Connecticut activists urge action on retirement security

Retirement security activists in Connecticut are urging their unions to contest a decision by the state’s Retirement Commission to delay implementation of an arbiter’s decision that will allow the state’s public higher education employees to withdraw from a defined contribution 401 (k) type retirement plan and enroll in the state’s defined benefit pension plan.

In a hearing last September, an arbiter ruled in favor of the State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition, a coalition of unions representing Connecticut’s public higher education employee, in a grievance charging that members of the Alternative Retirement Program (ARP), a defined contribution plan (for higher education employees), had been “unfairly steered as new employees into the ARP plan when a much better traditional pension plan was available.”

“They had not been given sufficient information to make informed choices nor had they been told that their decisions, once made, would be irrevocable,” writes James R. Russell on his blog, The Perfect Swindle. Russell is an activist in the Connecticut Committee for Equity in Retirement (CCER), a retirement security group that convinced the bargaining coalition to file the original grievance.

The arbiters ruling was to go into effect on December 31, when the Retirement Commission was supposed to notify ARP members that they could drop out of the plan and enroll in the Connecticut State Employees Retirement System’s defined benefit plan, which unlike ARP would guarantee them a life long pension benefit after they retire. The arbiter’s decision would allow ARP members to use money in their ARP account to purchase service credit in the State Employees Retirement System.

But the commission has dragged its feet in sending the notices. Russell says that the delay ”(benefits) ING, a Dutch multinational financial giant and third-party administrator of ARP, which collects millions of dollars in fees for each year that it maintains control of these retirement savings.”

The original grievance, filed in 2009, says that management at Connecticut’s higher education institutions steered new hires into ARP with misleading and insufficient information about the plan. 

CCER says that higher education management exaggerated the potential pay out of ARP, claiming that ARP members would receive a higher pension benefit than those in the defined benefit plan, according to CCER  ARP members contribute twice as much to their plan as do members of the defined benefit plan and receive about half of what they would had they enrolled in the defined benefit plan.

The claim that ARP members would receive higher benefits was based on an inaccurate model used to estimate pension payments after retirement. The model used overly optimistic estimates of the rate of return that ARP members could expect from their retirement accounts. The market crash of 2008 caused ARP accounts to lose much of their value, value which for many will never be recovered even though the market has recovered.

CCER also has calculated and compared the benefits that an employee could expect to receive under the ARP plan and the defined benefit plan. According to these calculations, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for low-paid workers in ARP to match a defined benefit pension.

Workers retiring with an annual salary of $30,000 per year would receive an annual defined benefit pension payment of $9,975. In order to buy a commercial annuity equal to this amount a male worker would need to have $178,175 in his ARP account; a female worker would need $203,571 (the commercial annuity market charges women more than men because on average women live longer,.

It would also be a challenge for  moderate-income and high-income employees to match the annual pension payment that they would receive from a defined benefit plan. A worker retiring with an annual salary of $60,000 a year would receive a defined benefit pension of $20,600 a year. To purchase a commercial annuity equal to this amount, a male would need $374,786 in his ARP account; a female would need $420,408 in her account.

The Retirement Commission justifies its foot-dragging by saying that it needs approval from IRS to allow ARP members to withdraw, but Russell points out that West Virginia school teachers were allowed to transfer out of their defined contribution plan into a defined benefit plan without approval from IRS.

Dems return after Indiana compromise

Democratic and Republican state lawmakers in Indiana on Monday reached a compromise on anti-worker legislation, which ended the Democrats’ 36-day walkout that essentially shut down the Legislature. Democrats  negotiated the compromise from Illinois where they had been in a self-imposed exile since February 22. 

The compromise shelves right-to-work-for-less legislation and a proposal to permanently ban collective bargaining for state employees. It also scales back changes to the state’s prevailing wage law that could lower construction workers’ wages and changes to the education code that set aside tax money for private school vouchers. The compromise does not include proposed legislation that severely limits teachers’ collective bargaining rights.

“This walkout may be coming to an end, but the debate is far from over,” said Nancy Guyott, the Indiana state AFL-CIO president. “Working Hoosiers will continue to stand together.”

The events that led up to the walkout began in February after Republican lawmakers proposed a raft of anti-worker legislation, including HB 1468, a right-to-work-for-less bill aimed at weakening union power and lowering workers’ wages. After HB 1468 was scheduled for a vote in the House, Guyott told union members that “we’ve been bombarded with bill after bill that seek to destroy our way of life and take away our rights,” and she urged members to come to Indianapolis, Indiana’s state capital, for a week of demonstrations beginning on February 21.

As a result,  thousands of autoworkers, steelworkers, teachers, state employees, and other union members descended on Indianapolis, surrounded the capital, and marched into the capital while debate on the right-to-work-for-less bill was taking place in the House.

The strength and vigor of the demonstration gave Democratic lawmakers the courage to do the only thing they could to prevent passage of the bill. They walked out of the statehouse and traveled to Illinois to prevent a quorum.

The day after the walkout began, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who supports right-to-work-for-less, urged lawmakers to kill the bill, which they did. But Democrats stayed away to protest other anti-worker bills. Over the next 36 days, Indiana workers carried out what Jeff Harris of the state AFL-CIO called the ”longest sustained protest in the history of Indiana.”

Workers showed up at the statehouse every day to picket, protest, and demonstrate their anger at the Republican anti-worker agenda. On some days, thousands of workers rallied and marched, on other days, a handful of workers were there to remind lawmakers that the anti-worker agenda wouldn’t pass without a fight.

The compromise lessens the impact of two bills, one aimed at lowering construction workers’ wages and the other at providing tax money for private school vouchers. In its original form HB 1216 would have exempted all public construction contracts under $1 million from complying with the state’s common construction requirement, which requires contractors to pay the local prevailing wage to construction workers. Prevailing wage laws prevent contractors from cutting wages so that they can under bid on construction contracts.

Currently public construction contracts under $100,000 are exempt from the common construction requirement. Under the compromise, the threshold will be raised to $250,000 in 2012 and $350,000 in 2013.

The compromise also caps the number of private school vouchers that the state can give out each year to 7,500 in 2012 and 15,000 in 2013. It also lowers the annual income for families eligible for the vouchers from $81,586 a year to $61,189.

Democrats and Republicans also agreed to scrap HB 1585, which would have permanently banned collective bargaining rights for state employees. Currently, state workers in Indiana don’t have collective bargaining rights because in 2005 Gov. Daniels by executive order decreed that the state would not continue to bargain collectively with is workers as it had done previously. That decree is still in effect, but could be overturned when a new governor takes office. Had HB 1585 passed, this option would no longer be available without new legislation.

One of the anti-worker bills not part of the compromise is SB 575, which severely limits the collective bargaining rights for teachers. If this bill is enacted, teachers would only be able to bargain for wages and some benefits. They would no longer have a voice in setting working conditions or giving input regarding performance evaluations.

In a recent statement to members, the Indiana State Teachers Association said that it is currently engaged in talks with lawmakers to amend this bill, but said that so far, “no clear consensus has been reached on the bill,” which will be heard in the House Education Committee this week.

