries, we then fought for medical surveillance programs for all workers. One positive result, at least in Department of Energy nuclear weapons facilities, is a program of employer-conducted medical surveillance and sheltered workshops for active workers exposed to beryllium. A separate program supposedly conducted by “independent” physicians was congressionally-mandated for all former DOE workers, but has been limited by tight budgets, government micro-management and contractors tied to the employer.

Another, massive human tragedy had been unfolding for centuries in the uranium and beryllium mines and mills until (at least in this country in the 1950s) a handful of civil servants in the diminutive National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health aided by doctors of the Indian Health Service, initiated critical studies uncovering endemics of silicosis and cancer. In 1967, then-Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz testified that these tragedies could have been prevented under a 1936 federal law. Forty years later —despite concerted pressure by Native Americans and our unions for stronger protections—the Mine Safety and Health Administration established the far less stringent radon standard in force today in mines and mills.

After passage of the OSHAct, NIOSH also conducted studies that paved the way for OSHA’s first attempted beryllium standard, an effort that has been frustrated by White House-supported DOE interference (that continues to this day). The delays have resulted in hundreds of unnecessary cases of debilitating and deadly beryllium disease in the nuclear weapons system and other industries!

In the United States, besides workers in the nuclear industries, the number of industrial and remediation workers exposed to beryllium dust has increased with growing applications, even though the total number of industrial workers has decreased.

In the United States, in 1975, a union petition proposed replacing the 1949 Atomic Energy Commission so-called “interim” exposure standard with a ‘permanent’ standard, the number of industrial workers exposed was an estimated 30,000. Today that estimate has risen, to an estimated 800,000 workers in the United States alone who could be currently or previously exposed to debilitating and cancer-generating beryllium dust.

No agency has bothered to do a definitive count.  The government has chosen to identify and count the sick and dying only in the primary beryllium industry and Department of Energy weapons facilities, although the toxic dust is also generated by production and waste disposal in other industries. Almost nothing has been done to look at the devastation of entire families, and the burden on their communities, but that omission is typical for all occupational disease, not just beryllium disease.

And we aren’t ‘safe’ behind the third line of defense for occupational health: compensation to our families for lost wages and medical care. 

Political Compromise
The Congress had before it a century of prior experience with state workers’ compensation systems, and the sad history of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) of 1990, before writing and incorporating similar provisions in the Energy Employees Compensation law in 2000. RECA was written to compensate communities exposed to testing and underground uranium miners. However, the new law incorporated traditional records-dependent cost containment provisions, records that most often are inadequate or don’t even exist. If they are found, their meaning is twisted to meet political compromises that date back to the first workers’ compensation statutes were written in Europe and in the Americas in the early 1900’s, predating the modern labor movement a generation later.

Compromises are the root of widespread intellectual corruption in occupational and environmental health science. Legislated lists of compensable disease distort the science in ways that were questionable even in 1900, and indefensible today. The medical expert is forced to twist what is known of risk in populations to pinpoint legal and social responsibility for individual cases, an objective unachievable with precision even with perfect records. Inevitably all parties are forced into what President Ron Ault correctly calls the “paper chase” and maladministration.

These effects are clearly seen in the radiation dose reconstruction program, mandated by Congress and administered by NIOSH, as illustrated by the four-year-old [2006] MTD petition for a Special Exposure Cohort (SEC) for Pantex workers. SECs are based on an escape clause in the law to cover instances where records do not exist. We claim the records do not exist and reconstruction cannot be done.

The National Academy of Science goes further, and objects to NIOSH’s fictional reconstructions used to calculate “probability of causation”, because that concept “applied to populations and not individuals and could not be interpreted as the probability that a given cancer was caused by a given radiation exposure.” NIOSH – and Congress - have ignored that expert advice.

The result, as in the case of the 2006 pending petition for an SEC to be established for Pantex employees, not one but whole sets of claimants are subjected to unjustified, unnecessarily prolonged delays while NIOSH and its consultants argue with still other consultants about presumptions made in the absence of hard data.

