Labor & Employment Law

Trenton Voters Say ?No? to Private Water

Posted on June 16, 2010
Union and community activists in Trenton, N.J., rallied voters with door-to-door campaigning to beat back the New Jersey American Water Company’s nearly $250,000 advertising and mail blitz to privatize a prized and profitable part of the city’s water system...

Longview, Wash., Workers Rally for Good Jobs Now

Posted on June 16, 2010
       The economic recovery is barely creating enough jobs to keep up with growth in the U.S. workforce, much less to make a dent in the 11 million jobs lost during the recession. In Longview, Wash., more than 120 workers and union supporters marched and rallied last week to demand Good Jobs Now...

Global Union Leaders: Focus on Jobs, Not Deficits

Posted on June 16, 2010
      Global union leaders called on G-20 governments  to deliver the promise made at the Pittsburgh summit to “put quality employment at the heart of the recovery” and focus on creating jobs in the short term to sustain the recovery and reduce public deficits in the medium term...

America?s Toilet Paper Economy

Posted on June 16, 2010
      The pundit class is so desperate to put a happy spin on the nation’s faltering economy they have resorted to this: toilet paper. Forget tea leaves. Now we are told the state of the economy can be divined by the shift in consumer purchases from one-ply to two-ply?and even three-ply!?toilet paper...

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Union Voice Can Help Prevent Future Gulf Oil Disasters

Posted on June 15, 2010
SIU Gulf Coast Vice President Dean Corgey. Dean Corgey has spent nearly 40 years in the maritime industry, from 1973 when he shipped out of Houston after graduating from the Seafarers (SIU) training program, until today, when he serves as SIU vice president for the Gulf Coast region...

Alliance, IUPAT Members Ask Obama About Health Care Reform

Posted on June 15, 2010
Barbara Franklin was worried that under the new health care reform law, seniors who receive their Medicare coverage from the privately-run Medicare Advantage program would see their coverage and benefits reduced because the law eliminates some government subsidies the private insurers receive...

Greed Behind BP, Mine Disasters

Posted on June 15, 2010
United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo W. Gerard and Mine Workers (UMWA) Cecil Roberts take on the root of all evil behind the nation’s disasters in this crosspost from the Campaign for America. As oil mucked the Gulf of Mexico and families mourned 11 dead rig workers, BP officials proclaimed that the corporation?s priority always was safety...

Jobs Bill: Action Needed Now

Posted on June 14, 2010
As the U.S. Senate considers a much-needed jobs bill with no certain date for a vote, the AFL-CIO union movement continues to push lawmakers to put the needs of workers and the economy before concerns over the nation’s budget deficit. Of the nation’s 15 million jobless workers, 6...

Protestors Demand Fair Deals at Hyatt Hotels

Posted on June 14, 2010
      Hundreds of hotel workers and community allies protested in front of Hyatt’s first annual shareholder meeting last week in Chicago and in simultaneous demonstrations in Vancouver, Honolulu, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The protesters are outraged that despite increases in the hotel chain’s revenue and share prices, Hyatt is cutting  staff and squeezing workers with more work and lower pay...

Temple Nurses Win Again: Hospital Must Pay Unemployment Costs

Posted on June 14, 2010
    After 28 days on strike, Temple nurses ratified a new contract in April.         Not only did Temple University Hospital nurses win a new contract after a 28-day strike in May, the workers now will receive $1.5 million in unemployment compensation?and Temple will have to foot the bill...

440 Spirit Airlines Pilots on Strike?and More Bargaining News

Posted on June 14, 2010
Some 440 pilots at Spirit Airlines, members of Air Line Pilots, are on strike, and more news from the “Bargaining Digest Weekly.” The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily, bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 1,200 subscribers...

Young Workers Call for More Communication, Larger Role in Unions

Posted on June 14, 2010
       The more than 400 participants in the Next Up conference, the AFL-CIO’s first-ever Young Workers Summit, developed a game plan for the future that focuses on making sure young union leaders and activists are taken seriously and their ideas are heard at all levels of the union movement...

Building Star Can Create 185,000 Green Jobs This Year

Posted on June 13, 2010
In the current recession, no sector has been harder hit than the construction industry, which has lost more than 2 million jobs.  The unemployment rate in the construction industry is a staggering 27 percent, almost triple the overall unemployment rate...

Next Up with Lee Camp and Jeremy Redleaf

Posted on June 13, 2010
            The 400-some participants at the first-ever AFL-CIO Young Worker Summit were hard at work all weekend, sharing their ideas with us and with each other as they strategized ways to move the union movement forward. But they also had fun...

Young Workers Summit: NFL Players Call for Union Solidarity

Posted on June 12, 2010
When an offensive or defensive line of a football team stands shoulder-to-shoulder, it is almost impossible to move it. Today, two National Football League (NFL) players came to the AFL-CIO Young Workers Summit to invite their fellow union members to stand with them in one of the toughest battles they face on or off the field...