Right-wing economic policy is about profits, not jobs

“Jobs is a funny word in the English language. It’s a way of pronouncing an unpronounceable word. I’ll spell (that unpronounceable word) . P-R-O-F-I-T-S. You are not allowed to say that word, so the way you pronounce that is jobs,” said Noam Chomsky in an interview with Democracy Now.

For decades now, right-wing politicians have said that, creating jobs is their number one priority, and in order to create jobs, they needed to cut government funding, reduce government services, and give tax breaks to businesses. But what they really mean, as Chomsky says, is that “profits are our number one priority, and in order to maximize profits we need to reduce government services and give tax breaks to businesses.” 

A recent report on the proposed Texas state budget shows just how little right-wing politicians are concerned about jobs. The state’s Legislative Budget Board reported last Thursday that the state budget proposed by leaders of the Texas House of Representatives will cost the state 335,244 jobs by 2013.

The proposed budget seeks to close the state’s projected $23 billion budget shortfall for the next two years by slashing funding for public education, health and human services, public safety, and public higher education. These cuts, according to the Legislative Budget Board, would result in 188,787 fewer public sector jobs, mainly public school teachers and other education workers, and 146,457 fewer private sector jobs. The job losses would mean a 2.3 percent decline in the number of jobs in Texas, a state where the current unemployment rate is 8.2 percent

The state’s right-wing politicians seem unconcerned about these job losses. A spokesperson for Gov. Rick Perry said that the governor “firmly believes that government doesn’t create jobs; entrepreneurs in the private sector do. However, the government has a key role to play in cultivating a favorable climate for job creation.”

This right-wing talking point has become conventional wisdom in today’s political discourse, but it doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny. During the first ten years of the 21st century when business taxes were low and regulation was lax, the private sector did an awful job of creating jobs. The Washington Post called the period between 2000 and 2009 the lost decade partly because job growth during that period was zero. That’s right, despite modest job growth between 2003 and 2007, the overall number of jobs created was zero.

Doug Henwood writing in the Left Business Observer says that the  rate of job growth steadily declined during the first decade of the 21st century until it dipped into negative territory in late 2009, which caused “the share of the adult population working (to fall) back to 1983 levels.” The only other time in modern history that the rate of job growth declined, according to Henwood, was during the Depression.

The first decade was bracketed by two recessions, but even when the economy was expanding, job growth was unimpressive. During 2006, the peak of a weak economic expansion, average monthly job growth was 147,500, 53 percent below the monthly average job growth in 1999 (225,300) when the technology fueled expansion of the mid 1990s was beginning to run out of steam. The economy needs 150,000 new jobs each month to absorb new entries into the job market.

The right wing’s conventional wisdom holds that higher profits translates into more jobs, but in 2010 that didn’t prove to be the case. The US Commerce Department reports that US corporations’ profits in the fourth quarter of 2010 were up 29.3 percent over 2009, but these profits generated only an average of 60,000 new jobs in 2010. There was better news in February when the economy generated 192,000 new jobs, a welcomed but still modest figure. 

“US corporations are “sitting on over $1.5 trillion of cash right now, writes economist Robert Reich on his blog. “They won’t invest it in additional capacity or jobs because they don’t see enough customers out there with enough money in their pockets to buy what the additional capacity would produce.”

If states like Texas continue to cut public sector payrolls, there will be even fewer customers out there with enough money to buy what the private sector produces and there will be even fewer new jobs for our growing population.

Implementation of Wisconsin anti-worker law in limbo after judge’s ruling

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said on Friday that  he would begin enforcing recently enacted legislation that strips Wisconsin public workers of the right to collective bargaining despite a temporary injunction issued by a judge last week that halted implementation of the legislation.

Gov. Walker made the announcement after the  Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau published the anti-worker bill, which, according to Gov. Walker and other Republicans, makes the law official. But Wisconsin Secretary of State Doug La Follette said that the bill is not official yet because he has not designated a publication date and the bill cannot take effect until the secretary of state directs its publication in the Wisconsin State Journal.

On Tuesday of this week Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi rebuked state officials, who ignored her ruling last week that La Follette not publish the bill until the court has a chance to determine whether the Wisconsin Senate violated the state Open Meetings law when a hearing on the bill was held without proper notice.

She told state officials at the hearing that further implementation of the bill “was enjoined” and threatened sanctions against anyone who ignores her ruling, but an assistant attorney general representing the state said in the hallway after the hearing was over that the legislation is still in effect. The state’s Justice Department later backed off that statement when a spokesman for the agency said that the decision whether to implement the bill would be left up to the state’s Department of Administration.

Judge Sumi said that the Legislature could easily resolve this problem by taking up the bill again and passing it, but Republican leaders in the Legislature expressed no interest in doing so.

Earlier last week Sumi issued a temporary restraining order that instructed the secretary of state to refrain from publishing the bill until a hearing could be held on a complaint by local officials and a Democratic lawmaker that the anti-worker bill was passed illegally.  

The director of the Legislative Reference Bureau Stephen Miller said that he published the bill within ten days of its passage as he is required to do, but that his publication of the bill did not make it official. He said that in order for the bill to become law, the secretary of state has to direct publication of it.

But an aide to Mike Huebsch, director of the Department of Administration, which is charged with implementing the bill for Gov. Walker, said that Huebsch believes that the anti-worker bill has been legally published and that his office would ”begin the process of implementing (the law).” 

Writing in Forbes, columnist Rick Ungar observed that “it’s now a toss-up between Wisconsin and Michigan in the race to see which state government can do the best job of thumbing its nose at our most basic democratic principles in order to force their autocratic desires on their citizens.”

In other developments, Laborers International Union of North America Local 236 and Firefighters Local 311 both of Madison filed suit on Friday alleging that Gov. Walker’s anti-worker bill did have a financial impact on the state and thus needed a three-fifths quorum for passage.

Democratic state senators had left the state to prevent the three-fifths quorum requirement needed for Gov. Walker’s original budget repair bill. The bill that subsequently passed stripped away most of the language that would have affected the budget but kept the portion that deprived public workers of their collective bargaining rights.

 It also included language that required state employees to pay more for their health insurance and pension benefits. Those particular pieces of the bill were to become effective on Sunday.

Egyptian military outlaws worker actions for justice

The Egyptian government on Wednesday decreed that fighting for better pay, better working conditions, and the enforcement of the country’s existing labor laws is illegal. The decree is intended to stop a surge of worker strikes, demonstrations, and sit-ins that began before the fall of Egypt’s former dictator Hosni Mubarak and have continued despite threats from the military and pleas by self-appointed leaders of the movement that overthrew Mubarak.

Under the decree, it is a criminal offense to participate in a strike, demonstration, or sit-in that disrupts the economy. Calling for these actions or encouraging others to participate in them is punishable by up to year in prison and a fine of one-half  million Egyptian pounds ($84,060). All workers are subject to the new law regardless of whether they work in the private or public sector.

“Issuing a law to criminalize strikes now will be unfair to the revolution (for) which about 1,000 Egyptians paid their lives,” said a statement issued by the Center for Trade Union and Worker Services, which played a leading role in mobilizing workers to support the January revolution. “It is not an acceptable or useful solution to the current problems. On the contrary, it will widen the gap between the people and the authorities.”