Writing the End to This Tale
NIOSH claims that records are not necessary, because:   “…the routine weapons operations at Pantex were technically contamination free …” The basis for this claim is the presence of product acceptance seal of approval on each weapon or material component, claiming that the component is “contaminant free.” This invalid claim is belied by the actual tasked behavior of both management and workers, and is contrary to the recorded observations of those actually engaged in or supervising assembly operations.     

This sad tale will only end when the weapons of mass destruction among the workforce—asbestos, beryllium and thousands of other toxic agents in the work environment, along with the corrupted science —come under control, when the labor movement in America and globally develops the strength of numbers and allies. Only then will Workers Memorial Day become a true celebration of life, and not an occasion for still more funerals of brothers and sisters taken from us before their time. 

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What Does Health Care Reform Mean for You?
We’ve fought to improve our health care system for decades—now we’ve won and health care
reform is law. What does it mean for you and your family?

The First Two Things
You Need to Know

1. You will continue to have the employer sponsored health coverage you win at the bargaining table.
2. Eighty-five percent of the proposed excise tax on insurance benefits is gone, thanks to our work.

HERE’S WHAT ELSE THE HEALTH CARE REFORM LAW DOES:

Holds Insurance Companies Accountable:
Health care reform limits wasteful spending on executive salaries, eliminates annual and lifetime limits on benefits and ends denials for preexisting conditions and discriminatory premiums for women. It also requires government review of excessive rate increases.

Lowers Costs:
It reduces union plan costs with reimbursements for early retirees. New health insurance exchanges—where members of Congress must get their health coverage— will lower costs by increasing competition. The exchanges and new tax credits and costsharing assistance to low- and middle-income Americans—the largest tax cut for health care in history—will make insurance affordable for people who don’t get health care through their employers. The bill also gives seniors additional help paying for prescription drugs, closes the Medicare “donut hole” and requires free preventive care through Medicare.

Helps Ensure Your Children Have Health Care:
Starting this year, children can’t be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions and they can stay on your policy until they are 26 years old.

Holds Employers Accountable:
It requires large employers to pay a penalty for workers who need subsidies in the exchanges to buy their own insurance.

Lowers the Deficit:
The independent Congressional Budget Office estimates that health care reform will reduce the budget deficit by $138 million over 10 years and another $1.2 trillion over the next decade.

For more information, visit www.aflcio.org/healthcare.
Download this information in flyer form here.

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Teamsters Union Position:
HOFFA APPLAUDS OBAMA FOR PROPOSING STRICTER BANK REGULATION
NEW RULES WOULD HELP CURB RECKLESS SPECULATION AND PROTECT JOBS AND BUSINESSES

IBT General President Jim Hoffa has commended President Barack Obama for proposing stricter bank regulation. President Obama last week said reform is necessary because of the irresponsibility of financial firms. He pointed out that the financial system is still operating under the same rules that led to its near collapse, and those rules allowed firms to act contrary to the interests of their customers.

“President Obama is clearly moving in the right direction on this issue,” Hoffa said. “He understands that our financial system deserves special treatment because it serves a crucial function: providing capital to businesses so they can create jobs.

Unfortunately, financial firms are selling irresponsible products such as credit default swaps that destabilize U.S. businesses and jeopardize jobs. It is crucial to regulate these little-understood, ‘financial weapons of mass destruction,’ to borrow Warren Buffett’s term.”

The jobs of 30,000 Teamsters who work for YRCW [NASDAQ: YRCW] were threatened recently because banks and equity firms created and marketed credit default swaps from YRCW’s bonds. That created an incentive for bondholders with credit default swap coverage to force a bankruptcy to profit on the insurance.

Hoffa pushed YRCW bondholders to take part in a debt-for-equity exchange offer that would save the company. He called out the shameful behavior that would have further hurt the U.S. economy and killed more American jobs. The swap was a critical step to ensure YRCW’s survival. The nation’s biggest trucker, YRC Worldwide Inc., is the parent company of YRC, Holland, Reddaway and New Penn trucking companies.

The Teamsters Union supports policies that would regulate these financial instruments and other shadow financial market practices currently under consideration by Congress. These instruments and the way they are packaged create perverse economic incentives that favor short-sighted financial gains to Wall Street over restructuring strategies designed to save jobs and preserve workers’ standard of living.

