CWA Commentary
George Washington
Reversing a lower court's grant of summary judgment to the seven companies, the appeals court rejected the companies' argument that the provision (Cal. Labor Code § 233) applies only to traditional accrual-based sick leave policies and not to the contractual provision, which allows employees with at least one year of service to be paid for "sickness absence" up to five consecutive days in a seven-day period. The entitlement is renewed each time the employee returns to work from such an absence.
Addressing an issue of first impression, the appeals court found that the contractual provision is covered by Section 233, which defines "sick leave" as "accrued increments of compensated leave provided ... to an employee as a benefit of the employment for use by the employee during an absence from the employment" due to illness or injury.
Justice James R. Lambden wrote the opinion, which Justices Paul R. Haerle and James A. Richman joined.
Suit Covers Seven SBC Subsidiaries
The seven SBC subsidiaries involved in the case are Pacific Telesis Group, Pacific Bell Telephone Co., Advanced Solutions Inc., Southwestern Bell Video Services Inc., Pacific Bell Information Services, SBC Services Inc., and SBC Telecom Inc. The suit was brought in 2005 by Kimberly McCarther, an SBC Services employee who was not paid under the sickness absence provision for seven days she stayed home to care for two ill children, and Juan Huerta, a Pacific Bell Telephone employee who was not paid under the provision for two days he cared for his ill mother.
Since 1986, every collective bargaining agreement between CWA and the seven companies has included the following sickness absence provision:
"All employees with at least one (1) year of service shall be paid for sickness absence beginning with the first scheduled working day of absence. Sickness absence payments shall be limited to a maximum of five (5) days in the seven-day period."
Once an employee returns to work following such an absence, the employee again is entitled to payment for up to five days of sickness absence, with no annual or other cap on the total number of days of payment. Employees do not earn any particular number of sick leave hours or days for working a particular period of time. In addition to sickness absence payments, employees are entitled to request up to a certain number of paid personal days off per year for any reason.
Under the companies' "attendance management" policy, employees are subject to progressive discipline for exceeding a certain number of absences during the prior 12 months. Absences covered by workers' compensation or the Family and Medical Leave Act are not counted as "occurrences" for purposes of the attendance policy.
Section 233, which was enacted in 1999 and amended in 2001 to cover domestic partners, now provides:
"Any employer who provides sick leave ... shall permit an employee to use in any calendar year the employee's accrued and available sick leave entitlement, in an amount not less than the sick leave that would be accrued during six months at the employee's then rate of entitlement, to attend to an illness of a child, parent, spouse, or domestic partner of the employee."
The labor code provision also permits employers to apply to the use of "kin care" leave all restrictions normally placed on the use of sick leave for the employee's own condition.
Section 233 defines "sick leave" as "accrued increments of compensated leave provided by an employer to an employee as a benefit of the employment for use by the employee during an absence from the employment" occurring because of the employee's illness, injury, or medical condition, because of seeking professional diagnosis or treatment, or because of other medical reasons including pregnancy or obtaining a physical examination.
The Alameda County Superior Court granted summary judgment to the companies, finding that sickness absence payments under the collective bargaining agreement do not constitute sick leave within the meaning of Section 233. The lower court did not decide whether to certify the case as a class action.
'Accrued' Means 'Earned But Not Yet Due or Paid.'
The companies argued that the word "accrued" in the definition of "sick leave" means "periodic accumulation over time," while the two employees argued that it means "came into existence as an enforceable claim." After examining dictionary definitions, case law, and other labor code provisions using the work, Lambden found that "the plain and commonsense meaning of 'accrued' " when used in the context of compensated leave means "something which is 'earned but not yet' due or paid."
"Accrued increments" means additions of compensated leave that already have come into existence as enforceable claims, Lambden said. He found that nothing in Section 233 suggests that it only refers to increments that periodically accumulate over time.
The reference to "the employee's accrued and available sick leave entitlement" relates to "the ability of employees to use 'accrued' sick leave" and recognizes the possibility that they "may need to satisfy certain conditions and meet certain restrictions before they can actually use" earned leave, Lambden said. He found that Section 233's reference to the amount of "sick leave that would be accrued" in this case means the five days of compensated leave that employees are entitled to after working for at least one year.
The SBC companies argued that if Section 233 is applied to the sickness leave provision, they would be unable to regulate the use of kin care leave because of Section 234's prohibition on counting Section 233-covered leave for purposes of an absence control policy. However, Lambden found that Section 234 "does not prohibit an employer's regulation of 'kin care' leave taken by employees pursuant to section 233, provided that employers regulate sick leave and 'kin care' leave in the same way."
The companies also argued that Section 233 does not apply to the sickness absence provision because it does not provide for accrual of increments of compensated leave. But Lambden found that "employees, after working for one year, are provided as a matter of right with increments of up to five consecutive days of compensated leave for their absences each time they become ill or injured," subject to the attendance management policy, and that these increments accrue after one year, although they are not due or paid until the employees become ill or injured.
Differences in Policies 'Not Particularly Important.'
The differences between the sickness absence provision and traditional sick leave policies giving employees certain amounts of leave for working certain periods of time "are not particularly important for purposes of analyzing the application of section 233," Lambden said. "What is of primary concern is that under both policies employees at some point become entitled to use increments of compensated leave upon becoming sick," he said. He found that there is nothing in Section 233 indicating an intent to treat the two types of policies differently and that the plain meaning of the text "indicates that it governs them both."
The companies argued that Section 233 cannot apply to the sickness absence provision because it cannot be determined how much kin care leave "would be accrued during six months at the employee's then rate of entitlement," which is the minimum amount employers must allow to be used in any calendar year. "We do not determine any minimum because it is not an issue in this appeal," Lambden said.
However, he found that "Section 233 does not require some mathematical calculation of an amount of 'sick leave' that would be 'banked' over a six-month period." The current rate of entitlement is the five days of compensated leave employees earn after working for an SBC company for at least one year, Lambden said. Although one cannot calculate in advance how much sick leave an employee will use in a six-month period, "this lack of mathematical certainty does not alter the fact that during any given six-month period, employees are entitled to use an increment at any time upon the occurrence of illness or injury, subject to the strictures of the 'attendance management' policy," he said.
The companies argued that the legislative history shows that Section 233 was intended to exclude sickness absence policies. But Lambden found that the legislative amendments cited by the companies "show an intent to more precisely define 'kin care' leave" and to cover a broader range of sick leave policies.
Finally, Lambden observed that it is the public policy in California "to broadly construe protective statutes regulating the workplace in favor of employees."
David A. Rosenfeld of Weinberg, Roger & Rosenfeld in Alameda, Calif., represented the two employees. Al Latham of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker in Los Angeles and Thomas E. Geidt and Laura N. Monfredini in the firm's San Francisco office represented the SBC companies.