The cabinet issued the new decree saying that the strikes, sit-ins, and demonstrations disrupting business were not necessary because the cabinet  “ is working on a new policy to deal with employment and wages.” The decree will expire when the current state of emergency is lifted. Egypt has been ruled under a state of emergency since 1981 when President Anwar Sadat was assassinated. A number of workers including postal workers, teachers, hospital employees, and police were still on strike at the time that the decree was issued.

About 6,000 teachers in the province of Qena went out on strike on March 1 demanding permanent jobs for teachers working under temporary contracts. The day after the strike began, the Ministry of Education said that temporary teachers with at least three years on the job would be offered permanent contracts if they pass an exam. The striking teachers rejected the government’s proposal and said that they would stay on strike until their demand that all teachers working under temporary and precarious conditions be given full-time, permanent status.

Many of the strikes that have taken place over two last few months have been over demands that the country’s current labor law be enforced. About 300 workers at a Samuel Tex Drapery factory went on strike for a 7 percent pay increase and to demand that the company give workers annual leave, not force them to work overtime, and not require new workers to sign a resignation form, which makes it easier for the company to fire workers and prevent them from collecting severance pay in the event of layoffs. All of these last three demands are covered by existing labor law, which for the most part is not enforced.

Even though the decree outlawing workers’ actions for justice was issued by the cabinet, the military is running the country now, and it alone has the authority to decide whether such a decree is issued. And as it turns out, the military is heavily invested in business. Members of the military high command own companies that among other things make electric appliances, bottled water, olive oil, pesticides, and optical equipment. They also own water treatment plants, hotels, nurseries, and catering business. Retired military officers also sit on the boards of directors of many Egyptian companies. Companies owned by military leaders employ tens of thousands of workers.

When asked by reporter Austin Mackell whether military leaders had links to the business elite, Egyptian journalist Ahmed Atleya replied, “They are the business elite.”

Brazilian labor demands fair trade; expresses solidarity with US workers

Union leaders in Brazil delivered a letter to President Barack Obama urging him to pursue policies of fair trade, immigration rights, and peace. The letter also expressed solidarity with public workers in the US, who have recently seen their rights curtailed by right-wing governors in the US.

Leaders from six large Brazilian labor confederations met with the President on Saturday, the first day of his two-day visit to Brazil, in Brasilia, the nation’s capital. During the meeting, the union leaders hand delivered a letter to the President expressing their concerns.

The letter said that the Brazilian labor movement was concerned about Brazil’s growing trade deficit with the US, which increased from $4.4 billion in 2009 to $7.7 billion in 2010, a 75 percent increase. The letter placed the blame for the deficit on the depreciation of the US dollar and trade barriers that keep Brazilian goods like orange juice, steel products, ethanol, and tobacco from competing with goods produced in the US. “We demand the immediate withdrawal of all trade barriers against these products,” said the letter.

The letter also expressed solidarity with US public workers who are facing attacks aimed at busting their unions and depriving them of a collective voice in matters that affect their jobs and livelihoods. “We express our solidarity with the public workers of Wisconsin and other states in their fight against attempts by state legislatures to restrict their union activities and collective bargaining rights.”

The Brazilians said that they were dismayed that  temporary state budget deficits were being used as an excuse to deprive public workers of their basic rights and suggested that rulers in other countries would follow the example being set in the US. “We demand that Convention 151 of the International Labor Organization, which the US has not ratified, be respected and upheld.” said the letter. The ILO is a UN organization, and Convention 151, among other things, guarantees the right of public employees to join and be represented by trade unions.

The union leaders urged the US to treat immigrants like the thousands of Brazilians now living in the US with respect and dignity and urged the two governments to reach an agreement that would allow Brazilians living in the US and US citizens living in Brazil to get full social security credit for the time spent working in their non-native country.

Finally, the labor leaders advocated a foreign policy of “peace, human rights, disarmament, and sovereignty of countries and peoples” and demanded an end to economic blockade of Cuba, “which imposes enormous hardship and suffering on the people of Cuba.”

The letter was signed by Artur Henrique da Silva, president of CUT, Paulo Pereira da Silva, president of Forca Sindical, Wagner Gomes, president of CTB, Ricardo Patah, president of the UGT, Jose Ramos Calixto, president of Nova Central, and Antonio Neto, president-general of CGTB.

California takes action to protect workers from lung disease; national action needed

Twelve years ago, Dr. Allen Parmet, a Kansas City physician, diagnosed several patients who worked at a microwave popcorn packaging plant with bronchiolitis obliterans, a debilitating and sometimes deadly lung disease. Three of the patients were so ill, they needed lung transplants. Dr. Parmet suspected that there may be a health hazard at the plant and reported his suspicions.

After inspecting the plant, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Heath found that high levels of diacetyl, a chemical used in the production of food flavorings like the butter flavor in microwave popcorn, was the culprit. In all, ten workers  or former workers at the plant were found to have bronchiolitis obliterans, and 20 to 30 current or former workers were suspected of having a less serious lung disease.

NIOSH investigated more microwave popcorn plants and by 2006 found that more than 200 workers exposed to diacetyl in popcorn plants had contracted bronchiolitis obliterans; three had died. And the problem wasn’t limited to just popcorn workers.

“We’ve got cases of bronchiolitis obliterans among workers in other plants that use flavoring and in plants that make the flavorings,” NIOSH’s Dr. Kathleen Kreiss told the Baltimore Sun.  At the time about 8,000 workers in the food processing industry worked at plants that used  diacetyl and other food flavoring chemicals.

Twelve years after Dr. Parmet suspected that workers were being exposed to a toxic chemical on the job, regulations have finally been issued that regulate the use of diacetyl and other food flavoring chemicals. But the regulations protect only a fraction of the 8,000 food processing workers because they only apply to the State of California.

For years, the United Food and Commercial Workers and Teamsters have been trying to get action at the federal level to protect food processing workers. “Three workers have died and hundreds of others seriously injured,” said Jackie Nowell, UFCW Safety & Health Director in 2006. “It’s time for action. We will not let food processing workers continue to be the canaries in the coal mine while waiting for the industry to regulate itself.”

The unions urged OSHA take action to regulate or reduce the use of diacetyl, but according to the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy (SKAPP), OSHA’s response was “trivial.” In 2002, OSHA entered into an agreement establishing an alliance” with the Popcorn Board, the trade association representing microwave popcorn manufacturers.

As a result of the alliance, the board agreed to share information about health risks of diacetyl and other food flavoring chemicals with popcorn manufacturers and to inform them of steps that could be taken to reduce the risk to workers.

The information was disseminated, but there was no mechanism to ensure that companies implemented the recommendation and the disseminated information didn’t have much impact. By 2006, more than 150 lawsuits had been filed by workers with lung diseases against companies that make microwave popcorn. One worker, Francisco Herrera told the Baltimore Sun his story. He worked in a flavoring plant and became ill with  bronchiolitis obliterans in 2003. By 2006,  bronchiolitis obliterans had destroyed 70 percent of his lung capacity, and he needed a lung transplant.

In 2007, a bill requiring the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration to issue regulations regarding the safe use of diacetyl passed in the US House but was lobbied to death in the Senate by the US Chamber of Commerce.

In 2006, the UFCW and California AFL-CIO petitioned California’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration to issue regulations,  which California’s OSHA did in 2010. The regulations establish standards for diacetyl’s use, prescribes the safety gear that must be worn by workers handling the chemical, and requires companies to provide training and medical surveillance for workers.

