Obama Unveils Huge Infrastructure/Jobs Program at Milwaukee’s LaborFest

Karen Hickey, Wisconsin AFL-CIO political field communications assistant, contributed to this story.

In a Labor Day address to more than 10,000 union members and their families in Milwaukee, President Obama announced a massive new job-creating road, rail, runway and air traffic control rebuilding project.

Speaking to the Milwaukee Area Labor Council’s annual LaborFest celebration, Obama said it was “the great American middle class that made our economy the envy of the world. It’s got to be that way again.”

It was folks like you, after all, who forged that middle class. It was working men and women who made the twentieth century the American century. It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today– the 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans, those cornerstones of middle class security that all bear the union label.

Joining Obama at the lakefront festivities were AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Labor Council Secretary Sheila Cochran and Wisconsin AFL-CIO President David Newby.

Trumka told the crowd, “Working women and men in Milwaukee—and all across our country—made America ‘No. 1’ in the world.  Now it’s time for America to make working people ‘No.1!’.”

It’s time for JOBS.  For economic patriotism.  I want to see the words “Made in America” again—because it’s time to start exporting the things we make, instead of jobs!

Obama said the massive rebuilding project will build on the investments already made under the Recovery Act, and

create jobs for American workers to strengthen our economy now, and increase our nation’s growth and productivity in the future.

According to the White House the plan would:

• Rebuild 150,000 miles of roads—renewing our commitment to the backbone of our transportation system;
• Construct and maintain 4,000 miles of rail—enough to go coast-to-coast;
• Rehabilitate or reconstruct 150 miles of runway—while putting in place a NextGen air traffic control system that will reduce travel time and delays.
• Create national infrastructure bank.

Click here for a fact sheet on the infrastructure plan.

Don Burmester, a member of Machinists Local 66 (IAM) said the emphasis on jobs is just the message he wanted to hear, and the message that needs to be sent in November.

We need to get regular people back to work. I’ve seen the other party put political games ahead of anything decent to make the president look bad.  We need to get the focus back on the economy and away from foolish political plays.

With just 57 days to go before the Nov. 2 election and with control of Congress at stake, Trumka said that Obama and Democratic leaders

share our vision of an America built on good jobs—and together, we’re going to get America back to work. It won’t be the bankers. It won’t be the Tea Partiers. It won’t be the Party of NO.

It’ll be you.  It’ll be us.  Together

For more on the AFL-CIO’s Labor 2010 mobilization, click here.

Obama said that Republican leaders, the same ones whose decade of failed and flawed policies shattered the economy, have yet to offer any new ideas and strategies.

When the leader of their campaign committee was asked on national television what Republicans would do if they took over Congress, he actually said they’d follow “the exact same agenda” as they did before I took office. The exact same agenda.

So basically, they’re betting that between now and November, you’ll come down with a case of amnesia. They think you’ll forget what their agenda did to this country. They think you’ll just believe that they’ve changed. These are the folks whose policies helped devastate our middle class and drive our economy into a ditch. And now they’re asking you for the keys back.

Click here for Obama’s full remarks.

The day kicked off with a parade of more than 6,000 union members. The Milwaukee LaborFest, which dates back to 1965,  was just one of hundreds of Labor Day events that working people held across the nation to call for good jobs, a stronger middle class and high voter turn-out for November’s midterm elections. We’ll bring you a wrap up of Labor Day action tomorrow.

Labor Day: Recommit to Full Employment

By Rev. Jim Sessions

The Rev. Jim Sessions is the president of the Working America Education Fund and is former director of the AFL-CIO Union Community Fund. He reminds us of the need for the union movement and religious communities to recommit to the joint fight for justice.

The labor movement is the largest and most powerful economic justice organization in the world. From its beginning, the union movement and some parts of the religious community have worked together to help bring justice to our society. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1909 recognized this connection by designating the Sunday before Labor Day as Labor Sunday, a day dedicated to the spiritual and educational dimensions of the labor movement.

Labor organizers have often drawn from the deep wells of religious imagery to lead struggles for economic justice. As scholar and author Perry Bush points out, “They have been able to do so because a great mass of U.S. workers have held religious convictions that were not easily stripped away or transmuted into mindless obeisance to the power of the wealthy.”