Naturally, CWA is all for increasing wages, however, the problem we have with this idea is that it is totally outside of the contract.
It is critical that any movements be bargained for with the union as specified in Article 7 of the contract.
Most people's first response might be "what's wrong with upgrading a title, and why should the company have to negotiate that with the union."
The answer is quite a few things that might include these :
* Hours wages and working conditions are things that must be negotiated.
* What about Maintenance Tech's that were surplused out of their job title for lower paying jobs, and have still not been allowed to return?
* What about members who have had transfers on file for months or years?
* How will seniority be treated?
* What will be the impact for those left in the Service Technician Title?
* Will the Service Technicians left behind be subject to a downgrade at some time in the future?
* How will the flood of new Maintenance Technicians be trained, and by who?
* Will the Service Technicians that move have return rights if things don't work out?
One reason so many U.S. imports are unsafe: Failed U.S. trade and regulatory policies.
Tim Newman of the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) offers another: Greed.
At Labor Is Not a Commodity, Newman writes the sourcing policies of companies like Wal-Mart bear a lot of the responsibility for the problems in China’s toy factories.
Retailers such as Wal-Mart put so much pressure on suppliers to produce cheap goods that health, environmental and labor protections get brushed aside. Wal-Mart is the nation’s top importer of Chinese-made products. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reports the giant retailer’s reliance on cheap goods made in China has cost this country nearly 200,000 jobs since 2001.
The U.S. trade deficit with China reached a whopping $233 billion last year, and imports for Wal-Mart alone accounted for $27 billion—11 percent of the growth in the U.S. trade deficit with China since 2001.
Newman cites a new report from ILRF, which analyzes Wal-Mart’s ethical standards and its effect on working conditions globally. Ethical Standards and Working Conditions in Wal-Mart’s Supply Chain concludes that Wal-Mart has not invested the necessary resources or taken the necessary actions to ensure that its ethical standards program is actually enforced.
In sum, Wal-Mart has a clear idea on who should be held responsible if factories fail to provide workers with proper working conditions; anyone but Wal-Mart. The company believes that “ultimately our suppliers and their factories must realize the benefits of improving worker conditions and incorporate improved standards and processes into their businesses.” However, Wal-Mart fails to recognize that its purchasing policies make this difficult and in fact encourage very different practices.
Wal-Mart has designed its system of production to contain as many degrees of separation between the corporate head and factory workers as possible, leaving the middleman as the scapegoat.
According to the annual labor market report by the International Labor Organization (ILO), which is part of the United Nations, these workers form a huge “decent work deficit” worldwide.
The ILO defines decent work as work that is productive and delivers a fair income, security in the workplace and social protection for families, as well as allowing people to express their concerns, form and join unions.
The report, which will be released on Labor Day, shows 195.7 million people are unemployed and nearly 1.3 billion earn less than $2 a day per family member. ILO Director General Juan Somavia says:
Hundreds of millions of women and men are working hard and long but without the conditions they need to lift themselves and their families out of poverty or the risk of falling into poverty.
The ILO estimates half of all working people worldwide work in jobs that carry a higher risk of being unprotected, without health care or retirement security and without a voice at work. Over 70 percent of the workers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are in such vulnerable employment.
The report, Key Indicators of the Labor Market, notes some one-third of the working-age population worldwide is not participating in labor markets. For the past 10 years, this rate has remained much higher for women than for men, with only two of 10 working age men not in the labor market, compared with five of 10 women.
The ILO report also shows the United States still leads the world by far in labor productivity last year.
But it does not seem that American workers are reaping the benefits of increased productivity. We reported the Economic Mobility Project recently found that between 1947 and 1974, productivity and income grew together, but between 1974 and 2005, productivity and income grew apart.
Any effort at accountability is "finger pointing" or "reopening old wounds." Either way it is just distasteful partisanship by Democrats, an effort to gain partisan advantage by assigning blame instead of finding solutions.
The sanctimony has already begun over the prospect of oversight hearings by the Democratic majority in Congress. The Washington Times warned just before the election that a Democratic majority would "exercise their considerable oversight powers...relentlessly. Armed with the power to issue subpoenas to executive-branch officials for the first time in a dozen years, House Democrats would promptly paper the executive branch with so many subpoenas that key administration officials will be so busy preparing for testimony that they will not be able to do their jobs."
In other words, they think we’ll act like Republicans. After Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, the House Government Reform Committee issued more than 1000 subpoenas to investigate alleged misconduct by the Clinton Administration and the Democratic Party, or two for every day Congress was in session.
Are Republicans worried that congressional investigations will be burdensome? The Clinton Administration produced two million pages of documents, an average of 4,000 pages of documents for every day Congress was in session.
Are Republicans worried that congressional investigations will be intrusive? Three Clinton Chiefs of Staff—Mack McLarty, Erskine Bowles and John Podesta—testified before Congress, as did four White House Counsels, the Chief of Staff to the Vice President, the Chief of Staff to the First Lady, and an assortment of White House officials with "deputy" or "assistant" or "deputy assistant" in their titles. A total of 134 Clinton Administration officials testified in public hearings on alleged Clinton Administration misconduct, and 141 Clinton Administration officials spent 568 hours in depositions before congressional staff. They testified to private discussions with the President, and the documents that the Clinton Administration provided included notes of discussions, internal e-mails and memos, and preliminary drafts of documents. Republicans in Congress routinely demanded documents detailing internal administration deliberations for evidence that political considerations had improperly influenced Clinton Administration policies, and the Clinton Administration routinely provided the documents that Congress demanded.
Are Republicans worried that congressional investigations will pursue trivial matters without any sense of proportion? The Clinton Administration provided records to identify who had attended White House movies, private White House dinners and lunch at the White House mess, and who had sat in the President’s box at the Kennedy Center. Congress took 140 hours of testimony in public hearings and depositions on whether the Clinton White House had misused the holiday card list for political purposes.
Are Republicans worried that Democrats will launch sweeping investigations based upon unsubstantiated allegations? In 1997, Congressman Gerald Solomon, then Chairman of the House Rules Committee, notified the FBI with great fanfare that there was "evidence" that a Chinese-American fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee was guilty of espionage and had sold secrets to the Chinese. Two years later the Government Reform Committee launched an investigation into whether the absence of indictments was the result of political interference with the FBI’s investigation. The Government Reform Committee chairman, Dan Burton, subpoenaed the interview notes from the FBI’s investigation.
That proved to be a mistake.
No one the FBI interviewed had a clue what Solomon was talking about. And the interview notes that the FBI produced included the notes of their interview with Solomon. Solomon had talked to a Senate staffer at a congressional reception who told Solomon that he had heard about the espionage from an unnamed employee of the Department of Commerce. Solomon had never met the Senate staffer before and couldn’t remember his name, but described the staffer as "a male in his thirties or forties, approximately five feet ten inches tall with brownish hair."
