Labor & Employment Law

New H-2B Wage Rules an Improvement, But Delay Hurts Workers

Posted on January 18, 2011
The Obama administration today announced a new rule on how the wage rates employers must pay to H-2B temporary foreign workers will be calculated. But the new rule does not take effect until 2012. The H-2B visa program allows employers to hire temporary workers from foreign countries for jobs they say they can find no qualified or willing American workers to do...

Trumka Speech to Unveil Working Family Vision for Economy

Posted on January 18, 2011
Tomorrow, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will detail the choices elected leaders across the country are facing and outline working people?s vision for the future of the American economy when he delivers a major speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D...

Health Reform Repeal Would Hurt ?Regular Joe Blow,? Not Lawmakers

Posted on January 18, 2011
       Every October, Anita?s parents fall into the Medicare prescription drug donut hole, and some of their medications cost $30 per pill. The new health care reform law already has begun to close that gap in coverage and eventually will eliminate it all together...

Republican Health Care Repeal Threatens Coverage for 129 Million

Posted on January 18, 2011
       If  the new health care reform law is repealed?and today, Republican lawmakers are taking their first step toward repeal?more than 129 million Americans would be put at risk of  losing their health insurance. A new study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) estimates that as many as  half of Americans younger than 65 have pre-existing conditions such as high blood pressure, asthma, cancer or other chronic health conditions...

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King?s Legacy: Fighting for Economic Justice

Posted on January 17, 2011
In his latest book, All Labor Has Dignity, historian Michael Honey brings together 16 of Martin Luther King Jr.?s speeches on economic justice, many of them unpublished until now. Honey, a professor at the University of Washington Tacoma, edited the speeches and wrote an introduction for the book...

Guide Offers Lessons from Nation?s First Paid Family Leave Program

Posted on January 16, 2011
       As more states consider offering paid family leave, state legislators would do well to check out a new guide released last week that offers a primer on the nation?s first paid family leave program, implemented six years ago in California...

S.F. Mime Troupe Talks Union?Really?and Sings and Dances, Too

Posted on January 15, 2011
      Let?s get one thing out of the way right off the bat?contrary to popular belief, mimes can talk. The silent mime we?re all accustomed to is just one form of the ancient theater art. Not only do mimes talk, they sing and dance in the legendary San Francisco Mime Troupe?s ?Posibilidad, or Death of the Worker...

Hundreds Support Ohio Home Care Workers? Right to Bargain

Posted on January 14, 2011
   Ohio’s Gov. John Kasich and his allies are attempting to blame and punish low-income workers for the state of the economy. Ohio Field Communications Coordinator Andrew Richards reports on a candlelight march and rally in support of the workers’ right to bargain...

NLRB: Federal Law Pre-Empts State Secret-Ballot Amendments

Posted on January 14, 2011
Today, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) took steps to enforce workers? rights as guaranteed by U.S. law. The board advised the attorneys general of Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah that so-called secret ballot amendments to their state constitutions are pre-empted by the National Labor Relations Act, which offers workers two paths to choosing a union...

Wage Theft: The Crime Wave Nobody Talks About

Posted on January 14, 2011
       Every day across the country, millions of workers in low-wage jobs are being robbed of billions of dollars they are owed by their employers. A new video by Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) shows how the practice of wage theft is a national epidemic no one is paying attention to...

Martin Luther King Jr. Gave His Life Supporting Workers? Rights

Posted on January 14, 2011
Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday we celebrate this weekend, died fighting for the freedom of Memphis sanitation workers to form a union with AFSCME. For King, economic justice went hand in hand with civil rights and the right to join a union was critical to gaining economic justice...

Senator Claims U.S. Child Labor Laws Unconstitutional

Posted on January 14, 2011
Children working in factories, picking crops and hauling lumber on construction sites is a vision Mike Lee, the Republican senator from Utah, apparently wants to make a reality again in the United States. In a lecture on his YouTube channel, Lee explains in great detail why he believes U...

King Day Gathering Challenges Ohio Gov. Kasich?s Attacks on Workers

Posted on January 14, 2011
//       When Teresa Laws takes the bullhorn this evening, she will raise her voice to speak out for some of our most vulnerable citizens: children and those who need constant home care. Laws will be one of  the speakers when more than 400 union and civil rights activists gather at Cincinnati?s City Hall to condemn Republican Gov...

Wisconsin Activists Ask: Where Are the Jobs in Gov. Walker?s Tort Reform

Posted on January 13, 2011
Across the country, newly elected Republican governors and state legislatures are trying to gut pro-worker, consumer and workplace safety laws and pass new legislation to weaken workers? and consumers’ rights. Wisconsin AFL-CIO field communications coordinator Karen Hickey sends this report on a recent hearing on the so-called tort reform bill...

UAW Pushing Foreign Companies with U.S. Plants to Allow Union Votes

Posted on January 13, 2011
Companies that do not allow union elections violate human rights, said Bob King, president of the UAW, which is talking with some foreign auto companies that have plants in the United States about a set of principles aimed at ensuring fair elections. Such principles are necessary, King said, because National Labor Relations Board procedures are outdated and allow companies to intimidate workers and spread misinformation...

