Organized Labor

On this week?s episode of ?Brotherhood Outdoors,? Lee Hengsteler, a member of Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA) Local 359 in Arizona, gets to realize a dream he?s had since he was 6 years old:  He heads to Montana to hunt elk.

The show airs on the Sportsman Channel at 8 p.m. EST and PST every Thursday.

His bow hunting expedition was made possible when his wife, Neva, applied to the show on his behalf. Says Hengsteler:

People like me don?t win things like a guest shot on a nationally televised show, but Neva insisted on applying for me. I have one heck of a wife.

The award-winning “Brotherhood Outdoors,” Union Sportsmen?s Alliance?s (USA‘s) hunting and fishing series pairs union members with renowned outdoorsman Tom Ackerman for a guided hunting or fishing trip in North America or the opportunity to show off their skills by taking Ackerman to their own favorite hunting or fishing sites.

You can click here to apply to be a guest on “Brotherhood Outdoors.” Says Hengsteler:

Tell all those union men and women out there to apply for a guest shot on “Brotherhood Outdoors,” and tell them they can win. I?m just a normal blue-collar working guy, and I won, thanks to my wife.

Click here for more photos form his elk hunt and here for more on the hunt.

Wednesday marked the six-month anniversary of America Crystal Sugar Co.?s lockout of 1,300 workers and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) told the U.S. House: ?It?s time for the company to negotiate.?

In a speech on the House floor, Ellison said the workers, members of Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Local 167G at plant sin Minnesota, North Dakota and Iowa, have been

denied the basic and most fundamental right to work and support their families. These workers have gone to bat for the company. These workers stood shoulder to should with the company to fight for a better sugar program in the farm bill just because that?s how dedicated they. What have they got in return? They?ve gotten locked out. They are not on strike. They are locked out because they refuse to accept an unfair take it or leave contract. They have been locked even though they have agreed to a no-strike guarantee.  It?s wrong, these 1,300 folks deserve better from this company.

Locked out worker Jay Holter told Steve Share, editor of Minneapolis Labor Review,

We?ve given the best we?ve got to this company and this is how we are treated. It?s probably only a year and a half ago the company gave us shirts that said, ?You?re the best at what you do.?

Click here for Share?s full update on the lockout.

Not that we ever believed right-wing lawmakers in the first place. But the cover’s been blown on all who claim that the extremist bills they introduce?uncannily similar from state to state?are the works of their own fertile but twisted minds.

They fervently deny that the legislation designed to strip workers of their rights, voters of their franchise, bust unions and boost corporate profits and power are handouts from the American Legislative Exchange Council?s (ALEC’s) corporate power toolkit.

Click here to take a look at a bill introduced last fall by Florida state Rep. Rachel Burgin (R) to reduce corporate taxes. Notice the second paragraph, ?Whereas is the mission of the American Legislative Exchange Council?.? That?s right ALEC?s mission statement is smack dab near the top of Burgin?s measure.

The next day Burgin apparently realized she had left the smoking gun at the scene and withdrew the bill only to reintroduce it later with ALEC?s mission statement removed. H/t to Common Cause for uncovering the deception.

In response to protests by foreign students exploited in a factory subcontracted by the Hershey Company and advocacy by the AFL-CIO and our allies, this week the U.S. State Department announced that it will make major revisions to a guest-worker and cultural exchange visa program and barred participation by a major player in the program, the Council for Educational Travel, USA (CETUSA).

Harika Duygu Ozer, one of the students involved in the protest, told the New York Times:

I hope this sends a clear message to other recruiters like CETUSA, that we will not be your captive workers.

As we reported last summer, students recruited for a cultural exchange program found themselves instead all but indentured to a factory in Palmyra, Penn., where they were made to perform dangerous work loading Hershey products with no safety protection for less than the minimum wage. In addition, the students stayed in housing provided by the Hershey contractor, for which it overcharged. Rents were deducted from the students’ pay.

In August, the students staged a sit-in at the factory to protest their working conditions and pay abuses by the Hershey subcontractor, Excel Logistics. Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President Rick Bloomingdale was arrested for taking part in the sit-in.