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Teamsters News Link:
CONTRADICTIONS OF OBAMAISM

By E.J. DIONNE, JR., Op-Ed

WASHINGTON, D.C., originally released on Blog January 20 — It turns out there were core contradictions in the promises Barack Obama made to the Country in 2008. They caught up with his Party on Tuesday (January 19) in Massachusetts.

• Things will not get easier. Republicans in Congress will be empowered to hold to their course of obstruction by Sen.-elect Scott Brown's victory. Washington will remain the object of scorn as a dysfunctional capital, and absent a new Obama approach, the GOP can act with the confidence that only Democrats will pay a price for the failure of comity.

This problem goes directly to the tensions in Obamaism. As a candidate, he pledged to change the tone in Washington and restore amicable relations between the Parties. But he also promised to accomplish large things, including a substantial reform of the health care system, major action to ease global warming, and a reshaped and more responsible financial system.

At some point, Obama's ambitions were destined to collide with the views of a Republican Party fundamentally opposed to almost everything he wants to do. Obama could try to get big things done or he could work easily with Republicans, but he could not do both.

As a result, he found himself leaning entirely on support from within his own Party, forcing a strategy of inside deal-making. This alienated Democrats from the many rank-and-file Americans who don't like the looks of such arrangements, however necessary they are.

• A related contradiction was between Obama's commitment to sweeping change and his soothing pragmatism that disdains public fights. In the campaign, this allowed him to unite a left that believed in his promises of transformation and a center that appreciated his conciliatory style.

In practice, this meant trying to reform the financial industry while avoiding an open battle with the bankers. As a consequence, Obama is now viewed as coddling Wall Street by those inclined to populism, and as anti-business by the titans of finance. This also involved pursuing a health reform plan that his political base came to see as too soft on the insurance companies, even as many of the heath care interests tried to bring it down.

And by avoiding arguments over philosophy and ideology — by failing to offer a pointed and running explanation of why he was reversing the policies of the previous Administration — Obama left independent voters confused about his goals. They saw expanding deficits and high unemployment. Absent a coherent Democratic narrative, they were open to a Republican story that linked the two and blamed the Democrats.

Brown's victory is also a rebuke to a United States Senate that acted as if it had unlimited time to pass health care legislation and ignored how foolish its listless ways appear to normal human beings. Like a bottle of milk kept out of the refrigerator too long, the health bill came to look curdled and sour to a public that felt it never heard an adequate explanation of what was in it.

In the short term, Democrats have to make a quick decision on health care. The obvious path is for the House to pass the Senate's bill and send it to Obama's desk, while reaching agreement on certain changes that, under existing practices, can get through the Senate with fewer than 60 votes. It would be the equivalent of a political crime for Democrats to have invested so much in health reform only to let it die because of one election in one State.

But Obama does not have the standing simply to force this result on a reluctant House. Many of its progressive members are angry that he took them for granted and assumed that the Senate — whose delays placed health care in jeopardy in the first place — would write something close to the final bill. Working through this thicket of dysfunction will be Obama's first post-Massachusetts test.

• It's true that one special election in Massachusetts is not a world historical event. Brown's five-point victory was made possible by Democrat Martha Coakley's poorly run campaign and a colossal strategic failure to see early on the danger she was in.

Yet the flight or demobilization of so many of Obama's former supporters — Coakley received roughly 850,000 fewer votes on Tuesday than Obama did in 2008 — cannot be blamed on her shortcomings alone. Obama needs to resolve the contradictions that are plaguing him, and to come out fighting. The President may not be entirely comfortable with this, but now he's fighting for his political life.

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Teamsters News Link:
FALLOUT: DEMS RETHINKING HEALTH BILL

Politico

Republican Scott Brown's upset win in Massachusetts Tuesday, January 19, threatened to derail any hopes of passing a health reform bill this year, as the White House and Democratic leaders faced growing resistance from rank-and-file members to pressing ahead with a bill following the Bay State backlash.

White House senior adviser David Axelrod told POLITICO: “I think that it would a terrible mistake to walk away now. If we don't pass the bill, all we have is the stigma of a caricature that was put on it. That would be the worst result for everybody who has supported this bill.” He said the administration will work with Capitol Hill to figure out how.