But California’s 20 flavoring plants are only a fraction of the US’s food flavoring industry. Workers in the other 49 states have very little if any protection from diacetyl. In January, the US OSHA expanded its “National Emphasis Program,” which sets guidelines for microwave popcorn worker plants, but the guidelines don’t set permissible exposure levels and aren’t legally binding.

Five years ago, Teamster Safety and Health Director Lamont Byrd said, “The science is clear. Such illnesses and fatalities are avoidable and therefore, inexcusable. An (OSHA) Emergency Standard is necessary to prevent the suffering and death of additional workers who will get sick during the time it would take for OSHA to set a Permanent Standard.” The same hold true today.

Wisconsin anti-worker law put on hold temporarily

A Wisconsin circuit judge on Friday issued a temporary restraining order that for now blocks enforcement of Wisconsin’s recently passed anti-worker law that prohibits the state’s public employees from bargaining collectively. Judge Maryann Sumi ruled that the Wisconsin Senate committee that held hearings last week on a substitute bill that became the anti-collective bargaining law signed by Gov. Scott Walker a few days later violated the state’s Open Meeting laws. The committee did not give the two-hour public notice of the hearing required by state law. 

For now, Wisconsin’s secretary of state Doug La Follette cannot publish the new law, and it can’t be enforced until it is published. State officials said that they would appeal the judge’s ruling as soon as possible, perhaps as early as Monday.

Wisconsin lawmakers could take up the anti-worker bill again, hold legal committee hearings, and vote again on the measure, but as of yet, no decision has been made on how the legislature will proceed.  More information is available here, here, and here.

Judge Sumi last month, refused a request for a temporary restraining order aimed at making teachers in the Madison public schools return to work during the height of action against Gov. Walker’s anti-worker bill. The Madison school district asked for the order, alleging that teachers who had called in sick and gone to the Capitol to protest Gov. Walker’s action were engaging in a strike, which shut down Madison public schools for four days.

The teachers’ union argued that the teachers weren’t striking; they were merely exercising their free speech rights to make their voices heard in a political issue that involved their jobs and livelihood. Judge Sumi, ruled that the school district did not present sufficient evidence demonstrating that the teachers were on strike. The point became moot when the union told members to return to work.

This is what austerity looks like

Austerity is another word for budget cuts like the ones that right-wing US governors from Wisconsin to Texas are proposing. Opponents of state budget cuts have warned us about the damage that the proposed cuts could do. The United Kingdom has already adopted austerity measures that will cut 245 billion pounds out of national and local government budgets over the next five years. Since some of the cuts have already been implemented, we can start to see the damage that they are doing. So far, the people hit hardest by Britain’s austerity measures are youth and women.

One of first effects of Britain’s austerity program has been the elimination of 132,000 public sector jobs, 45,000, or 34 percent, of those jobs were lost in the last three months of 2010. Since women make up a majority of the public workforce, they have been hit especially hard by the cuts. In February, the number of women claiming unemployment benefits increased by 12 percent over the same time last year.

“Slashing the public sector workforce hits women hardest,” said Anna Bird, Acting Chief Executive of the Fawcett Society, a women’s equality organization. “Sixty-five percent of public sector workers are women, and they are concentrated in the low-paid, low-grade, and insecure work that are most under attack.”

Women face a triple whammy from the austerity measures. They are not only losing a disproportionate share of jobs; they also are losing important benefits and services . For example, 65 percent of funding for day care services is being cut, which will mean “that it’s going to be hard to find full-time (day care) for mothers who work full-time,” said Penny Liechti.

Public sector jobs and social benefits and services have helped narrow the gender gap in the UK, but the cuts could undo much of what has been accomplished over the last 30 years. “The cuts represent a patriarchal offensive against women,” said professor Victoria Click.

And Britain’s austerity measures have, according to Dave Printis, general secretary of Unison, a public service union, created ”an abandoned generation.” When the government on Wednesday announced that UK’s unemployment rate rose to 8 percent, the highest in 17 years, it also announced that youth unemployment hit 20.6 percent. That means that in the UK, one in five people between the ages of 16 and 24 looking for work can’t find any.

Austerity measures are one of the main reasons that youth unemployment is so high. The austerity measures have caused most local governments to initiate a hiring freeze, closing one of the gateways to the workforce for young people. 

The cuts have also resulted in fewer services for people looking for work. For example, local government employment services like Connexions in Birmingham have already begun to cut its workforce, which means that people are waiting longer for employment services.

With these two paths to employment restricted, some young people might look to higher education to help them prepare for a career. But the austerity measures have caused public university tuition rates to increase sharply, which makes it much harder for working class students to go to college. 

Those who plan to skip college and enter the workforce through apprenticeship programs will find it harder to enter the workforce this way. ”All the talk about modern apprenticeships is just that, talk.” said Leonard Haye, a union organizer with GMB, another public service union. “Even when the economy was buoyant it was a challenge; now it is almost impossible.”

The fight moves to Michigan

More than 5,000 people rallied Thursday in Lansing, Michigan’s state capital, to demonstrate opposition to an emergency measure, known as “the financial martial law” bill that Gov Rick Snyder signed into law on Wednesday. The new law gives him unprecedented power to dismiss elected local officials and break union contracts signed by these officials. Protestors were also angry at Gov Snyder’s proposals to increase taxes on workers and lower taxes on corporations and the wealthy.

“This governor and his Republican party want to take almost $2 billion more off working people in Michigan,” said United Autoworker president Bob King. “And who does he want to give it to? The wealthy, the corporations.”

King was referring to Gov Snyder’s proposal to end Michigan’s Earned Income Tax Credit, which benefits low-paid workers, eliminate the state $600 per child tax credit, and reduce tax credits for the elderly. At the same time, Gov Snyder wants to cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy by 86 percent.

Snyder also proposes to reduce funding for local schools by 8 to 10 percent, which the Associated Press reports, “may force school districts to close buildings, reduce staff, and privatize services.”

Think Progress reports that “Michigan already has a regressive tax system, which Snyder’s proposal will only make worse. “Currently, someone in the poorest 20 percent of Michigan’s taxpayers pays a tax rate of 8.9 percent, while someone in the richest 1 percent pays 5.3 percent.”

The” financial martial law” bill signed Wednesday by Gov Snyder gives the governor the authority to dismiss local elected officials of cities, towns, or school boards, break union contracts that local municipalities or school boards may have with workers, and appoint a private manager to operate the municipality or school board.

Supporters of the emergency measure say that it will only be used to help local governing bodies cope with a financial crisis. Opponents say that the measure violates basic principles of democracy by allowing elected officials to be removed from office without the consent of voters and will be used to punish communities that are already feeling the effects of Michigan’s Depression-like economy by making them accept austerity measures that will lower wages and reduce benefits for workers while protecting assets of the wealthy.

“Michigan’s politicians have capitalized on our state’s budgetary woes in order to ram through legislation that rather than creates jobs, takes away even more rights and resources from Michiganders, and instead gives an unprecedented amount of power to the governor, said Mark Gaffney, president of the Michigan AFL-CIO. “This is not what democracy looks like.”