Working with Jobs with Justice and the National Guestworker Alliance, the student protesters’ actions led to a State Department investigation that found widespread abuses of a program that was designed to be a cultural exchange for students from abroad. Students who take part in the Summer Work Travel (SWT) program are admitted on a J-1 visa.

In a statement issued by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) on Thursday, EPI Vice President Ross Eisenbrey and Immigration Policy Analyst Daniel Costa wrote:

Our research has shown that corporations and labor recruiters like CETUSA are using the J-1 visa Exchange Visitor Program?and especially the SWT program, which admitted 132,000 workers last year?to avoid hiring unemployed U.S. workers and paying state and federal payroll taxes. In Pennsylvania, a state with a 7.6 percent unemployment rate, scarce jobs in rural areas (such as Palmyra, the site of the Hershey plant) should first be offered to local unemployed workers. In addition, the use of subcontractors as a way to keep employees from unionizing should be banned. The Hershey Company has successfully used the J-1 program as a way to diminish the bargaining power of its workers.

As urged by the AFL-CIO in its public comments on the SWT, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Rick Ruth announced that the list of jobs prohibited for exchange students traveling on a J-1 visa would be expanded to include construction, roofing and most industrial work.

But scrutiny of the Summer Work Travel program won’t end there. An investigation by the Associated Press also found SWT students pressed into service in the sex industry.

Read more about the student sit-in at Hershey’s Excel plant here and here.

Spreading the work here from our friends at LabourStart, who sent this action request (and plug for its conference this year).

They’re calling it the “uprising of the invisible.”

Cleaning workers in the Netherlands have been on strike for 30 days and have now asked for international solidarity. They’ve created an online campaign on LabourStart which needs your help.

It will take you just one minute to tell their employers?and their employers’ clients?that it’s time to show these workers some respect, and to reach agreement to end the strike.

Please send off your message here today and spread the word.

And one more thing?.

We’ve just announced the dates for the third annual LabourStart Global Solidarity Conference, to be held in Sydney, Australia, from Nov. 26-29 2012. To learn more and show your interest in attending, please visit the Event page on Facebook.

Click on chart to enlarge.

The nation?s unemployment rate in January fell to 8.3 percent, down from December?s 8.5 percent, and the economy added 243,000 jobs, according to the latest figures released this morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The nation?s unemployment rate continues it steady decline, dropping by 0.8 percentage points since August and to the lowest point since February 2009. The number of jobless workers dropped to 12.8 million, down from December?s 13.1 million. But the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 5.5 million, about 42.9 percent of the unemployed.

The unemployment insurance program for the nation?s jobless workers expires Feb. 29.  A conference is now under way between the Senate and House over two very different one-year extensions of the UI program passed late last year, and the Republican bill would slash federal benefits, impose harsh new restrictions and move to dismantle the essential lifeline of unemployment insurance. Click here for details.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says, ?The seeds of sustainable job growth are clearly present?if Republicans in Congress do not succeed in weakening the recovery.?

Republican leaders, who are admittedly unconcerned with the poor and still pressing for ill-timed austerity in Washington and state capitals, run a very real risk of putting this incipient recovery at risk. President Obama, by contrast, has laid out a comprehensive agenda for job creation and broadly shared prosperity, rather than wealth for a few.

Private-sector jobs grew by 257,000, and government employment was essentially unchanged, but over the past 12 months 276,000 public employee jobs have been lost.

In January, professional and business services add about 70,000 jobs. The leisure and hospitality industry added 44,000 jobs and health care jobs grew by 31,000.

Manufacturing saw an increase of 50,000 jobs, mostly in durable goods, and the construction industry added 21,000 jobs.  There were 10,000 new jobs in the mining industry in January.

The unemployment rates for adult men (7.7 percent) and African Americans (13.6 percent) declined in January. The unemployment rates for adult women (7.7 percent), teenagers (23.2 percent), whites (7.4 percent) and Hispanics (10.5 percent) were little changed.

Economic Policy Institute (EPI) economist Heidi Shierholz says today?s figures show ?a labor market where all the moving parts seemed to be moving in a solidly good direction.?