Banks Foreclosed on a Million Homes Last Year

Posted on January 13, 2011
       Rather than helping working people to save their homes, banks foreclosed on more than 1 million properties last year, which will slow the economic recovery and obstruct job growth, especially in construction.  As NPR?s Jacob Goldstein reports: …repossessed houses tend to sell at a discount, and this backlog is likely to keep housing prices down...

Vote Now to Press China on Currency Manipulation

Posted on January 13, 2011
  Ahead of President Obama?s meeting next week with China?s President Hu Jintao, the Washington Post is asking readers whether the White House should press Hu on China?s currency manipulation. The answer is an emphatic, “Yes!”    The Chinese government keeps its currency low, which artificially reduces the prices of its exports, creates a huge trade deficit for the United States and costs millions of American jobs...

Biz Leader Says Health Care Repeal Would Leave Us ?Worse Off?

Posted on January 13, 2011
      Be careful what you wish for, it might come true?with lots of bad consequences.  The leader of a Big Business group says CEOs and other corporate leaders joining the Republican call for the repeal of health care reform should heed that warning...

Solidarity in Action: Supporting Haitian Workers After the Earthquake

Posted on January 12, 2011
    Solidarity Center Country Program Director Alex Aleman outlines response strategies during a meeting with Haitian labor leaders.         This is a cross-post from the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center. One year ago, a massive earthquake shattered Haiti, violently disrupting the lives of more than 1 million people and killing more than 200,000...

Register Now for the 2011 Good Jobs, Green Jobs National Conference

Posted on January 12, 2011
      Register now for the 2011 Good Jobs, Green Jobs National Conference, Feb. 8?10 in Washington, D.C. With unemployment above 9.0 percent for more than 20 months, thousands of union, environmental, business, community and elected leaders will discuss how to create millions of good green jobs across the United States...

California?s Paid Family Leave Law Is Working, New Study Finds

Posted on January 12, 2011
California?s paid family leave law ?has been remarkably successful? and received high marks from both employers and workers, according to a new study released yesterday by researchers from UCLA/City University of New York (CUNY) and the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR)...

Candlelight March to Save Collective Bargaining to Highlight King Day Celebration

Posted on January 12, 2011
    Martin Luther King Jr. addresses striking sanitation workers in April 1968, the day before he was killed in Memphis.         More than 400 union and civil rights activists will march to Cincinnati?s City Hall Jan. 14 to condemn the plan recently elected Gov...

Bad Omens on the Eve of U.S.-China Chat

Posted on January 12, 2011
       Several disturbing items out now as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner gets set to meet next week with Chinese President Hu Jintao. At a time when our nation has a massive jobs deficit and an urgent need to catch up with other nations that are moving ahead of the United States in green industries, the Alliance for American Manufacturing notes today that Evergreen Solar, a maker of solar panels in Devens, Mass...

Freelancers Gain Union Recognition with WGAE

Posted on January 12, 2011
The Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) has brought union representation to a growing group of workers who do not fit the traditional union model: freelance writers and producers who work on nonfiction TV shows. WGAE won two tough National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) elections covering 150 workers at ITV Studios and Atlas Media, companies that contract workers for such popular nonfiction TV shows as “Dr...

AT&T?Not Verizon?Is Place to Shop for iPhones

Posted on January 12, 2011
      Jennifer Wright Dorr at Union Plus sends this latest news on the iPhone and AT&T. The big tech news in the past few days is that Verizon will begin selling the much-sought-after Apple iPhone?at least for those with phone envy?in February...

House Republican Says Health Care for Me, None for You

Posted on January 11, 2011
      While House Republicans have put a vote on health care reform repeal on hold in the wake of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of six others in Tucson Saturday, they haven?t backed off their threat to repeal a law that eventually will provide health coverage for 30 million people...

Labor History Made Easy Thanks to Pennsylvania AFL-CIO

Posted on January 11, 2011
In less than 2 minutes, the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO has provided a wonderfully entertaining history of the union movement in a fun and easy to understand animated video. It?s something for adults and kids. Hats off to President Rick Bloomingdale, Secretary-Treasurer Frank Snyder and the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO Communications Team of Jim Deegan and Karen Gownley for the clever and informative production...

California Nurses Win Improvements in Tentative Kaiser Deal

Posted on January 11, 2011
The California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA/NNU) reached a tentative agreement with Kaiser Permanente. today. The three-year contract includes more than 20 important professional and economic enhancements and, significantly, no reductions in patient care protections or economic or professional practice standards, according to the union...

Low Wages Are Recession?s Ugly Trademark

Posted on January 11, 2011
Wages have fallen lower and stayed low longer in this recession than in any time since the Depression. With unemployment at 9 percent or better for 20 months and likely to stay that way for a while, wages will continue to drop. Even the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) admits that wages for working people are heading down...

10 States Fail to Act to Qualify for Long-Term Jobless Aid

Posted on January 11, 2011
In a bitter battle late last year, Republicans in Congress filibustered an extension of the emergency unemployment insurance (UI) program for more than 1.4 million long-term jobless workers?and they didn’t approve the bill until they won an extension of Bush tax cuts for the rich...

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