More demonstrations against the tax cuts for the wealthy, tax hikes for workers, and the governor’s financial martial law are scheduled for this weekend.

Indiana workers fight right-wing, anti-worker agenda

For 24 days, workers in Indiana have kept a vigil at the Indiana statehouse to demonstrate their opposition to anti-worker bills proposed by the state’s right-wing lawmakers and right-wing governor Mitch Daniels.

“(Indiana’s) working men and women cannot be ignored,” said Nancy Guyott, president of the Indiana AFL-CIO. “We will continue to make our voices heard until these politicians end this assault on working families.”

The assualt began earlier in the year when Indiana Republicans in concert with fellow right-wingers across the US decided that the time was right to push an aggressive anti-worker agenda aimed at weakening unions and taking away rights and benefits that have made working-class life more secure.

The first order of business was to make Indiana a right-to-work-for-less state. Republicans filed HB 1468, which would have allowed non-union workers to avoid paying their fair share for union-provided services such as contract negotiations and enforcement. The purpose of the bill says the Facebook page of Stand Up For Hoosiers, a community organization opposing the anti-working class agenda, is to weaken unions “and ultimately drive down wages, benefits, workplace safety, and our voice on the job.”

HB 1468 was shelved when demonstrations by Indiana workers gave Democratic lawmakers the courage to walk out of the Capitol and travel to Illinois, so that a vote on the measure could not be held. They have remained in Illinois since February 23, which prevents the passage of other anti-worker bills.

To make sure that the Democrats remain in Illinois so that no further action can be taken on the anti-worker bills, workers have maintained their vigil at the statehouse. “This is truly a fight about all workers,” said Jeff Combs of Teamster Local 135. “It’s an attack on all workers; union or non-union, we’re here for everybody.”

Other Indiana bills aimed at weakening unions and making life more difficult for workers include bills that would

•  ban collective bargaining for state employees,
• weaken or prohibit project labor agreements that ensure that public construction projects are built safely and that construction workers are treated fairly and paid a fair wage,
• prohibit municipal governments from setting the local minimum wage higher than the state’s minimum wage,
• restrict collective bargaining for teachers, and
• divert state money away from public schools to private schools.

Last week, the largest rally of the workers’ campaign was held in Indianapolis. More than 20,000 public and private sector union workers and their supporters marched and rallied in Indianapolis against the right wing’s anti-worker agenda. Some construction workers like members of the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA) walked off their jobs to join the rally.

“The anti-worker special interests and politicians (that) they got into office think they can trample all over the rights of working people,” said Terry O’Sullivan, general president of the LIUNA. “(But) who will balance the power of corporate cash and speak for the middle class if the attacks on the unions succeed.”

The right-wing agenda in Indiana is expansive. On Tuesday the state Senate held hearings on an anti-immigrant bill like the one passed last year in Arizona that would deprive immigrants of legal due process and make it more difficult for them to attend Indiana state universities and colleges.

While union workers kept their vigil, about 200 people rallied against the bill. ”We’ve been here in (Indiana) for almost 22 years,” said Maria Hernandez. “It feels like home.” Hernandez is worried that if the bill is enacted, it would break up her family by causing some of her family members to be deported.

“I don’t think government should target specific people just because they look (different) from other people,” said Robert Johnson, who was attending the rally against the anti-immigration bill.

Locked out workers hit the road to support public workers under attack

Locked out workers at the Honeywell uranium processing plant in Metropolis, Illinois hit the road to show support for public workers under attack by state governors and other right-wing politicians. Meanwhile, Honeywell, which locked out its Metropolis union workers in June, was fined nearly $12 million for mishandling radioactive waste; for these and other misdeeds, the company rewarded its CEO Dave Cote with a 56 percent pay increase.

Members of the United Steelworkers Local 7-669, which represents the Metropolis Honeywell workers, travelled to Madison, Wisconsin in late February to attend one of the support rallies for public workers whose collective bargaining rights were under attack by Gov Scott Walker, one of a number of right-wing politicians who won state governor races last November.

A few weeks later USW Local 7-669 members were in Columbus, Ohio to support public workers whose rights were also under attack by Gov John Kasich, another right-wing politician.

“Many of my union brothers and sisters see the writing on the wall,” said Ozzie England, a locked-out Honeywell worker and a Local 7-669 member, who went to Madison and Columbus. “If public unions fall, these same senators, congressmen, and governors will be coming after the private sector.”

The next stop for Local 7-669 members is Iowa where rallies will be held on March 19 to protest Iowa Governor Terry Branstand’s proposals to limit public sector bargaining rights and revoke Project Labor Agreements that ensure that public construction projects are built safely and that construction workers on the project are treated fairly.

England said that a lot of voters bought the rhetoric of right-wing politicians, who last year said that if elected they would run government like a business. But what voters didn’t understand, said England, was that these politicians “want to run governments like a sweat shop.”

Meanwhile, Honeywell on March 14 pleaded guilty in federal district court to  illegally storing radioactive hazardous waste at its Metropolis plant, which “put  employees at risk of exposure to radioactive and hazardous waste,” said Cynthia Giles of the US Environmental Protection Agency. Honeywell was fined $11.8 million and put on probation for five years for violating the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

The fine stems from a decision that Honeywell made in 2002 when it shut down a reclamation project used to safely dispose of contaminated potassium hydroxide (KOH), a chemical used to process uranium. The company shut down the reclamation process because it was too expensive. Instead of processing the deadly chemical to detoxify it, the company stored contaminated KOH  in steel drums at the Metropolis plant creating a health and safety risk for workers.

For exposing workers to hazardous material and refusing to bargain with workers in good faith, Honeywell CEO Dave Cote was rewarded with a 56 percent pay increase. Cotes salary went from $12.4 million a year to $19.3 million at the same time that Honeywell was telling its workers that “containing costs is everyone’s responsibility.”

 ”Dave Cote, our CEO, recently gave himself a 56 percent pay raise, all the while preaching that employees need to share in the responsibility of keeping costs down,” England said. “He has tried to accomplish this by cutting health care benefits, pay, hours, and retirement payments to the workers who make the company money. His annual salary jumped from around twelve million a year to nineteen million a year, excluding bonuses.

“Something is very wrong with this picture, and all the while, people are getting word that around four hundred people in this country own around fifty percent of the wealth! I don’t know how many of you have ever gotten a 56 percent raise, but it is of little wonder how the rich get richer doing this.”

Union workers help create jobs, stand in solidarity with those under attack

So called right to work legislation has recently been introduced in Missouri, New Hampshire, Indiana, and other states. The purpose of these laws is to weaken unions and drive down wages. Proponents, like Indiana state representative Jerry Torr argue that weakening unions and driving down wages through right-to-work-for-less legislation is “the one thing that doesn’t cost anything that will bring jobs to Indiana,” which has become the conventional wisdom of the day.

But a unionized workforce can be a big advantage to a state or region trying to create jobs, which has turned out to be the case in the state of Washington, where Boeing recently won a $35 billion contract with the US Department of Defense for a new Air Force refueling tanker largely through the efforts of its unionized workers.

“Union engineers and production workers worked with management to establish new more efficient productions lines,” said Tom Wroblewski, president of the International Association of Machinist District 751, which represents production workers at the Everett, Washington Boeing plant near Seattle.