Strong payroll employment growth was matched by a falling unemployment rate, strong employment growth in the household survey and a growing share of the population with jobs?.It?s important to keep this growth in context, however?the jobs deficit is so large that even at January?s growth rate, it would still take until 2019 to get back to full employment.  We need reports this strong and stronger for the next several years to get back to good health in the labor market.

Warehouse workers, school, bus drivers, teachers, mechanics, telecommunication and manufacturing worker all have recently won a voice at work with AFL-CIO unions.

More than 350 employees at IKEA Distribution Center in Perryville, Md., voted by an overwhelming margin to join the Machinists (IAM ) despite opposition from IKEA managers who hired Jackson-Lewis, the well-known union-busting law firm. District 4 Business Representative Joe Flanders says the workers, ?were able to see through the scare tactics.?

Last year, the Danville, Va.-based employees at Swedwood, a wholly-owned subsidiary of IKEA, voted to join the IAM.

In DuPont, Wash., more than some 350 workers who repair military helicopters and do site maintenance site maintenance and repair work for defense contractor URS Corp. Wash., voted to join IAM District Lodge 751. The workers have been without a pay or cost of living increase for more than four years, says new IAM member John Davis, and ?a bunch of people got fed up.?

In Avon, Ky., 219 workers (see photo) at Allsource Global Management at the Bluegrass Station base voted to join the IAM. They are material coordinators for the distribution of military equipment.

Workers at former Alltel facilities?acquired in 2009 by AT&T?continue to choose the Communications Workers of America (CWA), through a majority sign-up agreement between CWA and AT&T. In a majority sign-up, the company agrees to remain neutral and recognize the union after a majority of employees signs authorization cards. Recently in New Mexico, Colorado, Minnesota and Montana more than 150 workers joined CWA.

Late last, month 282 Cablevision technicians and dispatchers in Brooklyn voted to join CWA Local 1109. Click here for an in-depth look at the workers? victory.

Workers at a GE Transportation plant in Kansas City, Mo., fought back against back against a hired gun, anti-union campaign and voted to join the Electrical Workers (IBEW). Workplace safety concerns following the 2010 on-the-job death of a co-worker and a long-list of broken promises by management spurred the nearly 100 workers to fight for a voice at work.  Click here for a detailed look at the struggle from the IBEW Now News blog.

More than 70 bus operators, mechanics, maintenance and other workers at Colonial Intermediate Unit 20 at several locations in Pennsylvania?s Lehigh Valley voted to join the Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 282. Colonial provides various school services, including transportation to 13 school districts.

Twenty teachers at the Evergreen Charter School in Hempstead, N.Y., won representation with AFT affiliate New York State United Teachers (NYSUT). But the fight is not over.  NYSUT is seeking reinstatement of special education teacher Jill Haag who was fired Dec. 2 when she was 8 1/2 months pregnant. The union says she was illegally fired for her for her work organizing the union. Haag regularly wore a lanyard stating, “Unions and Charters Working Together,” and urged parents to sign the petition in support of the union.  Click here for more from AFT.

In Fraser, Mich., the teachers and staff at the Arts Academy in the Woods, a charter school voted 20-to-1 to join Michigan Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff, an affiliate of AFT Michigan.

The Affordable Care Act has saved nearly 3.6 million people enrolled in Medicare $2.1 billion on their prescription drugs in 2011, finds a new report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says the health care reform law signed by President Obama in 2010:

is already saving money for millions of Americans with Medicare. As we move forward, we will close the donut hole completely and save even more money for everyone with Medicare.

The Affordable Care Act?which Republican lawmakers are fighting to repeal?provides a 50 percent discount on brand-name prescription drugs and, beginning this year, a 14 percent discount on generics. Last year, it provided a 7 percent discount on covered generic medications for people who hit the prescription drug coverage gap known as the donut hole, with more than 2.8 million beneficiaries receiving $32.1 million in savings on generics.

Overall, the 3.6 million Americans who hit the donut hole saved an average of $604 on the cost of their prescription drugs. The Affordable Care Act closes the donut hole completely by 2020.

Click here for a state-by-state look at donut hole savings figures for today?s donut and here for a fact sheet.