When President Bush took office, of course, virtually all oversight by Congress of the executive branch stopped. "Our party controls the levers of government," Republican Congressman Ray LaHood explained in 2004. "We’re not about to go out and look under a bunch of rocks to try to cause heartburn."
I watched the last six years of the Clinton Administration from North Carolina, well outside the beltway. As a citizen, I was appalled by the shameless partisan abuse of oversight powers by the Republican congress. I have no interest in getting even now that I am part of a Democratic majority in Congress and the President is Republican.
But we need to correct the utter failure of the constitutional duty of oversight for the last six years.
Oversight is not just about causing heartburn for the other party. A great American political scientist, Woodrow Wilson, wrote that "the informing power" of Congress —- the power to expose abuse of power, corruption and waste -- was probably more important than Congress’s "legislative function." Oversight investigations inform Congress’s decisions about legislation and funding. And oversight investigations provide unflattering scrutiny of abuse of power and corruption. Yes, political embarrassment can be a wholesome, proper purpose of oversight investigations. Political embarrassment punishes misconduct, and it is a deterrent to conduct that would be hard to explain in public.
Henry Waxman, the next Chairman of the Government Reform Committee, wrote in the Washington Post in 2004 that "the absence of oversight invites corruption and mistakes. The Founders correctly perceived that concentration of power leads to abuse of power if unchecked." The absence of oversight by the Republican Congress of the Bush Administration had done the Bush Administration no favor, Waxman said. "Lack of accountability has contributed to a series of phenomenal misjudgments that have damaged Bush, imperiled our international standing and saddled our nation with mounting debts."
President Bush isn’t likely to see oversight hearings by Congress as helpful, of course. But during World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt welcomed scrutiny by the Democratic Senate into fraud and mismanagement by the military and military contractors. In fact, Roosevelt asked the chairman of the committee to be his running mate in 1944.
National demand is booming for ethanol as a renewable automotive fuel, and Congress is authorizing tax incentives to build ethanol distilleries.
But within weeks, the company had reneged on its pledge of wage increases and economic benefits. Says Hohrein:
It was theft by deception.
Everybody was ready for a union. And when the workers ended up paying $900 a month for health insurance premiums, even though Front Range promised to provide them with a solid benefits package, some workers protested to management. And those workers were fired.
Late last month, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued an unfair labor practice complaint against Front Range. An administrative law judge will hear the workers’ stories May 15.
Instead of intimidating the workers, the firings infuriated them, Hohrein says.
This is a very conservative area, and most of these men have never been around or dealt with a union before. But they were adamant about joining a union because things got worse.
Hohrein says he also began to notice that safety procedures weren’t being followed and that workers were being put in dangerous conditions. But the company ignored workers’ complaints about unsafe situations.
Hohrein knew what it was like to be a union member. He had worked as a union boilermaker for 20 years before coming to Front Range. So he and several other workers contacted the United Steelworkers and began a drive to get a union.
More than 90 percent of the workers signed cards saying they wanted to join a union.
If the Employee Free Choice Act were the law today, the signed cards could have been submitted to the NLRB, and the labor board would have required Front Range to bargain with the union chosen by the employees.
But under current law, Front Range has the right to decide whether to honor the employees’ choice or to demand that they go through the NLRB election process, which gives the company an opportunity to pressure and harass workers into renouncing their decision to form a union.
So instead of honoring the employees’ choice, Front Range management “went crazy,” Hohrein says.
If you mentioned the union or even appeared to talk about the union, you were written up. Management held these meetings and trashed the union. If you were pro-union, you were living in a terrorist state, but those who backed management could do no wrong. One union supporter was written up for reading the paper on his break. That’s blatantly and obviously wrong.
When Hohrein began passing out union authorization cards, the company “acted like monsters and wouldn’t let co-workers near me for equipment maintenance consultation without prior permission.”
But intimidation and threats didn’t deter the workers, who voted, 12–11, for the union in December 2006. Just days after the election, Hohrein was fired.
Management thought by firing me, it would intimidate the men and bust the union.
The USW challenged his termination in charges filed with the NLRB. The USW also filed six charges before the NLRB for an accumulation of labor law violations at Front Range Energy that include harassment and ordering employees not to talk to union advocates. The company also provided employees who didn’t support the union with better conditions than union supporters.
The laws that supposedly protect workers are “toothless,” Hohrein says.
We need laws like the Employee Free Choice Act that really protect workers. The corporations hold 99.9 percent of the power. Management can say whatever it wants anytime about the union, but the union has no access to the plant. The company sits right on people who even say they want a union. And if workers complain and go all the way and win [in an NLRB hearing], all the company has to do is put up a sign saying, “We won’t do it again.”
The Employee Free Choice Act would level the playing field and give workers a strong voice, Hohrein says.
It’s not about what you need; it’s about making the workplace a better place for everyone.
California labor unions are planning a major push into workers' compensation alternative-dispute resolutions programs, commonly known as "carve-outs," as a bargaining chip to limit employee contributions to group health plans, union officials told WorkCompCentral Monday.
Dan Rush, political director for the United Food and Commercial Workers Local No. 120, said the UFCW is working with the Service Employees International Union and the Communications Workers of America to gather information about carve-outs. The labor unions hope to persuade employers that they will be able to save enough on workers' compensation to pay a bigger share of their employees' health-insurance coverage costs.
"Increasingly the issues that we are facing at the bargaining table are health-care costs," Rush said. "The employers come in the door looking for $200 or $300 a month co-pays from our members, and sometimes those increases are as high as 20% a year."
Rush said his union plans to submit an application to the Division of Workers' Compensation before Christmas to officially begin the collective-bargaining process with meat cutters in Northern California wholesale packinghouses. He said he hopes the carve-out initiative eventually will spread into retail grocery stores whose employees are represented by the UFCW.
Rush said the Service Employees International Union Local No. 616 already has spared an application to the DWC to negotiate a carve-out program with 7,000 employees of the Alameda County Medical Center. He said a Orange County chapters of UFCW and the Teamsters in Orange County are working on similar proposals.
What's more, the Communications Workers of America is planning to submit a carve-out proposal that could include up to 70,000 employees of AT&T and other companies, said Bill Harvey, secretary-treasurer of CWA Local No. 9415. Harvey said even though the union's collective-bargaining agreement does not expire until 2009, labor organizers hope to negotiate a midterm contract change because of the potential savings.
"We believe there is significant savings there and we believe there are significant reductions and hassles, if you will," Harvey said. "In many cases workers' comp is one of those things where there can be some degree of rationing."
California lawmakers first authorized carve-outs in 1994, but that program was limited exclusively to unionized construction workers. In 2002 the Legislature passed a bill that allowed carve-outs for union workers in the aerospace and timber industries. A law passed in 2004 allowed carve-outs in any unionized industry.