By consulting and working with its union workers, Boeing was able to streamline the production line of its 767 passenger jet that will be modified into the refueling tanker. The new is line is 25 percent more efficient than the old one. As a result of these efficiencies, Boeing’s bid on the contract was 1 percent lower than its European competitor EADS, which was planning to build the refueling tanker at its non-union plant in Mobile, Alabama. The new contract will create 11,000 new jobs and pump about $693 million a year into local economies.

In District 751′s newspaper, Wroblewski said that “machinist helped Boeing cut production costs by transforming the (production) line to use lean production techniques, which allowed Boeing to lower its bid.”

The production efficiencies were achieved without union workers making any concessions on wages or benefits, which make up only 5 percent of Boeing’s production costs.

Wroblewski told District 751 members that they should be proud of the work they did to achieve efficiencies but that they shouldn’t get complacent because they could find themselves “under attack from opponents who dream only of increasing corporate wealth, and see us as obstacles to be crushed so the can grow their profits.”

Most notably, Wroblewski pointed to recent attacks on workers’ rights in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana as threats to all workers in the US and praised union workers in these states for the stands they’ve taken against these attacks. “(They’ve) said no to the powerful forces that were trying to take away some of their basic economic rights. They’ve drawn a line in the sand and stood up to Wall Street, the corporate titans, and the politicians who would put profit before people,” Wroblewski said.

Then he compared the attacks that Midwest workers have endured to attacks made on Boeing workers. “Like them, we’ve been attacked–downsized and outsourced, criticized and coerced. But we’ve held together in solidarity,” just like the workers in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana.

“On the picket line, we vow to last one day longer than management to make sure that we get a fair contract,” said Wroblewski. “And in Wisconsin, the union workers there say  they’ll carry the fight one day longer than their misguided governor until he gives up on his efforts to crush their rights. This should be the goal of all working people nationwide.”

“The struggle is not over”

Angered at their betrayal, thousands of Wisconsin union workers and their supporters continued their fight against a a law stripping public workers of collective barganining rights. Rallies and demonstrations took place all over the state on Thursday. High school students in Madison, the state’s capital, have called for a student walk out Friday to support their teachers who are among those who will no longer be able bargain collectively. Unions amplified efforts to recall Republican senators who voted for the bill.  The leader of the Madison teachers’ union said that work is underway to take legal action to halt enforcement of law.

On Thursday, the day after the Wisconsin Senate voted to strip public employees of their collective bargaining rights, 7,000 people rallied in Madison chanting “We will never give up.” Some of the protestors took the rally inside the state Capitol where they continued chanting and beating on drums.

The demonstration delayed the General Assembly from voting on the union busting measure. Doors to the Assembly and its gallery were locked to keep demonstrators outside. Eventually police were called in to clear the building, and they arrested about 50 demonstrators who refused to leave. Rallies and demonstrations against the bill were held in 12 other Wisconsin cities on Thursday.

The General Assembly passed the measure on Thursday and Gov Walker signed it into law on Friday.

To protest the new law, high school students in Madison said that they would walk out of class at 2:00 PM Friday and hold a teach-in at the library mall in downtown Madison. “We are asking all students in the United States to walk out at 2:00 PM local time in solidarity with Wisconsin and to organize teach-ins on the attacks on public education and working families where you live,” read the announcement of the walk out on the Facebook page of Wisconsin Students in Solidarity.

The Wisconsin Farmers Union and Family Farm Defenders on Saturday will hold a tractorcade ending up at the Capitol. The event will protest Gov Scott Walker’s proposed budget cuts that the union says will  cause local property taxes to increase and take away BadgerCare health insurance from many who could not otherwise afford health care coverage. The tractorcade will also support collective bargaining rights for public employees.

In addition to the tractorcade, there will be another demonstration on Saturday in Madison that unions are urging members to attend. Bus schedules have been posted for those coming in from out-of-town.

Unions and their supporters also stepped up efforts to recall eight of the Republican senators who voted for the anti-worker bill and are subject to a recall petition. SEIU, AFT, and AFSCME are organizing members to canvass the Senate districts with recall petitions. Local demonstrations and rallies in Senate districts are planned throughout the rest of the month.

On Thursday after the Senate passed the measure, General Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca, Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk, and Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz filed complaints charging that open meeting laws were violated when the Senate committee that adopted the measure held a hearing without giving proper notice.

John Matthews, executive director of the Madison teachers’ union, told members after the Senate vote on Wednesday that they should show up for work on Thursday, but promised them that the Senate’s “improper and illegal action will be challenged in court.”

“The struggle is not over,” the Wisconsin AFL-CIO said. “Working people are mobilizing and working on recall efforts to change the Wisconsin state Senate, and are exploring legal challenges to the manner in which (Wednesday’s) vote was conducted.”

Wisconsin workers stabbed in the back

The Wisconsin state Senate yesterday voted 18-1 to strip the state’s public workers of their collective bargaining rights. The bill now goes to the state House where it is expected to be passed.

The Senate voted on a substitute to the original “budget repair” bill. The substitute deleted all references to budget cuts but retained provisions that deprive public workers of their collective bargaining rights. Because the substitute did not contain any language about the budget, it did not require the three-fifths majority required by the orginal bill.

Senate Democrats had walked out of the Senate two weeks ago to prevent a vote on the original bill and went to Illinois vowing not to return until the anti-worker provisions in the original bill were eliminated. They had been in negotiaions with Republican Senators on a compromise that would have allowed public workers to retain their collective bargaining rights. The substitute bill voted on Wednesday came from Wisconsin Gov Scott Walker.

Efforts are underway to recall eight Republican senators whose terms in office are subject to recall. Rallies and demonstrations across Wisconsin will take place today.

Find information about the rallies  here, here and here. Find out more details about Gov Walker’s treacherous action here, here, here, here, and here.

Solidarity delegation to Ciudad Acuna planned for May

NAFTA, we were told, would create prosperity in the US and Mexico by breaking down trade barriers. But the reality for workers on both sides of the border is that NAFTA has impoverished millions and made life much less secure for workers.

In Mexico, one of the results of NAFTA has been that the country’s labor code, which on paper provides many protections for Mexican workers, has been largely ignored and gone unenforced as Mexico’s leaders strive to make their workforce more flexible–that is, a workforce  willing to work for low pay with few benefits and little job security– to attract foreign investment.

Ciudad Acuna is the home to hundreds of maquiladoras, factories moved across the border by US companies to take advantage of Mexico’s flexible workforce. Life is hard for the people who work at the maquiladoras–pay is low, job security non-existent, and work is often unhealthy and dangerous. Unions have been kept out of the city by a local power structure more concerned with protecting profits of foreign maquiladora owners than standing up for the rights of Mexican workers.

However, for more than a decade, the Comite Fronterizo de Obreras/os (CFO), which means the Border Committee for Working Men and Women in English, have been helping workers in Ciudad Acuna and other border cities organize for social and on-the-job justice.

During this time, CFO has established a close working relationship with Austin Tan Cerca de la Frontera, an Austin-based solidarity and educational group that routinely sponsors delegations from the US to the border to give people North of the border an opportunity to see first hand the effects that NAFTA and neoliberal globalization, (unrestrained capitalism) have had on workers in Mexico. The next solidarity and education delegation will be traveling to Ciudad Acuna in May. Information about the trip will be posted on the Austin Tan Cerca de la Frontera website.