Obama's former campaign manager, David Plouffe, added on ABC's "Good Morning America": "I'm very confident we can pass health-care reform."

• Democratic leaders insisted they planned to press ahead with health reform, and met late into Tuesday night in Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office. But they made no decisions about how to proceed, now that Brown has swept away the Democrats' filibuster-proof 60-vote majority in the Senate.

Their options are few, and extremely complex, mostly involving legislative tactics that would be difficult to pull off in the best of circumstances, let alone at a time when members are worried they could be the next Martha Coakley — a seeming Democratic shoo-in laid low, in part, by health reform.

• And already Tuesday night, Democrats were being forced to come to terms with the prospect that their decades-long goal of health reform might once again fall short, despite getting closer to becoming law than ever before.

Pelosi insisted Democrats could still make it happen. "We will get the job done. I am confident of that. I have always been confident of that," she told reporters as she left the Capitol at 11:30 p.m.

"Massachusetts has health care and so the rest of the country would like to have that too," Pelosi said, referring to the state's health care program. "So we don't [think] a state that already has health care should determine whether the rest of the country should."

But it wasn't clear last night how Democrats could do it, or how hard the White House is prepared to push. A statement by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs announcing that President Barack Obama called Coakley and Brown made no mention of health reform.

The White House's preferred option is for the House to approve the already-passed Senate version of health reform, to avoid the need for another vote in the Senate. But several House members said last night they're not prepared to pass the Senate bill alone — even if it means health care reform would die.

In fact, early signs of split emerged as the polls closed in Massachusetts — between leaders like House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer who said “the Senate bill is better than nothing,” and individual members who refused to swallow the Senate's version of health reform whole.

And with the winning majority for a health reform bill in the House so thin, almost any defections at this point would be fatal to reform's prospects.

• "I've maintained for months now that incremental reform in the health care package would make much more sense from my perspective," said California Rep. Jim Costa, one of the last Democrats to vote "yes" on the House bill.

He said he'd like to see Obama tell voters that "we may have been overreaching" and then push for a scaled-back bill that focuses on things more people can agree on, like insurance reforms. He said it's not just a question of the House bill versus the Senate bill. "For me, it's broader than that," Costa said.

• Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), one of the leading advocates for health reform in the House, urged fellow Democrats to heed the message of Massachusetts and pivot toward creating jobs, perhaps with a health-care component added in. "If there isn't any recognition that we got the message and we are trying to recalibrate and do things differently, we are not only going to risk looking ignorant but arrogant,” he said.

One other option available to Democrats is ramming a revised reform package through the Senate in the roughly two weeks before Brown takes office. That idea already was fading in popularity before Tuesday's vote, with Democrats knowing they'd be slammed for such a political power-play.

• But moderate Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) effectively put the idea to rest Tuesday night, calling the Brown victory a “referendum” on health reform and taking a swipe at his party's leadership by calling for more transparency in the process.

“To that end, I believe it would only be fair and prudent that we suspend further votes on health care legislation until Senator-elect Brown is seated,” Webb said in a statement.

• Still, Democrats are floating the idea of a two-step process — passing the Senate bill in the House in step one, then passing a second “clean-up” bill to fix the things in the Senate bill that House members don't like. The Senate then would have to pass the clean-up bill in a reconciliation process — meaning it would only need 51 votes.

But the deep resistance to the Senate bill among many House members shows that even this legislative tactic would be difficult to pull off.

Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) was skeptical of the two-step scenario. “I've heard that theory but I don't know if it works," he said. "The problem is this we are spending almost a trillion dollars and folks are telling me I should vote yes and we will fix it later. You wouldn't buy a car for a trillion dollars and say yeah, it doesn't run but we will fix it later."

Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D-Ind.) said, "We were fully expecting to go some kind of conference committee and work out those differences [with the Senate]. And there are still differences to work out. I cannot imagine, from one person, one member from Indiana, that this House would accept the Senate bill as is."

• Liberal activists pushing for health reform pressed Democrats to keep up the fight. Health Care for America Now's Richard Kirsch said, “When it comes to the need to make good health care affordable, nothing is different today than it was yesterday. Congress must keep going and finish reform right.”

But Brown himself called his election a message that voters — particularly independent ones — didn't want to embrace Obama's vision of reform.