Live! Young Workers Summit

Posted on June 11, 2010
    We are live tweeting the first-ever AFL-CIO Young Workers Suimmit. More than 400 young workers union workers and activists are in Washington, D.C., for the  conference. These are the men and women who are “Next Up” to lead the union movement...

New Info on Health Care Reform Law Available From HHS

Posted on June 11, 2010
The Department of Health and Human Services has updated several websites and links for people looking for information on the new health care reform law, or, more formally, the Affordable Care Act. For a look at this week’s town hall meeting with seniors, President Obama and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, click here, and click here for information on the impact of health care reform and the deficit...

Young Workers, AFL-CIO Leaders Build for Future at Summit

Posted on June 11, 2010
   The best person to reach out to, communicate with and educate people about the union movement, is “a passionate, militant, committed union member…[and] someone who looks like you,” said a young Communications Workers of America (CWA) member during a question and answer session at the opening of the AFL-CIO’s Young Workers Summit this morning...

Minnesota Nurses Stage 24-Hour Strike for Patient Safety

Posted on June 11, 2010
      Workday Minnesota editor Barb Kucera sends this account of yesterday’s one-day strike by 12,000 Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) nurses over patient care issues in contract negotiations. In California, a similar strike by some 13, 000 California Nurses Association (CNA) nurses was blocked by a court order...

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

Posted on June 10, 2010
      Forty-seven years after President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, women still are not being paid the same as men for equivalent work. On average, women earn about 78 cents for every dollar earned by men. For women of color, African American women and Latinas, the gap is even wider...

Japan Moves Closer to Clean Energy Standards

Posted on June 10, 2010
AFL-CIO Union Industries Director Bob Baugh is a member of a global union delegation, led by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), attending the next round of the United Nations climate change negotiations in Bonn, Germany. This is the third of a series of blogs on the talks...

Union Summer Interns Anxious to Learn How to Create Change

Posted on June 10, 2010
    More than 40 college students and graduates are participating in this year’s Union Summer for Jobs program.         More than 40 Union Summer for Jobs interns will spread out across the country next week to gain an education in how to mobilize workers and how to play a role in restoring jobs lost during the economic collapse...

Join First-Ever Young Workers Summit Live

Posted on June 10, 2010
       This evening, more than 400 young workers, including 40 Union Summer interns, will kick off the first-ever national AFL-CIO Young Workers Summit in Washington, D.C. From the opening session until the conference ends June 13, union workers and activists?those who are “Next Up” to lead the union movement?will share with one another and with AFL-CIO leaders their concerns, skills and visions about young people’s role in the union movement and the movement’s future...

Follow the AFL-CIO Young Workers Summit Live

Posted on June 09, 2010
      We’re just a day away from the first-ever national AFL-CIO Young Workers Summit. More than 400 young workers?including 40 Union Summer interns?will be in Washington, D.C., for the June 10-13 conference. The union workers and activists under 35 are the men and women who are “Next Up” to lead the union movement...

Sandbags, Oil Spills and Wall Street

Posted on June 09, 2010
Denise Bowyer draws an interesting parallel between the nation’s financial collapse and BP’s disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Bowyer is vice president the American Income Life Insurance Co. (AIL) and secretary of the company’s labor advisory board...

Survey Finds Support for Jobless Benefits Outweighs Deficit Concerns

Posted on June 09, 2010
Nearly three-quarters of voters say extending unemployment insurance (UI) and COBRA health care benefits that Congress allowed to expire last month is more important than reducing the deficit, according to a new poll. The survey, by Hart Research Associates, says 74 percent of the public believes it is too soon for Congress to cut back UI and COBRA benefits...

AFL-CIO Condemns Attacks on Mexican Miners

Posted on June 09, 2010
    Members of the United Steelworkers and supporters protested Mexican President Felipe Calderon?s visit to Washington, D.C. last month.         The AFL-CIO today strongly condemned the violent federal assaults against striking miners and their families at Grupo Mexico’s Cananea and Pasta de Conchos mines in Mexico...

Survey: 101 Union Members Killed in 2009

Posted on June 09, 2010
       Some 101 trade unionists were murdered last year, a dramatic 30 percent increase over the previous year, according to the International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC’s) Annual Survey of Trade Union Rights. The survey, released today, also reveals increased attacks on basic workers’ rights around the world as the impact of the global economic crisis worsens...

Community Programs Offer New Vision for America

Posted on June 09, 2010
    Angela Glover Blackwell         Joan Fitzgerald         Gar Alperovitz     In 2008, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor joined with the Teamsters, the city administration and the Port of Los Angeles to create the innovative Clean Truck Program to combat the toxic emissions that had caused spikes in asthma, cancer and mortality rates among children, truck drivers, the elderly, dockworkers and residents near Southern California’s transportation corridors...

Halter Falls Short in Arkansas; Billionaire Whitman Buys California Win

Posted on June 09, 2010
In the Arkansas Democratic Senate primary runoff yesterday, working families came within a few thousand votes of unseating a two-term incumbent. Meanwhile, in California, this fall’s governor’s race will pit Main Street vs. Wall Street following yesterday’s primary elections...

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