Labor Day and Labor Sunday are times for the religious community and the labor movement to not only celebrate working people and their contributions to society. It also is a time to remember the struggles that workers endured to achieve the many benefits we now enjoy but take for granted. Benefits such as the eight-hour day, workers’ compensation, overtime pay, pensions, health and safety laws, Social Security, Medicare, vacation days, unemployment compensation, family medical leave, restrictions on child labor, a minimum wage and the freedom to form unions for collective bargaining. These benefits helped to humanize the workplace and to provide a safety net for millions.

This Labor Day and Labor Sunday, we need to recommit ourselves to the principles that have energized the labor movement over the centuries. For example, in this richest country in the world, more than 2 million full-time workers live below the poverty line, struggling to pay for necessities like food, housing, health care, transportation and child care.

If America’s economy is going to recover, we need paychecks that can fuel consumption. And it would be unconscionable to allow profitable companies to use the recession to drive America’s middle class out of existence.

With record long-term unemployment and communities losing vital public services, it is time to put full and fair employment and a massive federal works program back on the national agenda. Anybody who wants to work should be able to find a job, and not just any job but a job with justice.

Big Business is sitting on record cash reserves. Rather than put America back to work, they’re spending that money opposing jobs and fair taxes. The labor movement and the religious community must combine their power and mobilize to achieve full and fair employment. We must push hard for Congress to pass legislation like the Local Jobs for America Act, which would save or create 1 million jobs. We must continue funding the emergency Temporary Assistance to Needy Families subsidized jobs program and again extend emergency unemployment compensation. To rein in Wall Street, Congress must pass a financial speculation tax.

After the Labor Day weekend is over, we can keep raising our voices. Labor, religious and community coalitions across the country are organizing to address the jobs emergency in many ways, including actions on Sept. 15, organizing local Unemployed Workers Councils and building for the “One Nation Working Together” march on Washington on Oct. 2. Now is the time to make sure that we use our political and moral power once again to make life better for working Americans.

Mother Jones Takes to the Stage

“Eighty years after her death, Mother Jones’ howl for safe mines and responsible corporations still echoes,” writes LA Weekly’s Amy Nicholson in a review of  the play, “The Most Dangerous Woman in America: Machine Guns, Coal Dust, Mother Jones and the Making of the American Dream.”

Written by David Christie and performed by Actors’ Equity (AEA) member Therese Diekhans, the one-woman drama won the Best Solo Show award at the Hollywood Fringe festival in June.

It’s now set for two more performances in Everett, Wash., (just a 26-mile shot from Seattle, straight up I-5) next weekend, Sept. 11 and 12. The performances are half-price for union members and free for union members on strike (location info here).

Writing in the LA Theater Review, Kat Primeau says Diekhans’ charming, studied performance:

playfully brings to life 15 characters, from children mill workers to John D. Rockefeller, as the audience learns the true cost of Big Business cost-cutting in early 20th century mining towns. Mother Jones’ rallying speeches on apathy and revolution are particularly poignant amidst contemporary woes.

Visit Diekhans’ website here.

Labor Day 2010: America’s Workers Losing Ground

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) this week published three reports showing the extent to which America’s workers are losing ground this Labor Day: People are dropping out of the workforce because there are no jobs and those workers who have jobs are earning less.

First, there are not nearly enough new jobs. Nearly 15 million workers are unemployed, nearly a quarter of whom have been seeking work for more than a year. Even though unemployment rose slightly to 9.6 percent last month, it’s 0.5 percent less than it was last October. But that’s not because the economy has been generating that many jobs. EPI economist Heidi Shierholz found that the percentage of people who were actually employed held steady even as the population increased. Translation: The improvement in the unemployment rate has been almost entirely due to people dropping out of (or not entering) the labor force because of the lack of jobs. Check out Shierholz’s report, “Employment Growth Continues Subpar Performance,” here. 

And those who are working are making less. Wages for the typical worker have collapsed. In “Recession Hits Workers’ Paychecks,” Shierholz and EPI President Lawrence Mishel show that workers who have managed to keep their jobs or find new ones during the economic downturn have suffered from stagnant or no wage growth.