“People do not want the trillion dollar health care plan that is being forced on the American people, and this bill is not being debated openly and fairly. It will raise taxes, it will hurt Medicare, it will destroy jobs and run our nation deeper in to debt,” Brown said in his acceptance speech.

• And in the Senate, two moderates, Democrat Evan Bayh of Indiana and Independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, separately raised concerns Tuesday about the direction of the Democrats' agenda, with Bayh saying he feared the Democrats' policy plans had gone too far to the left.

“It's why moderates and independents even in a state as Democratic as Massachusetts just aren't buying our message,” he told ABC News. “They just don't believe the answers we are currently proposing are solving their problems. That's something that has to be corrected.”

As the early results poured in, House leaders and the three chairmen with jurisdiction over the bill walked their colleagues through changes that had been negotiated with the White House and Senate — but barely mentioning the political meltdown in the Massachusetts.

• Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) told colleagues that the three parties were close to an agreement on adding a new Medicare tax on unearned income for individuals who make more than $200,000 and couples who earn more than $250,000, people present said. On a normal night, that would amount to big news.

On Tuesday, it was a sidebar to the drama resolving itself in Massachusetts.

Weiner said the tone of the caucus meeting was "whistling past the graveyard."

• After the meeting, House Democratic caucus chairman John Larson (D-Conn.) said of the bill: "The reports of its death — as Mark Twain would say — have been exaggerated." He downplayed the negative comments from members, saying they routinely leave caucus meetings and declare it dead. "Every time we come out of a caucus, everyone pronounces the bill dead or it's not going to pass," Larson said.

Earlier Tuesday, Pelosi said Tuesday that House Democrats are still "right on course" with the health care reform bill, regardless of what happens in the Massachusetts special election.

But by Tuesday night, in the caucus meeting, Pelosi said, "Whatever happens tonight, we can't ignore it," according to the notes of someone present.

• House Republican Leader John Boehner fired back at Pelosi's “right on course” comment, with spokesman Michael Steel saying, “Regardless of what happens in Massachusetts, it's clear that jamming this government takeover of health care through Congress will set off a political firestorm. The American people are screaming, ‘stop' at the top of their lungs, and out-of-touch Democratic leaders ignore them at their peril.”

Despite the deep misgivings of rank-and-file members, a decision to abandon health care reform would contradict every major rationale offered by the president and congressional Democrats as to why they pushed so hard for it over the last year.

Before Tuesday, Obama and congressional Democrats were actually on the verge of passing a major overhaul of the health care system that has eluded generations of presidents and lawmakers. Giving up on it now might appear reasonable from a political standpoint in light of a Massachusetts defeat, but some Democrats fear they will look back at some point and regret deserting the bill given how far along they actually were.

The move would also run counter to the reputed ethos of the Obama White House, which regards itself as taking the long view and not reacting to every development. Plus, Obama and Democrats have argued they cannot solve the nation's budgetary problems before dealing with health care. Those policy challenges will still be present after the polls close in Massachusetts, Democrats argue.

• "For a lot of us it is our second round, and the most important thing is we know we will never get this economy under any kind of control until we get health care costs under control," Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) said. "We're not doing this to aggravate people."

From a political standpoint, the White House will argue that Democrats own the bill either way. Most members of Congress have already for voted for the legislation, so they should take this last push to get it over the finish line and have a product to tout at the end — rather than failure.

But under the most-discussed scenario, the White House and Senate leaders would need to convince a skeptical House to trust them — that the Senate will approve the same set of changes as part of a reconciliation bill. With relations between the House and Senate strained, at best, it will be a tough lift, aides said.

But if the alternative is no bill at all, Democrats may have little choice.

[Meredith Shiner, Jake Sherman, James Hohmann and Chris Frates contributed to this story.]

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Teamsters News Link:
OBAMA, CONGRESS TAKE AIM AT WALL STREET

CQ.com
The Obama administration and members of Congress are looking to strike at Wall Street just as the nation's largest banks prepare to release their quarterly earnings and year-end employee bonus numbers.

President Obama will announce Thursday his intention to include a new fee on large financial institutions in his upcoming budget proposal, according to an administration official. House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, a little more than a week later, will hold a hearing to consider expanding shareholder say over employee compensation, as well as a proposal to raise the marginal tax rates on bonuses for financial sector employees.