If you’re frustrated about the wage gap that persists between male and female workers, you can channel your energy into a new contest sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor and President Obama’s National Equal Pay Task Force.

The Equal Pay App Challenge invites the public to create innovative software applications that use the department’s data to educate users about the pay gap, and provide tools to combat it.

Women earn about 80 cents for every dollar earned by men doing comparable work?and the gap is wider for Latinas and African American women. Over a lifetime, the pay gap results in lost wages, reduced pensions and diminished Social Security benefits.

Of course, unionized women do better than their unrepresented sisters, thanks to the power of collective bargaining. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that union women earn nearly 34 percent more than nonunion women.

Software apps that “improve the accessibility of pay data broken down by gender, race and ethnicity, and provide coaching on early career pay, pay negotiation or career mentorship” are among the goals of the challenge. March 31 is the deadline and prizes will be awarded around Equal Pay Day in April. Find development tools here.

This is a cross-post by Dustin Beilke from PR Watch.

Today, hundreds of state legislators from across the nation will head out to an island resort off the coast of Florida to a unique “education academy” sponsored by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). There will be no students or teachers. Instead, legislators, representatives from right-wing think tanks and for-profit education corporations will meet behind closed doors to channel their inner Milton Friedman and promote the radical transformation of the American education system into a private, for-profit enterprise.

What Is ALEC Scoring on Its Education ‘Report Card’?
Little is known about the agenda of the ALEC education meeting taking place at the Ritz Carlton on Amelia Island. The meeting is not open to the public and recently even the press has been kicked out of meetings and barred from attendance. So to understand the ALEC agenda with regard to education, it is important to examine ALEC’s education “scorecard.” Imagine getting a report card from your teacher and finding out that you were graded not on how well you understood the course material or scored on the tests and assignments, but rather on to what extent you agreed with your teacher?s strange public policy positions. That is the best way to understand ALEC?s 17th Report Card on American Education, released last week.

The report card?s authors are Matthew Lardner, formerly of the Goldwater Institute, and Dan Lips, currently of the Goldwater Institute and formerly of the Heritage Foundation. They give every state?s public schools an overall grade based on how they rate in 14 categories. Homeschooling, alternative teacher certification, charter schools, private school choice and virtual learning make up seven of the 14 categories. Of the other seven categories, two rate the states? academic standards and the other five have mostly to do with the way states retain ?effective? teachers and fire ?ineffective? ones.

ALEC’s education bills encompass more than 20 years of effort to privatize public education through an ever-expanding network of school voucher systems, which divert taxpayer dollars away from public schools to private schools, or the creation of new private charter schools with public funds, and even with private online schools (who needs actual teachers when you can have a virtual one?). The bills also allow schools to loosen standards for teachers and administrators, exclude students with physical disabilities and special educational needs, escape the requirements of collective bargaining agreements and experiment with other pet causes like merit pay, single-sex education, school uniforms, and political and religious indoctrination of students.

States where students score well on tests but where ALEC?s legislative agenda around school choice, charters, merit pay, de-unionization and alternative certification have not yet taken hold get low grades. States where elected officials are gung-ho for ALEC?s agenda but the students are not faring so well are still graded generously.

Ranking Policy, Not Performance
While ALEC?s report card and its many appendices weigh in at hefty 130+ pages, it is markedly slight on evidence that school choice, charters, or firing more teachers improve student performance. Indeed, the report card itself even makes this case by also ranking each state?s students? performance on the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) exam, the largest and most accepted national, standardized assessment of student knowledge in several subject areas.

Massachusetts, Vermont, New Jersey, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, North Carolina, Kansas, New Hampshire and New York comprise the top 10 states in NAEP performance. Among them, only Colorado is among the 13 states ALEC gives a B or better on its report card. Vermont, even though it scored number two on the NAEP, is tied for dead last for policy with a D+. Missouri, ALEC?s star pupil
with an A-, scored 47th on NAEP.