Under Labor Code sections 3201.5 and 3201.7, only a union may request a carve-out. Employees must be guaranteed access to an attorney throughout the dispute-resolution process. Otherwise, unions and their employers can design the programs as they see fit. Often, ombudsmen are used to settle disputes, which can reduce litigation.
Rush said he sees carve-outs not only as a way to reduce employers' costs and increase employee benefits, but as a way out of a "divisive and antagonistic" workers' comp system that makes injured workers' angry and afraid.
"Then they go talk to a lawyer and they don't understand that that lawyer gets money strictly on how big of a permanent disability rating they can get," Rush said. "They get hooked on drugs, or lose their home, or divorced. The list of tragedies is tremendous."
So far, only two non-construction carve-out programs have been approved since the Legislature allowed other industries to participate in 2004. The Division of Workers' Compensation approved the Basic Crafts Workers' Compensation Benefits Trust Fund in February 2005 and a program for Mainstay Business Solutions in September 2005, according to a report on the DWC's Web site. The DWC has approved 33 carve-out programs in the construction industry since 1994.
With so little experience outside of construction, one of the main obstacles to creating new carve-outs will be persuading employers that they can save money, Rush said. He said his union is spending a lot of time on data collection and may hire a consultant to work up an estimate on potential savings once negotiations begin in earnest.
Information is hard to find because the DWC has not been completing annual reports on the existing carve-out programs, despite a statute that requires them, said Christine Baker, executive director of the Commission on Health and Safety and Workers' Compensation. She said CHSWC has hired Frank Neuhauser, a professor for the University of California, Berkeley, to study the existing programs, but his report is not expected until January or February.
However, Baker said the State Compensation Insurance Fund offers a discount of 10% of premium reduction for participants in the Basic Crafts carve-out program and a 5% premium reduction for construction industry carve-outs.
Chuck Cake, who administers existing carve-out programs for Intercare Insurance Services in Sacramento, said a properly designed program can save employers 30% of their workers' comp costs, even after cost-saving reforms passed by the Legislature in 2003 and 2004. He said early this decade, when workers' comp costs were soaring and before lawmakers passed back-to-back reform bills, employers were saving up to 60% of workers' comp costs through carve-outs.
Cake said both public and private employers are gaining interest in carve-outs. He said Raley's, which owns some 300 grocery stores in Northern California, Nevada and New Mexico, plans to issue a request for proposals soon to design a pilot carve-out program for some of its employees.
Cake said several state agencies are also interested in creating carve-out programs for their workers, but currently state law does not allow the state government to participate in alternative dispute-resolution programs. He said Intercare is working with union representatives to introduce a bill that would change that. The California Correctional Peace Officers Association and Service Employees International Union are major proponents of the legislation, he said.
"The state agencies are on the unions' side because they believe they can save a minimum of 30% out of their (workers' comp) budget," Cake said. "That's a lot of money."
Jason Schmelzer, a lobbyist for the California Manufacturers and Technology Assocation, said carve-outs do show potential to create costs, but the "devil is in the details." He said he understands why labor unions would be offering them up as a means of retaining group-health benefits.
"I think more than anything, it's an indication of how much a problem group health is turning out to be for everybody," Schmelzer said. "It is getting hard for employers to maintain these huge premium increases every year."
The NLRB ruled on three cases, collectively known as “Kentucky River,” but it’s the lead case Oakwood Healthcare Inc. that creates a new definition of supervisor. Dozens of cases involving the definition of supervisor now before the NLRB will be sent back, with employers having the option to craft arguments that will meet the new definition of supervisor and limit the number of workers who can join a union.
Although the Oakwood decision covers only nurses, the expanded definition of superviors means up to 8 million workers, including nurses, building trades workers, newspaper and television employees and others may be barred from joining unions. In Oakwood, the board agreed with the employer that charge nurses are supervisors. But the ruling also sets broad definitions for determining who is a supervisor that invites employers to classify nurses and many low-level employees with minor authority as supervisors. The decision was issued Sept. 29 but not released until today.
The board’s new definition essentially enables employers to make a supervisor out of any worker who has the authority to assign or direct another and uses independent judgment. Amazingly, the board also ruled that a worker can be classified as a supervisor if he or she spends as little as 10 percent to 15 percent of his or her time overseeing the work of others.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney calls the decisions “outrageous and unjustified.”
It’s the latest example of how the Bush-appointed NLRB is prepared to use legal maneuvering to deny as many workers as possible their basic right to have a voice on the job through their union. The NLRB should protect workers’ rights, not eliminate them. If the administration expects us to take this quietly, they’re mistaken.
This week, working people are coming together in the streets in cities across the nation to make sure everyone knows that the Bush administration is slashing workers’ right to have a voice on the job.
In their dissent, NLRB members Wilma Liebman and Dennis Walsh say the decision “threatens to create a new class of workers under federal labor law—workers who have neither the genuine prerogatives of management, nor the statutory rights of ordinary employees.” Liebman and Walsh wrote that most professionals and other workers could fall under the new definition of supervisor, “who by 2012 could number almost 34 million, accounting for 23.3 percent of the workforce.” They go on to say that the Republican majority did not follow what Congress intended in applying the National Labor Relations Act:
Congress cared about the precise scope of the Act’s definition of “supervisor”, and so should the Board. Instead, the majority’s decision reflects an unfortunate failure to engage in the sort of reasoned decision-making that Congress expected from the Board, which has the primary responsibility for developing and applying national labor policy.
This week, thousands of union members and workers’ rights activists will rally in Boston, Buffalo, N.Y., Burlington, Vt., Nashville, Portland, Ore., and Washington, D.C., to demand that workers’ freedom to form a union is protected.
Currently, the NLRB is holding up dozens of cases that address the definition of supervisor and 60 of those are union election cases. These cases have been sent back to the various regional boards. In some of these cases, workers who voted several years ago to form a union still are waiting for their ballots to be counted. Vanessa Quinn, a member of Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 1133 and an emergency room nurse in Kenmore, N.Y., near Buffalo, says expanding the definition of supervisor will be disastrous for nurses:
In Buffalo, recruiting is already a problem. If we can’t get young people into nursing, we’re in trouble. They need to know they can go into this profession and take care of a family. Without union protection, pay will not be competitive.
AFT and AFT Healthcare in a statement also say the decisions will jeopardize health care:
If nurses and other skilled workers are considered supervisors and lose union protection, they would be extremely reluctant to speak out about patient care problems out of fear of being fired or disciplined.
The ramifications of this case are extremely serious; the decision could have a significant impact on the quality of patient care and workers’ rights.
Michael Verbil, a member of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 412 in Sarasota, Fla., and master electrician, says the decisions are an attempt to weaken unions:
Since I’ve joined the union we’ve been able to get all of our contracts to include pension and health benefits, which didn’t exist before the union. I see this as another push from the government to whittle away at the union’s base.
