Organized Labor

Last year, more than 2.8 million workers were victims of mass layoffs or plant closings that should have fallen under the 1988 WARN Act, which requires employers to give workers and communities advance notice before shutting down. But, as a new AFL-CIO report reveals, the plant closing ?has proven severely flawed.?

Numerous reports have concluded that most layoffs are not subject to WARN Act requirements; few employers act in compliance with the law; and penalties for noncompliance are so lax that they do not act as deterrents.

The AFL-CIO report, “The Public Availability of WARN Notices: Lack of Accessibility and Disclosure Calls for Reform,” examines the difficulty in obtaining WARN notice information that can be vital in planning for the economic and jobs impact of a mass layoff or plant closure.

With access to comprehensive and easy-to-use data bases of past layoffs and plant closures, organizations working to increase employment in states can look for trends in past economic dislocations as they chart their paths forward.

We presented the report to the U.S. Department of Labor?s Employment and Training Administration today.

Essentially, the WARN Act requires employers with more than 100 full-time workers to provide 60 days advance notice of a plant closing to local and state officials, the workers and their union.

Community leaders and workers who are given this advance notice can then work to mitigate the effects of the job losses by offering retraining programs, providing social services and working to avoid layoffs altogether.

But nearly each state has its own set of rules and regulations on handling WARN notices, which the report describes as a:

flawed jumble of websites, offices, and email accounts, which organizations and individuals must keep track of to obtain information on economic dislocations across the country.

Most states have Rapid Response Teams to assist employers, workers and communities during a mass layoff or plant closing. But the report  found that in many cases when those coordinators tried to push for easier and more WARN notice public disclosure, the coordinators reported they had:

encountered pressure from businesses and politicians when they tried to push for disclosure on websites.

The report examines states with difficult or flawed disclosure rules and states with best practices and makes a series of recommendations to the Labor Department, including:

• Issuing a regulation, training and employment notice or guidance letter requiring states to forward any WARN notices received to the Department of Labor for inclusion in a centralized, publicly accessible database.
• Developing a standardized format for WARN notices and conducting an educational campaign to encourage adoption of the format in the submission of notices.
• Adopting the best practices described within this report for the handling of WARN information within that centralized database.
• Connecting WARN data to other site-specific employment information using unique, site-specific nine-digit identification numbers.

Click here for a copy of the full report.

AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow Jennifer Angarita contributed to this report.

As Social Security turns 75 years old Aug. 14, the nation’s most successful social program likely will be under attack by the federal budget deficit commission, which, by all accounts, is considering benefits cuts and raising the retirement age.

Today, more than 60 groups, including the AFL-CIO, announced the creation of the coalitionStrengthen Social Security?Don?t Cut It. The group is launching a major mobilization to push back the commission?s phony assertions, backed by the Wall Street spin machine, that claim Social Security is a major component of the budget deficit and is teetering on the brink of disaster.

In a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., the group outlined plans to build support in Congress to fight benefits cuts and press candidates this election to pledge to fight any move to raise the retirement age or privatization scheme. Says Ed Coyle, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans:

The Strengthen Social Security campaign unites everyone here to improve?not weaken?Social Security. We are united against any cuts in benefits, such as increases in the retirement age, and to any form of privatization of Social Security.

We will stand united if the commission calls for any cuts to Social Security. We are launching a major lobbying campaign for Congress to block their recommendations.

Speaking at the press conference, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said that raising the retirement age is:

a benefit cut, plain and simple. It is a cut that is unnecessary and one that Americans can ill-afford.

He also says it unfairly singles out workers in demanding physical occupations,

workers like my father who spent his life in the mines and couldn?t work another day by the time he qualified for Social Security?and those older workers who may no longer be able to find work due to age discrimination.

Social Security benefits are the largest source of retirement income for most retirees. For six of 10 seniors, Social Security represents more than half of their income. In addition, nearly one-half of older unmarried women and widows, and one-third of all beneficiaries, have little other than Social Security and rely on its monthly benefit for 90 percent or more of their retirement income. Says Terry O?Neill, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW):

Social Security is the mainstay for millions of older women. Every year, a major share of the nearly 24 million women age 62 and older who receive benefits are kept out of poverty because of Social Security. Often that monthly Social Security check is their only income.

A new Gallup Poll out today shows that by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, Americans oppose raising the retirement age and, by an even bigger margin, say the best way to strengthen Social Security is to ensure the wealthiest pay their fair share.