?It?s a compendium of the progress of the ALEC agenda and it has nothing to do with educating students,? says Julie Underwood, dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Underwood, who wrote about ALEC for The Nation last summer and has studied the organization extensively, notes that the most interesting and potentially useful data in the report card is left out of each state?s grade calculation. There are tables ranking states according to the NAEP performance of low-income students, students of color and students with disabilities, but this is not added in the final grade.

?Why is that not part of the state?s A to F grades?? Underwood asks. Missouri ranks 43rd in low-income students? 4th grade reading score improvement and 34th in math improvement, but still got the top grade. Utah is 49th and 37th, but was still one of the few states to score a B or better from ALEC. Maryland is number one in reading improvement and number 2 in math improvement, but drew a C-.

Union-Busting Applauded
Her answer comes in the report card?s introduction, where Lardner and Lipps call 2011 ?The End of the Beginning in the Battle for K-12 Reform.? Legislative efforts to weaken and defeat unions were so successful in places such as Florida, Indiana and Wisconsin last year that, according to the authors, we have entered a new era for ALEC’s education policy agenda.

Comparing the union fight to Britain?s defeat of Germany in Egypt to secure the Suez Canal, Lardner and Lips crow that in 2011, ?For the first time, the unions suffered major policy defeats in a large number of states across a wide array of policy issues.?

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels wrote the report card?s forward, lamenting how the unions in his state once had a voice in issues such as the length of the school day, academic freedom and, generally, the content of their work, says his state has turned the corner. ?Collective bargaining will now be limited to wages and benefits and will no longer stand in the way of effective school leadership or student progress,? Daniels writes.

Indiana?s ALEC grade improved to a B from a C+ in 2010 even though its NAEP scores declined from 13th to 17th. Indiana did, however, pass several pieces of legislation in the last year that were influenced by ALEC model bills, including the creation of a statewide voucher school program, merit pay and restricted collective bargaining rights for teachers, and deep budget cuts.

ALEC Education Policy ‘Academy’ at Island Resort, No Students Allowed
The report card, released during National Charter School Week, also comes during the ramp-up to ALEC?s annual “K-12 Education Reform Academy” at the swanky Ritz-Carlton in Amelia Island, Fla. The non-profit group Fund Education Now intercepted one of ALEC?s invitations to legislators in Florida delineating the junket?s deluxe (and gratis) accommodations and summarizing the opportunity to learn more about school privatization and giving teachers their comeuppance.

You are cordially invited to attend ALEC?s K-12 Education Reform Academy,
February 3-4, 2012 at the Ritz-Carlton in Amelia Island, Florida. For invited
legislators like you, ALEC will cover your room for up to two nights at the host
hotel. ALEC will also reimburse up to $500 for travel expenses, which includes
coach airfare, cabfare, and a reimbursement of 55.5 cents per mile driven.

This event will address the top reforms in K-12 education that ALEC believes
each state must have to ensure the successful and productive education for all
American students. We will discuss what you as a state legislator can do to
address a variety of issues surrounding K-12 education reform, including charter
schools accessibility, accountability and transparency, standards for teacher
excellence, open enrollment, vouchers, tax credits, and blended learning
options.

Fund Education Now co-founder Kathleen Oropeza says the “academy” is closed to the press and the public and Amelia Island itself is secluded from the outside world and heavily policed. The meeting?s agenda is so secretive that Oropeza has been unable to track one down.

?The island is a challenge for protesters, and we think they chose it for that reason,? Oropeza says.

However, a raft of ALEC legislative and corporate members are certain to be there. These include online school businesses such as K-12 Inc., Insight Schools, and Connections Academy a division of Connections Education LLC. These for-profit schools will likely join with their allies from the Heritage Foundation, Texas Public Policy Center, The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, the Hoover Institution, the Alliance for School Choice and more.

Today, the Democratic Progressive Caucus of Florida (DPCF) called on Florida legislators to boycott the island retreat. Caucus President Susan Smith stated, ?The secretive process of allowing corporate lobbyists and billionaires to write legislation, which they then pass off to Florida legislators, is a betrayal of the intent of representative government. The closed-door gathering of legislators is not government in the sunshine.?

See the ALEC education bills and learn more about the ALEC’s Public Education Task Force at the Center for Media and Democracy’s ALEC Exposed website.