It just doesn’t make sense. This could destroy the working conditions we’ve fought so hard to achieve. We’re talking about millions of people who could lose their ability to negotiate with their employer, and that is just wrong.
A group of 13 religious leaders wrote the NLRB last month expressing deep concern over the impending decisions. The letter read in part:
Our religious traditions support workers’ right to organize and bargain collectively. We support proposals that expand coverage and access to collective bargaining rather than limit it. We believe that all persons are created in the image of God and as such their work unites them with others and should be endowed with dignity, equality and justice. In the workplace, collective bargaining is the most effective process for workers to express this dimension of their humanity.
Speaking at a Sept. 22 conference on the possible impact of the Kentucky River cases, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) condemned the NLRB’s refusal to conduct oral arguments in these cases:
These decisions could very well change the basic rights of American workers.
Given the stakes, the NLRB needs to be as thorough as possible in hearing testimony. The fact that the NLRB has not held hearings shows that the board is not taking this case as seriously as it should. At the heart of the issue is the right of workers to organize, to bargain collectively and to share in decisions.
We were just asking to be heard, I don’t know how you get a fair deal when you can’t be heard.
These decisions are just the latest in a string of anti-worker rulings by an agency charged with protecting workers’ rights.
The Republican-controlled NLRB already has taken away the rights of university graduate assistants, workers with disabilities and temporary workers to join a union. And the board, which is supposed to protect workers’ rights has made a series of consistent rulings backing employers’ rights, while ignoring workers’ concerns.
After all, who are you going to believe, him or your own eyes and ears?
And here's White House Press Secretary Tony Snow on Monday not only reinforcing the notion that Bush does not think like that, but saying that it's not the president's fault that he gave people that idea by repeating the phrase over and over as his primary strategy in Iraq:
Q: Tony, it seems what you have is not "stay the course." Has anybody told the President he should stop calling it "stay the course" then?
Snow: I don't think he's used that term in a while.
Q: Oh, yes, he has, repeatedly.
Snow: When?
Q: Well, just about every time he opens his mouth speaking about our policy in Iraq.
Snow: No, he stopped using it.
Q: Why would he stop using it?
Snow: Because it left the wrong impression about what was going on. And it allowed critics to say, well, here's an administration that's just embarked upon a policy and not looking at what the situation is, when, in fact, it's just the opposite. The President is determined not to leave Iraq short of victory, but he also understands that it's important to capture the dynamism of the efforts that have been ongoing to try to make Iraq more secure, and therefore, enhance the clarification -- or the greater precision.
Q: Is the President responsible for the fact people think it's stay the course since he's, in fact, described it that way himself?
Snow: No.
I'm sure George W. Bush doesn’t know a lot of things that are common knowledge to the rest of us, but one of those items seems to be the fact that video tape was invented 50 years ago. And, especially when you're the President of the United States and your every move and utterance is recorded, these lies have a way of coming back to haunt you pretty quickly. Have a look:
The stay-the-course theme is so common to the overriding Republican philosophy that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has even used it in a very effective ad:
President Bush hinted that he was aware the country was hearing voices on the occasion of his October 11th news conference. "The characterization of, you know, 'It's 'stay the course' is about a quarter right," he said. "'Stay the course' means keep doing what you're doing. My attitude is: Don't do what you're doing if it's not working -- change. 'Stay the course' also means don't leave before the job is done."
Understand?
Got it?
"Stay the course" = constant motion. Simple. It's as simple as knowing what the meaning of "is" is.
So, when President Bush said in most of his public appearances over the past year or so that America needed to "stay the course" in Iraq, he didn't mean that America needed to "stay the course" in Iraq. In no way was he supporting a "stay the course" policy.
So it must follow that when the president accused the Democrats of wanting to "cut and run" in Iraq, he was not accusing the Democrats of wanting to "cut and run" in Iraq. He must have meant something very different.
And I'm sure Minister Snow will tell us exactly what "cut and run" really means when the administration's next Language and Reality Edict is ready.
This stuff gives doublespeak a bad name.
"Stay the course" became a negative that implied an ostrich-like imperviousness to reality. But the president and his marketing team didn't just dump the slogan; they denied the slogan ever existed.
Because not staying the course with "stay the course" would mean you're a cut and runner. Americans aren't cut and run guys. Cut and run guys aren't resolve guys and the president is a resolve guy.
The audaciousness of this is offensive. Actually, it's insulting.
"Listen, we've never been stay the course..."
Puh-lease.
The law defines a war crime to include a "grave breach of the Geneva Conventions", specifically noting that "grave breach" should have the meaning defined in any convention (related to the laws of war) to which the U.S. is a party. The definition of "grave breach" in some of the Geneva Conventions have text that extend additional protections, but all the Conventions share the following text in common: "... committed against persons or property protected by the Convention: wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health."
The law applies if either the victim or the perpetrator is a national of the United States or a member of the U.S. armed forces. The penalty may be life imprisonment or death. The death penalty is only invoked if the conduct resulted in the death of one or more victims.
The law criminalized breaches of the Geneva Conventions that the United States could prosecute war criminals, specifically North Vietnamese soldiers that tortured U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War. The Department of Defense "fully supported" the bill, recommending that it be expanded to include a longer list of war crimes. Because the United States generally followed the Conventions, the military recommended making breaches by U.S. soldiers war crimes as well "because doing so set a high standard for others to follow." The bill passed by unanimous consent in the Senate and by a voice vote in the House, showing that it was entirely uncontroversial at the time.
Ten years later, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applied to the War on Terrorism, with the unstated implication that any interrogation techniques that violated Common Article 3 constituted War Crimes. The possibility that American officials and soldiers could be prosecuted for war crimes for committing the "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" prohibited by the Conventions led to a series of proposals to make such actions legal in certain circumstances.
White House officials were concerned that they and other U.S. officials could be prosecuted under the War Crimes Act for the U.S. treatment of detainees after 9/11 for violations of the Geneva Conventions. In a January 2002 memorandum to the president, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales pointed out the problem of prosecution for detainee mistreatment under the War Crimes Act, cautioned that given the vague language of the statute, no one could predict whether it could be used as a basis for prosecution of U.S. officials in the future, and therefore Gonzales recommended that Bush find that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to al-Qaida and the Taliban.
However, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the Geneva Conventions did apply to al-Qaida and Taliban detainees. As a result, to eliminate the possibility of U.S. criminal liability for high-level administration officials, the Bush administration has been falling all over themselves trying to gain support to pass legislation that would provide immunity from prosecution.
The Terror Bill that seems to have the support of Senator John McCain, who opposed the original language, would seem to have its own drawbacks, and protections for high level officials who supported the use of some questionable practices.