Currently, all workers pay the Social Security payroll tax on the first $106,000 of their earnings. Earnings above $106,000 are exempt from the Social Security payroll tax. That means a grocery clerk or warehouse worker pays a bigger chunk of income to Social Security than a hedge fund manager. By a 67 percent to 30 percent margin, the public supports raising the Social Security payroll tax to cover all earnings.

Also taking part in the press conference, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee says the deficit commission is trying to

turn Social Security into a scapegoat for the deficit. Social Security is not the  problem.

Social Security?with a $2.6 trillion surplus projected to grow to $4.3 trillion by 2023?is not the cause of the nation?s deficit. Says O?Neill:

The fiscal commission should address the real causes of the deficit?unfunded wars, irresponsible tax breaks for the wealthiest, and an economic crisis caused by financial regulatory failures.

This fall, says Coyle, coalition members will be ?demanding clear, unequivocal answers from the candidates on where they stand on Social Security.?

As McEntee warns congressional candidates:

If you break promise from 75 years ago, we will hold you accountable. Keep your hands off our Social Security.

In a major profile of Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA/NNU), Bloomberg Businessweek writes:

DeMoro is expert at dishing out political pain with a flourish, a talent that has endeared her to her 86,000 constituents in the California Nurses Association. Under DeMoro’s leadership, the union has recast itself from a special-interest trade group to a consumer and patient advocate that lobbies hard?and volubly?for universal health care and patients’ rights.

“Nurses are the last line of defense for patients,” says DeMoro from a seat in her cactus-filled office at the union’s Oakland headquarters. “This isn’t about just bread-and-butter issues for registered nurses, this is about living in a good and a just society.”

Click here for the full article.

Most recently, CNA/NNU created a crowned and scepter-carrying Queen Meg parody of Meg Whitman, the billionaire former eBay CEO and California Republican gubernatorial candidate, a sharp-elbowed spoof that DeMoro says is a sharp poke at:

the new corporate aristocracy, they’re used to unilateral control, no democracy.

Just hours before Arizona?s controversial anti-immigrant law was to go into effect, a federal judge today blocked one of its most contentious provisions?the requirement that police stop and question anyone they have ?reasonable suspicion? is undocumented.   

The law does not define ?reasonable suspicion,? a fact that many opponents say is a carte blanche for racial profiling.

Earlier this month, the federal government filed suit to block Arizona from implementing the new law, which has drawn heavy criticism from civil rights organizations, immigrant groups, unions and the religious community.     

U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton also blocked provisions of the law making it a crime to fail to apply for or carry alien registration papers or for ?an unauthorized alien to solicit, apply for, or perform work,? and a provision ?authorizing the warrantless arrest of a person? if there is reason to believe he or she might be subject to deportation.

Arizona is expected to appeal the temporary injunction ruling, however, and most observers believe the case is eventually going to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a statement the Justice Department said the court ?ruled correctly.?

While we understand the frustration of Arizonans with the broken immigration system, a patchwork of state and local policies would seriously disrupt federal immigration enforcement and would ultimately be counterproductive.

When the suit was filed, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said:

The solution to our broken immigration system must protect all workers and provide a fair path toward citizenship for undocumented workers already living and working in the United States. It must address the unique circumstances faced by undocumented students who were brought to the United States by their parents long ago. It must include an independent commission to determine our society?s genuine need for more workers that does not afford employers a steady stream of exploitable labor. And it must include a mechanism to ensure that employers are held accountable when they break the law.

Yesterday, we reported that the nation?s biggest health insurers are ?sparing no expense to weaken? the new health care reform law by lobbying the state regulators who are writing new regulations to ensure consumers? premium dollars are spent on real medical care.

Today, a new report from the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) reveals the same insurance giants are discussing forming a $20 million, ?nonprofit? front group to influence regulations, sway voters and back industry-friendly candidates.

The companies, according to CPI, are Aetna Inc., Cigna Corp., Humana Inc., United HealthCare Inc. and WellPoint Inc. Sources told CPI they:

expect millions of dollars will be pumped into issue advertising in a number of races where candidates sympathetic to health industry concerns have a shot at winning?.Overall, the insurers are expected to focus on swaying about two dozen close House contests, says one source.

Keep in mind that during the health care debate there was near unanimous Republican opposition to the bill and the strong insurance reforms the industry is now fighting. Senate and House Republican leaders have marked repeal of health care reform as a top item on their agenda if they win back control of Congress.