With several Democratic House members also renewing the push for legislation (HR 4191, S2927) that would impose a tax on large stock and securities transactions, it appears that the populist drive to punish Wall Street for its excesses has reached levels not seen since last year's furor over American International Group Inc.'s decision to dole out millions in bonus money amid a taxpayer bailout.

But as the heads of the major banks made their way to Capitol Hill to testify Wednesday at the first hearing of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission — a congressionally appointed panel tasked with finding the causes of the financial crisis — questions remain about what effect, if any, these initiatives might actually have on the industry.

• The administration proposal must be enacted by a Congress that, even in the midst of the national outrage over the retention bonuses awarded to AIG employees, was wary of imposing any type of proscriptive tax measures. The House passed a bill (HR 1586) to put a 90 percent tax on bonuses handed out by bailout recipients, but it was shelved in the Senate.
• The banking industry and House Republicans, 85 of whom voted for the bill last March, have come out strongly against the new fee proposal.

Obama is expected to propose a fee that would be designed to recoup any outstanding federal bailout money and would be imposed on major financial institutions based on their debt-to-equity leverage ratios and overall risk exposure in the market, an official said.

Administration officials predict that the fee could recover as much as $120 billion of the money outstanding from the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (PL 110-343) enacted in October 2008.

The Treasury Department has estimated that losses from the $700 billion program, commonly referred to as TARP, could be less than $100 billion. The majority of the nation's largest banks — including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and JP MorganChase — have repaid their bailout money with interest.

But the repayments have done little to quell the anger that has coursed through a country dealing with double-digit unemployment numbers. The proposed fee appears to be the administration's effort to address that frustration.

INDUSTRY CAUGHT OFF GUARD
“This is pure politics,” another financial industry lobbyist said Wednesday, indicating that many top industry representatives still haven't been briefed on the structure or mechanics of the fee.

Jamie Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., said after his testimony to the financial crisis commission that the fee is a bad idea that would almost certainly end up being passed on to bank customers.

“Using tax policy to punish people is a bad idea,” Dimon said, adding that he agreed the financial industry should eventually cover the costs of the bailout.

• Congress will likely have to play a role in putting the fee in place, possibly by amending the TARP law. As the law currently stands, the Office of Management and Budget is instructed to craft a plan to recoup any outstanding TARP money in 2013.

Frank said he thought the administration's proposal would be “entirely legitimate” in light of the federal help extended to major financial institutions since 2008. Along with the TARP money, financial firms have also had access to asset guarantees from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and increased access to the Federal Reserve's discount window.

“The financial institutions collectively, especially the larger ones, caused problems by their errors of judgment, their irresponsibility and in some cases their dishonesty,” Frank said. “I think it is entirely reasonable to say that the industry that A) caused these problems more than any other and B) benefitted from the activity should be contributing.”

The expectation that the institutions would simply pass on the federal fee to consumers is something that Frank said he hoped would be monitored — and restricted — by the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency proposed in the House-passed financial regulatory overhaul bill (HR 4173).

MORE LEGISLATION
Frank said during a Wednesday meeting with reporters that he would seek to further restrict Wall Street practices, focusing on the compensation structure for bank employees.

A Jan. 22 Financial Services hearing will explore ways lawmakers and regulators might be able to restrict pay practices that encourage risky behavior, Frank said.

The House's regulatory overhaul bill included a provision giving shareholders a non-binding say on executive compensation. But Frank said that the provision is too narrow.

“The question of compensation for people in the financial industry is a legitimate cause of concern,” he said.

Frank provided no details on the idea of raising the marginal tax rates on bonuses.

• The banking industry has attempted to head off the expected furor over pay by announcing a shift in compensation to company stock, most of which can only be cashed in after a specified number of years.

“All the senior people get the predominant amount of the compensation in shares, and that's been true for years, and we've just even ratcheted that up to the point where our senior [executive] committee is only getting shares,” said Lloyd Blankfein, the chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs.