The precept is whether Congress can enact a law purposefully designed to prevent any US Court from reviewing its legality.
At issue here is not just the basic right of “detainees” sentenced to death by the United States to appeal their death sentence before an impartial US court before being executed. At stake here is what happens when Congress and the President work together to silence the Judicial Branch entirely on the fundamental issues of human torture, secret off-shore gulags and summary death sentences. The intent of the Torture Bill is to keep the courts' mouth shut.
The Torture Bill prohibits any US Court from hearing a writ of habeus corpus submitted by a “detainee” defendant facing execution, long prison sentences or continued imprisonment for years without any charges filed against them.
The Torture Bill prohibits any court from hearing or considering the merits of a defendant's claim that his capture, imprisonment, trial or sentence violate the Geneva Conventions -- which under US Constitution have the full force of US law.
The Torture Bill gives the US military an unchecked right to imprison the sentenced defendant in any locale on the planet and allow the prisoner to be treated in any manner the laws of the host nation allows -- even if such treatment is in direct violation of US law.
This is just a smattering of what the Torture Bill allows. If you haven’t detected the pattern yet, the Bill is specifically written to make legal in federal statute everything the Bush administration has done illegally for the past five years -- and more. At its core, The Torture Bill is designed to make it as hard as possible for any US Court to rule on whether its provisions are Constitutional.
In an exhaustive, word-by-word analysis of the Torture Bill published in the on-line edition of the Jurist magazine yesterday, Benjamin Davis of the University of Toledo College Of Law stated about just one section of the Bill:
"As I proceed through this text I begin to feel that this is really becoming a kangaroo court ... This section is shameful and a disgrace to America."
Pursuant to its design, nothing in the Torture Bill is even remotely Constitutional. It is a naked power grab by the Executive Branch over the Judicial Branch. But this power grab has a new twist. Previous Executive power grabs involved the invocation of “executive privilege” to prevent the Courts from reviewing the Constitutionality of specific Presidential decisions. This power grab involves Congress and the President working together to prevent the Judicial Branch from checking the actions of the Executive or the Legislative Branch, or both.
Because the US Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected the President’s “executive privilege” arguments in various torture and imprisonment cases since 2001, the President has asked Congress to codify in statute the sweeping executive powers the US Supreme Court has said the Constitution does not grant him. If Congress passes the Torture Bill, the US Supreme Court will have a fundamental right to determine if its provisions square with the US Constitution.
Here's an odd question. Outside of amending the Constitution itself, can Congress pass a law which prohibits its own review by the US Supreme Court? No. That would be in violation of the Constitution. But Congress is free to pass a law which "sort of" amends the Constitution. To do this, Congress need only reduce the likelihood of the Judicial Branch ever ruling on the law's constitutionality. This is what Congress and the President are now trying to do.
An anomaly of our Constitution is that the US Supreme Court may abstain or refuse to hear any case presented to it, no matter how important. Even if every American citizen believed a law passed by Congress was in violation of the Constitution (say, a law re-instituting human slavery), the US Supreme Court could allow the law to remain in effect in perpetuity simply by refusing to hear any case challenging it or overturning without comment any lower court decision throwing it out.
The key here is time. Congress and the President know that most provisions of the Torture Bill are so wildly abhorrent to the Constitution that it will eventually be struck down -- but only eventually and piece by piece. A key goal of the “Torture” Bill is to prevent a defendant from getting a hearing in a civilian courtroom in the first place-- and by doing so, prevent any court from examining the law itself. Catch-22.
US Courts, even the US Supreme Court, cannot wantonly issue rulings on whether a law passed by the Congress is constitutional or not. A case must first be presented to the court by a person who is allowed by law to bring the claim. The person must show the law in question harms some legal rights the person possesses. The person must then show the court is not excluded by law from providing the relief being sought. All of these elements must be in place before a court can even reach the question of whether the law in question comports with the US Constitution. This is also known as the concept of "constitutional avoidance," where courts will avoid addressing constitutional claims raised in a case if the substance of the case can be adjudicated without touching on them.
The Torture Bill contains an endless welter of complex, procedural language specifically designed to prevent any legal challenges to the Bill from ever reaching a court; and provides pliable or cautious federal judges with a kaleidoscope of open-ended procedural encouragements to dispose of the case without ever ruling on whether the law itself is constitutional.
This is the ulterior motive of the Torture Bill. It is designed to ensure its victims will never be able to question its legality before a US Court. If the law itself prevents a victim from bringing a claim against it, then no US Court can rule on its legality. And if no US Court is presented with a case questioning the law's constitutionality, the law remains in effect. Catch-22.
The key here is time. Both Congress and the President need to buy time badly. Actions authorized by the President since 2001 allowing torture are felony crimes under the 1996 War Crimes Act. Unless and until the 1996 War Crimes Act is substantially amended, the President and the entire chain of command are potentially subject to indictment and prosecution for war crimes in federal court.
Congressional passage of a massively unconstitutional revision of the 1996 War Crimes Act is a very useful tool to buy badly needed time. A direct Constitutional challenge to the Torture Bill could take years to wend its way through the courts -- especially because the procedural thicket of the Torture Bill is designed to prevent any victim from getting anywhere near a US courtroom. By including so many procedural roadblocks to judicial review of the Torture Bill within the Bill itself, Congress does everything possible to prevent a US Court from having any chance to say whether the law is constitutional or not. Catch-22.
This is shown by the text of the Bill itself. To review. The Torture Bill strips all “detainee” defendants of any right to file a writ of habeus corpus to any US Court and prohibits any US Court from hearing such a writ. This eliminates the most fundamental US right afforded to people imprisoned, tried and sentenced by the US government. A writ of habeus corpus is often the only method an imprisoned defendant can raise a constitutional question to a US Court -- and the only way a US Court can address it. Catch-22.
The Bill prohibits any US court or military tribunal from hearing a defense that the accused has been deprived of the rights under the Geneva Conventions during their capture, imprisonment, trial or sentencing. This nullifies the Geneva Conventions and the express Constitutional requirement that international treaties approved by the United States are fully equivalent to federal laws as enacted by Congress.
These two pillars of the Bill were specifically inserted to (1) remove the ability of any US Court to review the most basic elements of the Government’s reasons for imprisoning, trying and sentencing the accused; and (2) remove the right of the accused to rely upon the Geneva Conventions as a Constitutional defense against his imprisonment, trial and sentence -- even when the Conventions themselves clearly prohibit what the government has done.
Any person with a brain can discern that in the face of violations of both the US Constitution and the Geneva Conventions looming over the Executive Branch during the past five years, Congress is trying to pass a law which nullifies both without saying so directly.
This past weekend U.S. Sen. John McCain claimed on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the Torture Bill would leave the Geneva Conventions intact and "untouched." This is provably false because the Torture Bill is specifically designed to prevent any court in the world examining if a person's Geneva Convention rights have been violated and to prevent a defendant from ever making this claim to any court.