Wages are growing half as fast as they were immediately prior to the recession. That’s true in almost all occupations. The numbers were worse for men than women. In fact, the median income for an average working household fell between 2000 and 2007 by more than $2,000. This report, which you can find here, is the first in a series of reports leading up to the launch of EPI’s much anticipated “State of Working America” volume and revamped website in January 2011.

Finally, EPI has released a handy new tool that gives a clear statistical picture of the recession in one place. Labor Day by the Numbers is a chart that lists pertinent facts about the economy in a quick, compact form with links to previous EPI reports.

For example, the section dealing with the unemployment rate shows the number of people who are jobless, the portion who have been unemployed for six months or a year, the number who are underemployed and other key facts. You can check out the chart here.

Human Rights Report Highlights Discrimination, Inequality in U.S.

The land of the free is not so free if you are poor, a person of color or an immigrant, says a new report. As a result, the U.S. government must aggressively work to eliminate discrimination and disparities throughout society and in the workplace and to ensure that international human rights standards are enforced inside its borders.

The report, compiled by the U.S. Human Rights Network, a coalition of human rights, academic and civil society groups, is part of the United Nations’ Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of human rights around the world. This is the first time the U.S. government has participated in the review, which occurs every four years. As part of the review, the U.S. government will have to defend its human rights record before a U.N. panel in November 2010.

The report on human rights conditions in the United States highlights the nation’s significant shortcomings in complying with international human rights standards and makes recommendations on how the United States can better meet those standards.

For example, the report points out that the U.S. labor laws fail to protect low-wage workers such as domestic workers, agricultural workers and independent contractors, who most often are people of color, immigrants or women. According to the report, the nation’s laws also limit freedom of association of workers by excluding large groups from the right to form a union. It calls for expanding and strengthening the right to collective bargaining, either by passing the Employee Free Choice Act or other legislation.

More than 200 nongovernmental organizations and hundreds of advocates across the country have endorsed the report, which took nearly a year to research and produce. The AFL-CIO and affiliated unions participated in several field hearings on human rights across the country that gathered information for the report.

The report addresses a wide range of issues, including education, equality and non-discrimination, capital punishment, treatment of people with disabilities, poverty and access to health care.

Anti-workers have denounced the report. But University of Pennsylvania Law School associate professor Sarah Paoletti, senior coordinator for the Human Rights Network’s UPR Project, says:

Refusing to acknowledge that the U.S. can make any improvements in its human rights policies and practices misses a critical opportunity for the U.S. to demonstrate the need for governments to hold themselves accountable to their constituents at home. Enhancing human rights at home will only strengthen the nation’s standing and influence abroad, and we should embrace the challenge.

To read the U.S. Human Rights Network report, click here.  For more information on the UPR process, click here.

Wind, Web, Telecom and Sanitation Workers Join AFL-CIO Unions

Workers at wind turbine maker Trinity Structural Towers voted to join IBEW.

Telecom workers, green industry wind power employees, sanitation workers—and, in a precedent setting win, website writers/producers—have recently joined AFL-CIO unions.

In Puerto Rico, 171 call center workers at AT&T Mobility won union representation with Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 3010 through majority sign-up. Under an agreement between AT&T and CWA, the company will remain neutral and will recognize the union once a majority of employees sign up. Meanwhile, in Ocean County, N.J., five employees of the Borough of Island Heights won representation by CWA Local 1088 also through majority sign-up.

A group of more than 130 workers at Trinity Structural Towers—Iowa’s leading manufacturer of wind towers—voted to join Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 347 in Des Moines.

IBEW organizer Brian Heins reports that Trinity mounted a two-monthlong anti-union campaign that included hiring two union-busting firms. “It was nonstop.…They used everything in the book.” The IBEW website has a detailed look at the workers’ victory here.

In Portland, Ore., 13 workers in the sanitation department at the Safeway Bakery voted to join the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Local 114. Incredibly, even though the rest of the bakery department had long been unionized, Safeway not only used anti-union lawyers but flew in top executives to try and beat the drive by the bakers’ dozen to join the union. It didn’t work.

In a first for the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), Web news writer/producers at Chicago CBS station WBBM voted unanimously to be represented by the WGAE. These are the first news writer/producers working exclusively on Web content to join the WGAE, the union that has long represented CBS News employees writing for TV and radio.