TRANSACTION FEE
But as members of Congress come back for the second session of the 111th Congress, finding ways to rein in the banking industry appears high on the to-do list. Another idea gaining traction is imposing a fee on stock transactions.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has publicly dismissed the idea, raising questions about whether it can be imposed in a way that doesn't drive U.S. financial business overseas. But liberal members of the Democratic Caucus continue to push for its consideration.

• “As you know, it has recently been announced that Wall Street firms are paying huge bonuses to their top executives despite a major economic recession and a ten percent unemployment rate,” Democratic Reps. Bruce Braley of Iowa, Michael Arcuri of New York and Betty Sutton of Ohio wrote in a Jan. 12 letter to Obama supporting the transaction tax proposal. “We believe now is the time to ensure that the bank bailout funds are paid back in full and that more money is invested to help Main Street recover.”

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Governor’s Jobs Plan:
GOV. GREGOIRE UNVEILS PLAN TO CREATE JOBS, SPUR ECONOMIC GROWTH IN WASHINGTON STATE

SEATTLE – Gov. Chris Gregoire today unveiled her plan to create as many as 40,000 jobs over the next three years while speaking at the 38th Annual Economic Forecast Conference hosted by “EnterpriseSeattle.”

“Despite our budget constraints, I believe we can and must encourage employers to start hiring and capitalize on new opportunities,” Gregoire said. “We need to think creatively and act swiftly. So I have developed a 10-point plan to accelerate our recovery and give businesses the confidence they need to create jobs.”

Gregoire’s plan contains a combination of capital investments and financial incentives, including:

• A Business & Occupation tax credit for large capital projects equal to five percent of the project cost. The program will be capped at $100 million, distributed first-come-first-served, and is expected to create 20,000 construction jobs and 5,000 ongoing jobs over the next 3 years.
• Reducing the threshold a company must meet in order to qualify for the Rural County New Employee tax credit from a 15 percent to a 10 percent increase in the number of people they employ.
• A $2,000/new employee tax credit for small businesses that don’t qualify for other incentives.

Along with reducing the Rural County New Employee credit, the tax credit for small businesses is expected to create 15,000 jobs that will help businesses stay open and put more people to work.

“The proposed B&O tax credits will help small businesses like mine who need the talent, yet are hesitant to hire due to uncertainty around the sustainability of this increase in demand,” said Tracy Corley, chief strategist at Tracy A. Corley & Associates. “Immediate, actionable incentives mean a lot to the bottom line of organizations with fewer than 100 employees and will get us to start making commitments to fueling job growth."

Additionally, Gregoire proposes to expand the state’s Multi-Agency Permitting teams to reduce permit time, and extend all previously-approved state development permits for two additional years.

The governor estimates that these actions will encourage $2 billion in private investment in Washington state over the next two years.

• Gregoire also announced she has directed the Washington State Department of Commerce to create and lead a new Clean Energy Business Development Program, which will work closely with the private sector to identify and seize opportunities for further clean-energy employment growth in Washington. In addition, Gregoire says the state will work to unlock $60 million in energy savings by retrofitting inefficient state buildings. The projects will be financed with the savings achieved in energy consumption.

“These projects will put people to work immediately,” Gregoire said. “They will save taxpayer money over the long haul, they will further improve our workforce’s skills in energy efficiency and clean technology, and they are good for the environment.”

“We remotely monitor energy performance in over 100 million square feet in schools, universities, hospitals, and commercial buildings all across the country,” said McKinstry Executive Vice President David Allen. “That allows us to guarantee that energy cost savings repay any loans taken out. If that guarantee is not met, we write a check for the difference.”

“Washington state can compete successfully in the world’s transition to clean energy,” said Rogers Weed, director of Commerce. “Our research institutions, our global technology corporations, and our clean energy companies have earned us a reputation for innovation in this rapidly growing sector. With a focused state effort we can leverage our competitive advantages in clean energy to attract capital investment to create more high quality jobs in Washington.”

• Gregoire has also proposed extending the clean fuel vehicles retail sales tax exemption, the tax exemptions for biofuels, and the tax incentives for Federal Aviation Regulation repair stations. Additionally, Gregoire would like to establish a sales tax deferral/waiver for distressed counties with unemployment greater than 14 percent to spur private investment and put people to work.