While this might still leave the Geneva Conventions themselves "untouched" as words on paper, it fundamentally prevents the Conventions from achieving their only purpose -- to actually protect the real human beings whose rights have been violated.
Mr. McCain should know better than anyone in the world the Geneva Conventions are worthless if the nation which ignores them has nothing to fear in doing so and the victim is purposefully denied any redress.
America has contemplated such a law before, yet with starkly different results. When considering the Espionage Act of 1917 during World War I, Congress refused to give the President blanket authority to prohibit publication of classified information by criminalizing its disclosure during wartime. In 1957, Senator Norris Cotton (R-New Hampshire) championed a proposal to make unauthorized disclosures of classified information a crime. Again Congress refused.
It was nearly a half-century later when Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) resurrected this heavy-handed idea—this time, with near-success. Then as now, under existing law only the unauthorized transmission of a narrow band of secrets—like cryptography methods and the identities of covert agents—come with criminal penalties. But in 2000, Senator Shelby presided over the quiet movement through Congress of a bill that would have criminalized the unauthorized disclosure of any classified information to the media and others. The bill passed—but died with a stroke of then-President Clinton's veto pen. Still enamored of the idea, Shelby reintroduced the bill again in 2001. Even in the wake of 9/11, no less an authority than then-Attorney General John Ashcroft told Shelby that his legislation was unnecessary, thus ending Shelby’s attempts to foist a dubious English legal import onto existing American law.
But on August 2, the possibility of an American Official Secrets Act reared its head once again. This time, it was sprung by Senator Christopher Bond (R-Missouri). Wrapped in the deceptively benign title, "A bill to prohibit the unauthorized disclosure of classified information," Bond’s legislation is identical to Shelby’s.
If ever there was a piece of legislation crying out for withdrawal, this is it. Intolerably broad and unneeded, it would deprive Congress and the public of critical information they should know by chilling disclosures of wrongdoing to the press.
For many, Bond’s legislation sounds reasonable. Shouldn’t “unauthorized” disclosures of information that could damage the United States be a crime? It is not so simple.
The First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech and a free press presents a formidable barrier to such a sweeping law. When Congress made it a felony to reveal the identities of covert CIA officers in 1982, this law met a constitutional test because it only narrowly interfered with the First Amendment and its role in securing free political discussion. As noted by National Security Archive director Thomas Blanton, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, then a law professor, testified before Congress, “The necessity of this particular, narrow category of disclosure [the identities of covert agents] to the free and open political debate which the First Amendment is intended primarily to assure” is “negligible.” By contrast, according to a recent Congressional Research Service report, “a statute that relies solely on the Executive’s classification of information to determine the need for its protection might be contested as overbroad.”
Bond’s Official Secrets Act does not require that the information even be classified for its disclosure to be a crime. As long as someone with official access to government information “has reason to believe” that information might be classified and discloses it, Bond would have that person subject to arrest and prosecution. Yet the Senator fails to enumerate any requirements that classified information be clearly marked to indicate its status, thus giving employees notice of their responsibilities. This law would invite abuse by wrongdoers in the executive branch who could prevent embarrassing or illegal activity from being discovered by classifying evidence of it after the fact and then prosecuting employees who bring it to light.
One could argue that if the secrets that truly needed to be protected from public disclosure were the only ones classified, Senator Bond’s legislation could be considered reasonable. But this is clearly not the case.
In 2004, Carol Haave, then-deputy undersecretary of defense for counterintelligence and security, testified that roughly 50 percent of classified information needn't be classified at all. Over the last five years, the number of Executive branch decisions to classify items has exceeded even the Cold War heights of secrecy in the early 1980s. Indeed, Peter L. Galison, a Harvard historian of science, has calculated that “the classified universe is, as best I can estimate, on the order of five to ten times larger than the open literature that finds its way to our libraries.”
While certainly some information, if leaked, could harm national security, the overheated rhetoric thrown around—such as Commentary magazine editor Gabriel Schoenfeld's exhortation that "failure to prosecute the [New York] Times [for its disclosure of the National Security Agency warrantless domestic surveillance program] would be a blow to the rule of law and bad for the war on terrorism"—should give way to the examination of real-world examples.
Case in point: Many—including former CIA director Porter Goss and Schoenfeld himself—have argued that the Washington Times and other media outlets tipped Osama bin Laden off to U.S. eavesdropping of his satellite phone. This charge has been soundly refuted. First, bin Laden advertised his use of a satellite phone to Time magazine in 1996; that he had such a phone was no secret and certainly not a leak. Secondly, the Al Qaeda leader did not cease using his phone until the day after American cruise missiles rained down on his Afghan bases in response to the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.
Such basic reportage aside, press disclosures of classified information have overwhelmingly been in the public interest, and have led to a reexamination of government policies and actions. Had Bond’s law been in effect, Americans might never have learned about egregious acts: human rights abuses like the My Lai incident; the secret government history of the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers; Pentagon lies about multi-billion dollar weapon system cost overruns and test failures; Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse; the Iran-Contra operation where our government sold weapons to Iran during the 1980s; and security breaches leaving nuclear facilities vulnerable to terrorists.
Some believe that Congress can check the executive on its own without the press working to inform the public. History, however, does not support this contention. There are numerous cases where Congress has only been informed of at least dubious, if not unconstitutional and illegal, Executive branch machinations by the media.
For example, contrary to the National Security Act of 1947, the full congressional intelligence committees, including staffers whose expertise is crucial in achieving informed oversight, were not briefed on the NSA warrantless domestic surveillance—an intelligence collection program rather than a highly sensitive covert action—until it was exposed by the New York Times.
Revelations by the New Yorker and Washington Post of secret findings and executive orders by President Bush authorizing covert operations overseas run by the Pentagon, rather than the CIA, generated concern by Republican Senator Pat Roberts (Kansas), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee. Roberts said he was concerned that even as a member of the “Gang of Eight”—the handful of lawmakers who are supposed to be informed of covert operations in lieu of the full intelligence committees—he was not informed. Again the press spurred Congress to action in the face of the Executive’s attempt to evade accountability. Roberts told the Kansas City Star that if he was being left out of the loop, “That would be a problem, that will be a big problem…He (the president) has an obligation. We will be making inquiries.”
And then there is the fact that the Congressional intelligence committees themselves were created as a result of Congressional investigations sparked by press disclosures in the mid-1970s of massive intelligence operations targeted against American citizens.
After a cursory review of this history, it should come as no surprise that although numerous laws require that Congress be kept in the loop by the Executive branch, our lawmakers and overseers have consistently not been briefed by the White House. The current administration’s penchant for “signing statements”—the President’s official interpretation of the legislation he signs into law—that assert that the President may choose to flout the law and ignore Congress makes this clear. And in proposed intelligence reform language submitted by the President in 2004, in response to the 9/11 Commission report—and contrary to their recommendations—the administration sought exemptions from informing Congress about intelligence operations.