The unit, four writers/producers, are just the beginning, WBBM Web writer Michael Ramsey says:

We are proud to be the first web news writers and web producers to join the Guild, but I’m sure we won’t be the last. Web writers and producers may work in a different medium than the writers the Guild traditionally represents, but our needs are essentially the same.

As WGAE Executive Director Lowell Peterson says:

The news industry is shifting to digital platforms and their decision to join us helps ensure that writing and producing news continues to be a good job into the 21st century.

Sept. 15 Day of Action: We’re in a Jobs Emergency!

With their six-figure salaries and government-paid health care, members of Congress may not feel the pinch of a 9.6 percent unemployment rate. But millions of Americans are in pain, and on Sept. 15, they will shout loud and clear that we are in an emergency and Congress must act immediately to create good jobs. 

 Sept. 15 is the day workers, students and community and religious groups in dozens of cities across the country will revive one of the key demands of the 1963 “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” by calling for full and fair employment and demanding the government declare a national “jobs emergency.”

“It’s time for corporate apologists in the Senate, who are blocking a recovery for the rest of us, to recognize what workers already know: we are in a jobs emergency that requires a bold, emergency response,” says Sarita Gupta, executive director of Jobs with Justice, the main organizer of the protests.

With record long-term unemployment and communities losing vital public services, it is time to put full and fair employment and a massive federal works program—core demands from the 1963 March for Jobs and Freedom that Glenn Beck wants us to forget—back on the national agenda. 

Protestors will demand that Congress pass the Local Jobs for America Act, which would save or create 1 million jobs, extend emergency Temporary Assistance to Needy Families subsidized jobs program, extend emergency unemployment compensation and pass a financial speculation tax that would rein in the more destabilizing aspects of Wall Street and generate $200 to $500 billion annually.

Says Gupta:

If Congress focuses on reducing the federal budget deficit rather than fixing the jobs deficit, millions of workers and communities will suffer. When Wall Street was in crisis, Congress found hundreds of billions of dollars to bail them out. We need to respond to the jobs crisis with the same urgency.

The Wall Street Journal reported that taxpayer bailed-out Wall Street banks are making “bumper earnings” while non-financial U.S. corporations are sitting on more than $8 trillion in cash reserves. A mere 20 percent of those holdings could employ 5 million Americans at $70,000 a year for five years.

 ”Our community has been devastated by the jobs emergency and these conservatives are actually bragging about blocking a federal job creation program while they help Wall Street and greedy corporations make record profits,” says Elce Redmond of Chicago Jobs with Justice and the South Austin Coalition.

Our country needs full and fair employment. Anybody that wants to work should be able to find a job, and not just any job but a job with justice.

For a list of cities planning actions and to learn more, visit www.jwj.org/jobs  or check out the Facebook page here.

Wisconsin Union Members Already in Gear for Election Season

Wisconsin working families aren’t waiting until Labor Day to mobilize for the fall elections.  They are already knocking on doors, leafleting worksites and more to get out the vote.

Rep. Steve Kagen (D- Wis.) won’t know until the Sept. 14 Republican primary who will be his general election opponent. But in the meantime, unions and their members are mobilizing to re-elect the Green Bay physician.

Denny Lauer (see top photo) of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 2-1279 took part in a recent labor walk where he talked with other union member families about Kagen, who has voted for job-creation legislation to put people back to work. Says Kagen:

It’s Main Street, not Wall Street or Big Business, that will provide jobs that will complete our economic recovery.

Earlier this week, a group of military veterans from the AFL-CIO Union Veterans Council met with Tom Barrett, Democratic candidate for governor. Barrett has the backing of Wisconsin’s unions. The group discussed vital issues, including jobs, the economy and veterans’ health care.

Unlike either of the leading candidates in the Sept. 14 Republican primary who have endorsed jobs cuts and furloughs, Barrett has proposed a detailed jobs plan that is estimated to create as many as 180,000 Wisconsin jobs in his first term.

Find out more about Labor 2010’s action in Wisconsin here.

Jobless Rate Worsens to 9.6% in August, Congress Needs to Act

The U.S. jobless rate worsened to 9.6 percent in August from 9.5 percent in July, with 54,000 jobs lost, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data out today. The private sector created only 67,000 jobs in August, far below the 150,000 jobs a month needed to keep up with the population and extremely far below the hundreds of thousands of new jobs needed each month to return to pre-recession employment levels. Government employment fell by 121,000, largely reflecting the loss of 114,000 temporary workers hired for U.S. Census 2010.