During last year?s contentious health care debate in Congress, writes CPI:

these same five insurers?teamed up to channel between $10 million and $20 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to underwrite a negative advertising drive to block the legislation.

The front group under discussion would be what is known as a 501(c)(4) group, which, says CPI:

is legally allowed to engage in lobbying and election-related work. Donors to this type of nonprofit don?t have to be publicly disclosed.

Click here for more on the industry?s drive to weaken new health insurance rules and here for a report from Health Care for America Now!

It?s not quite as scary as looking up and seeing Godzilla lurking over the city skyline, but a two-story-tall Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) staring down from the side of a downtown Louisville office building caused a few surprised gasps Monday night.

In a bit of guerilla theater, AFSCME projected a 30-second silent video reminding passers-by about McConnell?s role as chief architect of the Republican?s obstructionist battle plan. The Party of No’s obstructionist tactics cost more than 2.5 million long-term jobless workers their unemployment insurance (UI) and blocked aid to state and local governments that would save or create nearly a million jobs for teachers, public employees, police officers, firefighters and others.

AFSCME chose Louisville because McConnell was there to speak before the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). The group had just released a report that said without federal aid, more than half the nation?s states will see their budget shortfalls grow by as much as $72 billion next fiscal year, forcing cuts in vital services and jobs to make up for the shortfalls.

McConnell’s words of advice to the state legislators desperately scrambling to keep their budgets afloat? He was opposed to further federal stimulus help for the states and, in a nutshell, told state lawmakers: Get used to it?you all have been spoiled for years by federal funds.

Along with the video that was moved about and was projected on several buildings, AFSCME took out a full-page ad (click here) in the Louisville Courier-Journal telling McConnell, ?It?s Time to End the Obstruction,? and highlighting editorials from around the country calling on Congress to approve badly needed federal aid for cash-strapped states.

Mine operators around the country, like Massey Energy, owner of the deadly Upper Big Branch coal mine where 29 miners were killed in April, routinely escape tougher enforcement by appealing serious safety violations to a federal agency that’s bogged down with a 17,000-case backlog.

It can take the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission (FMSHRC) more than two years before it finally adjudicates a case. During the appeals process, operators like Massey with troubling safety records avoid being placed under a stricter safety watch because of their pattern of violations.

Last night, as part of an emergency supplemental funding bill, the U.S. House approved $22 million for FMSHRC and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to reduce the backlog of appeals. Says Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the Education and Labor Committee:

It is clear that the seemingly indiscriminate appeals of nearly every significant safety violation by some mine operators are undermining important enforcement tools and putting miners? lives at risk. This additional funding approved today will reverse a backlog that has been allowed to pile up since the Bush administration and is a step in the right direction in holding some of our most dangerous mine operators accountable.

Miller says it takes an average of 30 months to adjudicate a contested violation. In a preliminary report on the Upper Big Branch blast, MSHA says that Massey ?contested the majority of its serious violation citations? that could have led to putting the mine under the tougher safety watch before the April 5 explosion.

From 2009 through March this year, MSHA inspectors cited the Upper Big Branch mine for more than 600 safety violations, nearly 40 percent  of which were classified as ?significant and substantial.? Also the Massey mine?s rate for repeated serious violations was 19 times higher than the national average, according to the report. But because Massey appealed the serious violations, it was able to avoid the stricter enforcement and inspections that a pattern of violations finding triggers.

The Senate already approved the bill and President Obama will sign it.

After spending tens of millions of dollars trying to kill the new health care reform law, the nation?s big health insurance companies now, says Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), are:

sparing no expense to weaken this new law and the protection it promises to America?s consumers.

According to a new report by the coalition Health Care for America Now (HCAN), big insurers are trying to gut proposed new rules that require they spend a certain amount of premium dollars on actual medical care, not wasteful administration, marketing or executive pay and bonuses.

The medical care cost benchmark under the Affordable Health Care for America Act is known as the medical-loss ratio (MLR). It is set at a minimum of 80 percent of premiums for individual and small employer plans and 85 percent of premiums for large employer plans. Insurers that fail to meet those MLRs must rebate the difference to enrollees.