During the last trip in January, delegates from the US learned about the fight to organize workers at one of Ciudad Acuna’s largest employers, Arenses y Accesorios, formerly owned by Alcoa, but now owned by Platinum Equity, a private equity company in the US.

CFO has been helping an organizing committee made up of workers inside the six maquiladoras owned by Arenes y Accesorios, which makes electric harnesses and other auto parts, to organize a local of the National Union of Mineworkers and Metalworkers, known as Los Mineros, an independent union with a militant history that has won exceptionally good contracts for its members.

In order for the union to be recognized as the bargaining agent for the workers, the organizing committee must get 50 percent plus one of the factory workers to join the union by completing a union membership application.

“(The CFO and the organizing committee) have now rallied 30 percent of the factory workers (over 1,200) to their unionizing cause,” writes Bianca Hinz-Foley, a member of the January Austin Tan Cerca delegation, in a report on the visit. ” They need 50 percent plus one to be recognized by the employer, and they are in the “recta final,” the final push, to get the other 20 percent plus one that they need to win recognition.

CFO and organizing committee members are “going door-to-door in the colonias dispelling myths about unions as (being) inherently corrupt and talking about union rights,” writes Hinz-Foley.

“Many of these workers have been kept in the dark about the rights under the law,” said Judith Rosenberg of Austin Tan Cerca. “They are often surprised and enthusiastic when they learn what their rights really are.”

During the January visit, delegates from the US met with rank-and-file workers and CFO members active in the organizing drive.  “CFO members, without judgment, opened up their lives and homes to strangers from another country and culture,” writes Hinz-Foley about the reception that the Austin Tan Cerca delegation received.

And for the delegates it was an eye-opening and moving experience. “One delegate remarked on the sense of responsibility she felt to share her experience with the CFO with family and friends back in Austin,” writes Hinz-Foley. Another delegate said, “I need to send my boys on this trip. It would give them perspective; it would change their lives.”

Make Wall Street Pay

“The money is there; it’s on Wall Street. They just need to go get it,” said a young African-American woman inside the Washington DC office of Sen. Mitch McConnell whose office was being occupied by about 600 people demanding that the senator and his colleagues on Capitol Hill stop trying to balance the budget by cutting social services and instead tax big corporations that caused the Great Recession and the ensuing spike in the budget deficit.

The occupation of McConnell’s office on Monday was only one stop in what was a busy day for the kickoff of the Make Wall Street Pay Campaign. The morning began with the occupation of a Washington DC Bank of America branch that temporarily caused the bank to close for business; the protest then moved to Capitol Hill where in addition to Sen McConnell’s, the office of House Speaker John Boehner was occupied. After which, the group picketed the hotel where the National Association of State Attorneys General was meeting, demanding that the state AGs take aggressive action against banks like Bank of America that profited from predatory lending practices that caused so many families to lose their homes to foreclosure.

“Inspired by workers in Wisconsin and Ohio, Americans from coast to coast are now standing up and fighting back,” said George Goehl of National People’s Action, which organized Monday’s events. ” Even more hopeful is how we are shifting from defense to offense. Just take the issue of budgets – Americans are now standing up saying we will not be fooled by false debates about budgets and deficits. We know the country is not facing a budget crisis — it’s a revenue crisis. And, we found the money. It’s on Wall Street.”

NPA also used the occasion to announce the release of a report entitled Big Bank Tax Drain. The report says that state budget woes that are causing so many cuts to schools and social services are not caused by too much spending but by too little revenue, the result of the Great Recession.

The point of the Make Wall Street Pay campaign is to hold those responsible for the recession accountable for their actions by making them pay for the damage that they’ve done. The Big Bank Tax Drain finds that instead of paying their fair share, Wall Street banks have been given huge tax breaks. According to the report:

• Bank of America for the 2010 tax year will receive a $666 million tax refund, two times the amount of the proposed federal budget cuts for the Community Block Grant program,
• Banks use a variety of mechanisms, such as offshore tax shelters, to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley have incorporated half of their 1,871 foreign subsidiaries in offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands to avoid paying corporate income taxes, and
• Closing tax loopholes on the financial sector would generate $150 billion in federal tax revenue a year.

“Wall Street has bankrupted our communities, counties, and states, and not paid their fair share,” Goehl said. “We can (and must) make Wall Street pay.”

500 gather in Austin for Day of the Fallen

On June 9, 2009,  Wilson Joel Irias Cerritos of Guatemala, Jesus Angel Lopez Perez also of Guatemala, and Raude Ramirez Camacho of Mexico plunged to their deaths when ill-designed, overloaded scaffolding on which they were working crumbled and collapsed.

The three worked on a construction crew building the 21 Rio high-rise apartments near downtown Austin. Their employer, Capoera Construction LLC of Margate, Florida, was cited and fined by the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration for not properly inspecting the scaffolding and for not providing safety training to its workers.

Other Capoera workers not injured in the accident have since charged the company with wage theft. They also reported that Capoera did not allow its workers to take rest and water breaks despite the fact that summer time temperatures in Austin frequently hover around 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and they said that the company didn’t have workers compensation insurance, so that when they were injured on the job and couldn’t work, they had no income to make up for lost wages.

Construction work in Texas is a dangerous endeavor and can be deadly, which is why Build a Better Texas, a joint effort of construction workers, honest construction businesses, safety advocates, and faith leaders, has initiated a campaign to improve construction safety and to stop labor abuses such as wage theft by unscrupulous contractors. 

Last week Build a Better Texas held a Day of the Fallen in Austin to commemorate the deaths of Irias, Lopez, Ramirez and hundreds of other construction workers who have died on the job in Texas. 

More than 500 construction workers and their supporters from all over Texas gathered at Austin’s downtown federal building and marched to the state Capitol carrying coffins in honor of those who have died on the job.

The Workers Defense Project, an Austin-based worker center that helped organize the event, reports that in 2009 Texas recorded 138 on-the-job construction worker deaths–that’s one death every 2.5 days. “That’s a statistic that belongs in the 19th Century, not the 21st  Century,” said Texas state Senator Eddie Lucio, Jr speaking at the Day of the Fallen rally.

“The construction industry (in Texas) has long been marred with safety problems that have hurt workers, and made it more difficult for honest busineses to compete,” read a media release by the Workers Defense Project, which helps low-income, mainly immigrant workers organize and fight back against abuses like poor on-the-job safety and wage theft.

After the rally, workers and their supporters went inside the Capitol to build support among lawmakers for the Build a Better Texas legislative agenda, which would:

1) Require Texas construction companies to provide workers compensation insurance. Texas is the only state in the US that does not require employers to have workers compensation insurance. Only 45 percent of Texas’ construction workers are covered by workers’ compensation, despite the fact that one in five Texas construction workers have suffered a serious on-the-job injury. Sen Lucio has filed SB 938 that addresses this issue, and Rep Armando Walle has filed a companion bill, HB 1734, in the House.

2) Require ten-minute rest breaks every four hours on state-owned construction sites. Despite the hot, life-threatening summers that Texas experiences, 41 percent of Texas construction workers report that they don’t get rest breaks.