The number of people who are underemployed, which includes those who are too discouraged to look for work or are working part-time out of economic necessity, worsened to 16.7 percent from 16.5 percent in July. More than 26 million U.S. workers are without jobs or full-time work. The long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) declined by 323,000 over the month to 6.2 million. In August, 42.0 percent of unemployed persons had been jobless for 27 weeks or more.

Jobs increased in health care (28,000); mining (8,000); and construction (19,000). Manufacturing employment declined by 27,000 in August.

Maybe when Congress gets back in town, lawmakers—especially those Republicans who repeatedly have blocked extending unemployment insurance and funding for jobs programs—can finally figure it out: The private sector is not creating jobs.

Discussing the “Be nice to us or we’ll quit investing,” threats by Big Business to Congress and the White House if they pass regulations to rein in corporate greed, Yves Smith writes:

Guess what? As we’ve indicated, big businesses were net disinvesting even during the corporate-friendly Bush Administration.

And it’s getting worse. Big Business isn’t creating jobs and yet corporate mouthpieces have the gall to attack unemployed workers. In one such screed this week, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed slamming unemployment insurance. As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote in rebuttal:

A majority of the jobless typically have moved from job to job before they failed to find a new one, or have held a number of part-time jobs.

So it’s hard to make the case that many of the unemployed have chosen to remain jobless and collect unemployment benefits rather than work.

And then there’s the not-so-small fact that there are more than five workers for every one job in this country.

As Reich writes, extending unemployment insurance is a basic action of a civil society. In addition, lawmakers need to move federal funding to create more jobs.

Mark Weisbrot at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), is among many economists calling for more immediate federal aid to address the nation’s jobs crisis.

Republicans have successfully promoted the idea that we already tried a stimulus and it didn’t help. There are few, if any, economists who would agree. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that between 1.4 and 3.3 million more people were employed by mid-2010, because of the stimulus.

The American public knows how such job creation can be funded: A clear majority of those polled favors federal spending to create jobs, and letting the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is calling on Congress to “take up and pass legislation that will create jobs and rebuild America, starting with the Surface Transportation bill, Clean Water Authorization, clean energy infrastructure spending, and expansion of nuclear power loan guarantees.”

We will not allow Republicans, who continue to say no to jobs, say no to unemployment benefits and want to privatize and cut Social Security, to derail our efforts to fight for a middle class economy. The future that we leave for our children depends on our success in beating back these barriers.

Today’s jobs data, combined with a new study showing that four of the five fastest growing occupations between 2006 and 2009 pay below the median wage ($15.95 an hour in May 2009) and a report that an appalling one in six Americans now is enrolled in an anti-poverty program, it’s long past time for Congress to act.

The last word goes to Reich:

A record number of Americans is unemployed for a record length of time. This is a national tragedy.

USW: Hold Off Drilling in Gulf Until It’s Safe

The explosion and fire on an offshore petroleum platform in the Gulf of Mexico today shows “we need to make sure all these rigs in the Gulf are safe to operate before we put personnel back to work on them,” United  Steelworkers (USW) Vice President Gary Beevers said.

One person was injured in the explosion on a platform owned by Houston-based Mariner Energy Inc.

Beevers, who heads the union’s National Oil Bargaining division, said in a statement:

I would hate to see a worker killed in our haste to reopen the Gulf to drilling. We need to give the government adequate time to do its inspections and ensure adequate health and safety provisions are in place.

It’s ironic, said Beevers, the explosion happened one day after the American Petroleum Institute (API), the oil industry’s trade association, held rallies to lift the moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf.

Instead of holding political protests, the API and the industry should be helping the government ensure all the rigs are safe to operate so the moratorium can be removed sooner.

We want drilling to return to the Gulf just like everyone else in the industry, but we have to make sure these rigs are safe first. We don’t need another oil explosion and oil spill.

Meanwhile, Beevers adds, offshore workers and the businesses affected by the moratorium that came as a result of the BP explosion and oil spill should be given “adequate assistance.”