The new MLR rules are being established by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), which is made up of insurance regulators from the states. According to the HCAN report, the America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association and their member insurers:

want to redefine MLRs by pressuring the NAIC to give insurers vast discretion over what expenses they may classify as clinical and administrative costs. Already, Wellpoint Inc., the nation’s largest private health insurer by enrollment, has reclassified $500 million in administrative costs as medical expenses.

Rockefeller says the insurance industry is ?furiously lobbying? the NAIC to write the new rules in a way that will:

allow them to do business as they did before the passage of health reform. The resources health insurance companies are throwing into the effort to weaken the medical loss ratio appear almost endless.

On HCAN?s The Now! Blog, HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome writes:

The definition of “medical care” is at the core of this fight….So they want to change the definition of “medical care” to include things that aren’t medical care and that have never been considered as such. And the insurance companies are shameless in just how far they will go. They really are trying to have “underwriting,” the process by which sick people are weeded out of eligibility for coverage, defined as a medical expense! Along with claims processing, call centers and other expenses that aren’t about the actual delivery of care.

According to the report, if the new law had been on the books in 2009, the six largest for-profit health insurance companies would have been required to refund $1.9 billion for that year alone. That would have represented only a fraction of their massive profits. The top five for-profit health insurers alone recorded $12.2 billion in profits in 2009.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who helped write the medical cost requirements into the bill, says health care reform:

will bring coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans, which will bring lots of new business to private insurers. We need strong regulations for medical-loss ratios so Americans can be confident that they’re getting value for their premium dollars.

BP CEO got a golden parachute. These Gulf pelicans weren’t so lucky.

When most of us screw up big time, we pay for it, instead of getting paid for it. If it was the other way around, I?d be a rich man, sort of like ousted BP CEO Tony Hayward who is finally getting his life back. He is also the latest example of what seems to be the new corporate game of ?fail big, win big.?

Hayward, who whined about the time and toll the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster was taking on his life, is walking away with a tidy severance check of $1.6 million, a pension of more than $16 million and a chance to cash in on BP stocks that, if the company?s share price recovers from its recent battering, could mean millions more, according to news reports.

Hayward?s platinum parachute is nowhere near the biggest prize for recent corporate failures. Remember the Big Banks?who can really forget?that blew up the nation?s economy and racked up hundreds of billions of dollars in losses and even more in jobs destroyed and lives shattered?

Last week, a new report found that at the depths of the financial meltdown in late 2008, a group of 17 banks that pocketed money from the Bush Big Bank Bailout fund paid out more than $1.6 billion in unmerited and undeserved bonuses to the executives, hedge fund managers and traders who were at the controls when the economy crashed and burned.

The report by Kenneth Feinberg, appointed by the Obama administration to examine executive pay at firms that received bailout funds, cited Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, AIG and several others for the lavish bonuses.

The Feinberg report follows last year?s findings by  New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that nine of the ?too big to fail? banks and institutions that posted $81 billion in 2008 losses before going on the federal bailout dole, paid out $1 million-plus 2008 bonuses to more than 5,000 of their traders and bankers. Talk about pay for non-performance.

If you?re a Big Oil CEO, Big Bank exec, or corporate chief who screws up major big time, eh, don?t worry. No problem. No consequences. Here?s a little something to get you through the hard times.

But for the rest of us, it?s ?pack up your things and don?t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out.?

A new report from the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) warns that if Congress does not extend Medicaid assistance to help states operate the low-income health care program, the states? budget crises and budget gaps will grow even larger.

The Medicaid funding assistance program, known as FMAP, was originally included in legislation to extend unemployment insurance (UI) benefits for the long-term jobless that Senate Republicans blocked for more than two months. The filibuster against the UI bill was finally broken last week, but the Medicaid money was not included in the bill.

After passage of the extended UI bill, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee said:

Republicans continue to block emergency aid for state and local governments, funding that the majority of U.S. governors have specifically requested, and almost half have factored into their state budgets. Without this funding, nearly a million more jobs will be lost in the private and public sectors.

The NCSL report shows that at least 25 states assumed an extension of the enhanced FMAP funding for their 2011 budgets. Without it, according to the report, budget gaps could grow by more than $12 billion in the current fiscal year and as much as $72 billion next fiscal year, forcing cuts in vital services and jobs to make up for the shortfalls.

Corina Eckl, NCSL?s fiscal program director, says while there are some signs of economic recovery:

[G]limmers of improvement are tarnished by looming problems. States are in a tenuous fiscal position, teetering between delicate revenue improvement and the end of the federal stimulus.