“Greater Spokane Incorporated supports actions by the state to provide new incentives to spur business growth during this economic downturn,” said Rich Hadley, executive director of Greater Spokane Incorporated. “In Spokane, existing incentives have helped stimulate more than $50 million in private investments. We believe that a new Business and Occupation tax credit would be very helpful for companies looking to expand or relocate their businesses in Washington.”

For more information about the proposal, visit: http://www.governor.wa.gov/priorities/economy/jobs.pdf

 

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Washington State Labor Council Commentary:
THERE’S BLOOD IN THE WATER IN OLYMPIA
STATE 2010 LEGISLATIVE SESSION BEGINS TODAY, JANUARY 11TH, AND THE WSLC HAD SOME COMMENTS ABOUT IT IN THEIR LEGISLATIVE REPORT JANUARY 8TH

Believe it or not, despite all the doom-and-gloom you've heard about the 2010 session of the State Legislature that begins Monday, and the $2.6 billion projected budget deficit legislators face, not everyone is upset. In fact, there are some who are very excited and view this session as a great opportunity — one they've been waiting on for decades.

Most of us see the devastating, unconscionable harm that another all-cuts budget would cause.

We are the people who value public safety, public health, public schools, public roads, public transit and other public services intended to protect our society's most vulnerable. We are the people (and the children and grandchildren of people) who fought for safety nets for workers who lose their livelihoods due to layoff or injury. We are the people who understand that all these public services cost money. And we believe it would be morally reprehensible to eliminate those services at the precise time they are needed most: during an economic downturn when people are suffering.

But there are those who see this crisis as something else entirely: an opportunity to make more money.
Some of them sit in corporate boardrooms and at the computers of the think tanks they finance. They think sacrifice is for chumps. They know that the best time to increase private profits by cutting wages, benefits and regulatory costs is when unemployment is high, working people are desperate and the government is broke.

They know that blood is in the water in Olympia and there's never been a better time to eliminate government regulation of their businesses. They know it's open season on the unemployment and workers' compensation systems and anything else they declare to be "uncompetitive" or a "job-killer." They know the lure of privatization and its false promises of cost savings have never been more powerful. Their greed and hubris is best exemplified by the fact that, despite this historic budget crisis, they are seeking even more corporate tax breaks — and just might get them.

And then there are the anti-government ideologues, those who want government to either "wither on the vine" or "drown in the bathtub" — depending on how well their anger-management classes are going. They want to starve state programs into ineffectiveness and undermine public confidence in government. They demonize public employees as overpaid bureaucrats who don't deserve their luxurious wages and benefits. They seek to divide us.

The Washington State Labor Council and the rest of the state's union movement understand the importance of unity in the face of this kind of adversity. We will demonstrate that unity by advocating for all working people — unionized or not — and especially the real victims of this recession: the unemployed. We will show unity with public employees, our neighbors who police our streets, put out our fires, teach our children and protect them from abuse, make our jobs safe, tend to our wounds and save our lives. We will advocate for shared sacrifice to preserve necessary state services and our quality of life here in Washington. And that will mean more revenue from all who can afford it, including businesses.

How will we do that? (Thanks for asking.)

WSLC’S LEGISLATIVE AGENDA: JOBS, JOBS, JOBS
The Washington State Labor Council’s 2010 legislative agenda — at both the state and national levels — is focused on jobs, jobs, jobs.

Creating jobs. Retaining jobs. Strengthening jobs.

• The WSLC's agenda includes creating jobs by investing in public infrastructure, environmental clean-up and other emerging green industries; maintaining jobs by eliminating or suspending corporate tax exemptions and avoiding the closures of state institutions that protect public safety and health; and strengthening jobs by empowering more workers to form unions, if they so choose.
• But while we are mindful that quality jobs will lead us out of recession, the WSLC and its more than 500 affiliated unions also recognize the moral imperative of protecting and strengthening the safety nets that the victims of this recession need to survive; we must raise revenue to protect our families’ health and safety; and we must make sure our state is prepared to effectively implement national health care reform.
• And as always, our agenda will include active support for our affiliated unions' individual legislative priorities and support for coalition efforts in such areas as the passage of a Homeowners Bill of Rights and strengthening our public initiative system.

Our detailed legislative agenda is available here: PDF (printable).

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