3) Mandate ten hours of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) safety training on government-owned construction sites. While construction work is some of the most dangerous work, 64 percent of Texas construction workers report that they never received any safety training.

4) Enhance enforcement against wage theft. One in five construction workers report that employers either didn’t pay them or didn’t pay them the correct amount. In some cases, construction employers do not pay time and one-half for overtime. 

5) End tax fraud which some construction employers commit by misclassifying workers as contract employees and not deducting income taxes or paying Social Security taxes.

“Those who build our state face some of the most dangerous and unhealthy working conditions in the country,” said Emily Tinn of the Workers Defense Project. “Texas needs to hold (all) employers to . . . high standards so that good businesses aren’t undercut by those who break the rules.”

Texas state workers stand up for abused children

If the budget cuts proposed in the Texas Legislature  pass, all but the wealthiest of Texans will feel their sting, but among those who will be hurt the most are the state’s abused children.

“The budget cuts will undo the progress that the Department of Family and Protective services and its employees have made toward protecting abused children,” said Myko Gedutis, a Texas State Employees Union organizer. “If these cuts pass, the Child Protective Services division of DFPS will lose more than 700 workers, most of whom provide direct services to abused children and their families. And other divisions of DFPS are taking hits too; there will be fewer workers to oversee day care safety, to investigate elderly abuse complaints, and to answer reports about abuse.”

The proposed budget also does more than cut staff; it reduces or eliminates payments that support abused children like the kinship care program that pays a modest stipend to relatives to care for children whose parents have lost custody because of abuse.

“The proposed state budget bill . . . endangers all the progress Child Protective Services has made and threatens to take CPS back to the days the days when . . . children were sleeping in CPS offices, and case workers were overwhelmed,” said  Dr Jane Burstain of the Center for Public Policy, an Austin-based research center, in written testimony on the proposed budget.

A delegation of TSEU members who work for CPS and other Department of Family and Protective Services divisions last Wednesday visited state lawmakers as part of a TSEU mini-Lobby Day to urge them to oppose cuts to Child Protective Services and other DFPS services that support Texas’ most vulnerable population.

“We did a good job of explaining the impact that the DFPS cuts would have,” Gedutis said. “But we’ll have to do more to stop these irresponsible cuts.” Gedutis told TSEU members at the mini-Lobby Day that “we need to get more of our members committed to attending our April 6 Lobby Day and we need to reach out to people in the community and get them involved in the fight against the cuts.”

Although Texas remains a low-service state when it comes to protecting children of abuse, “there have been extensive efforts on multiple levels in recent years to improve how the CPS system operates,” says a recent report on CPS by the Center for Public Policy Priorities entitled The Guide to Texas Child Protective Services.

One reason for this improvement is that in 2007 DFPS was authorized to hire more caseworkers to investigate child abuse allegations and to provide services to children when investigations confirmed abuse. As a result, caseloads while still high have been reduced to manageable levels.

“With caseloads at a manageable level, caseworkers (can) visit with children and families more often and ensure the children (are) safe and families (are) getting needed services,” says The Guide.

But the proposed budget would cut 749.5 employee positions at CPS, nearly 400 of whom would be workers who work directly with abused children and their families. “In 2003, the Legislature made the mistake of eliminating positions at the CPS with tragic effects,” Gedutis said. ”It would be a shame to repeat the mistake made in 2003″

The reforms, which began 2005, also tried to address the high staff turnover rate that was identified as one of the barriers to improving child protection services. In 2005, DFPS’s turnover rate was 24 percent. In 2006 after the state upgraded child protective services positions, the turnover rate declined by 13 percent.

“Child protection is high-stress, low pay work,” Gedutis said. “One of the things that helps retain quality workers and reduce the turnover rate is that the job offers decent health care and pension benefits. But if the budget cuts go through, these benefits will be drastically cut, and when the economy improves we’ll likely see a lot of highly qualified workers leave state service for a job that pays more and has less stress. That will mean that abused children will have fewer people in their corner to protect them.”

Anti-worker bill passes Ohio Senate

The Ohio Senate on Wednesday voted  17-16 for SB 5, a bill that severely restricts collective bargaining rights for state workers, public higher education workers, local government workers, and public school teachers. Union leaders vowed to continue the fight as the bill next goes to state House of Representatives for consideration.

“We have been shut out, but we will not shut up,” said Eddie L Page, president of the Ohio Civil Servants Employees Association (OCSEA), which represents 35,000 state and local government employees. “We refuse to be silenced. The vote today will just mean our voices will be raised even louder tomorrow.”

On Tuesday, 20,000 public sector union members and their supporters were in Columbus, Ohio’s state capital, to demonstrate against SB 5, whose purpose is to weaken the power of unions and their ability to protect pension and health care benefits that help make workers’ lives more secure. 

SB 5 is similar to one being pushed by Republican Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin and was initiated by Ohio’s Republican Governor John Kasich, who has made it clear that taking away these benefits and weakening union power is one of his priorities.

On Wednesday, SB 5 was scheduled for a Senate committee hearing.  Thousands of public workers and their supporters returned to Columbus to demonstrate against it. It passed out of committee Wednesday morning and was sent directly to the Senate, which passed the bill by a one-vote margin about 5:00 P.M. After the vote, union members chanted, “Shame on you!” and “We’ll remember this.”

For the last three days Columbus has been a hub of activity as union workers marched, rallied, and spoke directly to lawmakers urging them to vote against SB 5. Even before this week, union members mobilized for a statewide campaign to kill SB 5. “OCSEA members across Ohio called and visited Senators almost daily,” Page said.

As a result of these efforts the original SB 5, which ended collective bargaining rights for state employees, was amended. The amended bill permits collective bargaining for state employees, but severely restricts the scope of their bargaining. They can bargain over wages but increases are to be based only on a so-called merit system; they can bargain over health benefits subject to some limits; and they can bargain over leave, certain aspects of performance evaluation, and the duration of the agreement.

They can’t bargain over transfers, staffing levels, hours of work, equipment, and privatization. Employees also lost the right to strike and to have contract disputes settled by binding arbitration. Instead, any issues that can’t be resolved will go to a legislative body for resolution. These limitations apply to local government workers and public school teachers as well as state employees.

“The changes continue to leave all control at the top and (give)the unions no chance to make any difference at the bargaining table,” Page said. “Now, the bill makes criminals out of public employees, and slaps them with a fine, firing and even jail time if they participate in a strike. It also gives the legislature final decision-making power in any contract disputes and allows the state to declare a fiscal emergency and unilaterally open up union contracts mid-stream.” 

The bill substituted for the original SB 5 is 99 pages long, but the committee reviewing the substitute heard no testimony, allowed no questions about the bill to be asked, and basically rubber stamped the substitute.

“This is unconscionable, to have no valid discussion of this bill and then to ignore the voices of hundreds of thousands of Ohioans, who oppose it,” Page said.

Supporters of SB 5 said that the bill had to be passed in order to bring public sector workers pay and benefits in line with the private sector. However, research shows when you compare total compensation (wage and non-wage benefits), ”Ohio public employees annually earn 6% less than comparable private sector employees and 3.5% less on an hourly basis than comparable private sector employees.”