Given this administration’s callous disrespect for even a Congress dominated by the President’s own party, the legislative branch should not seek to chill disclosures to the press. The press can be a valuable guide for Congress in its vital but little exercised oversight role. A valuable guide that is, only if Congress does not criminalize disclosures of classified information that are in the public interest, while protecting secrets that could actually harm national security.
It is ironic that while Congress should be thankful to the press for greasing the wheels of our constitutional system, some lawmakers are seeking to sharply reduce their own ability to defend democracy and the public interest, and leave out in the cold those conscientious government employees who want to expose government malfeasance.
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once wrote, "Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." This astute observation is a warning that even the best intentioned measures to defend freedom can contain the seeds of its—and our—demise. Will we heed it?
"Congress is going to have earn its raise by putting American workers first: A raise for workers before a raise for Congress," said Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
Reid refused to spell out exactly how he will block a $3,300 pay raise scheduled for January 1 for members of Congress, who currently earn $165,200 annually. He said with 40 Senate Democrats backing the measure, "We can stop anything the Congress tries to do with a congressional pay raise."
Democrats in the House and Senate want the $5.15-per-hour federal minimum wage, in place since 1997, to rise in 70-cent increments to $7.25 by January 1, 2009.
In arguing for the minimum-wage increase, Democrats are emphasizing that salaries for members of Congress have risen $31,600 during the time the minimum wage has been frozen.
They complain that rising costs for gasoline, utilities, education and food have taken a chunk out of minimum-wage paychecks, which have to support entire families.
Republicans in Congress have blocked numerous attempts to raise the minimum wage, saying it would backfire by causing small businesses to hire fewer entry-level workers.
But with Republican control of the House and Senate uncertain after the November congressional elections, some moderate Republicans have been joining with Democrats to support a minimum-wage increase.
"I think it's the right thing to do. It seems like if I can defend and be sincere about tax cuts, some to the wealthiest, if I can do that," then a minimum wage increase is also in order, Rep. Mike Simpson, an Idaho Republican, said in a recent interview.
House Majority Leader John Boehner, an Ohio Republican who opposes an increase in the minimum wage, Tuesday acknowledged growing sentiment in this election year.
"We may have to deal with it," Boehner told reporters.
But not just yet. A move by House Democrats to attach the minimum wage to an unrelated spending bill now being debated in the House of Representatives was blocked.
They described how Cingular's agreement to remain neutral in organizing drives and grant recognition based on majority card check support has allowed 39,000 workers to gain CWA representation — 17,000 in just the past year.
Joyce and her co-workers originally tried to organize when her call center was owned by AT&T Wireless, and she described how bosses conducted one-on-one meetings to intimidate them, and how several union supporters were even fired.
When Cingular bought AT&T Wireless last year, "I was on the conference call with Cingular's CEO when he talked about the great relationship the company had with CWA," she told the conferees. "I wanted to shout out loud for all the managers to hear."
Now part of CWA, her workplace is entirely different, she said. Workers have a say on the job and better pay and good health benefits at a lower cost.
The annual Take Back America conference brings thousands of progressive activists and political leaders together to discuss ideas and develop a common agenda. For more information and to view streaming video of major speeches at the conference, go to www.ourfuture.org, the website of the Campaign for America's future.
I've watched more than a few college-grad friends struggle to pay off their towering school loans and credit card debt -- usually on "creative sector" annual salaries ranging from $25K to $40K (while attempting to thrive in notoriously overpriced cities such as New York, Boston and San Francisco).
Gen X-ers have it much worse than our Baby Boomer parents, because while typical earnings for college grads have stayed the same for three decades, the costs of housing, education and health care have grown exponentially -- much faster than inflation.
The grim financial situation many young folks are now facing is part of a broad governmental failure to regulate the rising costs of higher education, to boost the minimum wage to a livable wage, and to create a sufficient number of full-time jobs -- with benefits -- to ensure that America's massive twenty- and thirty-something work force is healthy and paid well enough to provide for their families.
The result of this sweeping federal failure isn't pretty. Attending college, for many middle-class as well as low-income families, is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" proposition, and in 2003, less than a third of young adults aged 25 to 29 had a bachelor's degree. College is just too expensive for all but the luckiest few to afford -- but not having a degree means difficulty in landing a job. In 1972, the typical male high school graduate, aged 25 to 34, earned $42,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars; three decades later, male high school graduates of the same age were earning just over $29,000.
Because of the scarcity -- and competition to find -- full-time salaried jobs, growing numbers of young people are turning to part-time or temp gigs. During the '90s, the number of jobs handled by temp agencies doubled. And more and more young people are being forced to move back home with their parents; nowadays, four out of 10 people move home at least once after college.
I wanted to counter the conventional wisdom that young people today are struggling financially because they lack a strong work ethic or because they're profligate spenders. There is so much frustration out there among both parents and young people who can't understand why they're having such a difficult time getting ahead. I want to raise awareness that the challenges facing this generation are not personal, but the result of political decisions made over the last three decades.
Young people need to fight for reforms by showing that the breakdown in opportunity and economic security didn't "just happen," and it can be changed.
Today's generation of twenty- and thirty-somethings are experiencing the fallout of a three-decade-long shift in our culture and politics. A generation ago, three factors helped smooth the transition to adulthood. The first was the fact that there were jobs that provided good wages, even for high school graduates. A college degree wasn't necessary to earn a decent living. But even if you wanted to go, it wasn't that expensive, and grants were widely available.
The second was an economy that lifted all boats, with productivity gains shared by workers and CEOs alike. The result was a massive growth of the middle class, which provided security and stability for families.
Third, a range of public policies helped facilitate economic mobility and opportunity: a strong minimum wage, low college tuition and generous financial aid, major incentives for homeownership and a solid safety net for those falling on hard times. Simply put, the government had your back. This world no longer exists. The story of what happened is well-known.
As the nation's shift to a service-based economy accelerated, the new economy dramatically changed the way we lived and worked. Relationships between employers and employees became more tenuous, as corporations faced global competitors and quarterly bottom-line pressures from Wall Street. Increasingly, fringe benefits like health care and pension plans were only provided to well-paid workers. Wages rose quickly for educated workers and declined for those with only high school degrees, resulting in new demands for college credentials.
As most families saw their incomes stagnate or decline, they needed two full-time incomes just to stay afloat, creating new demands on working parents. Getting into the middle class now required a four-year college degree, and even that was no guarantee of the American dream.
While adults of all ages have endured the economic and social changes brought by post-industrialization, today's young adults are the first to experience its full weight as they try to start their adult lives. But the challenges facing young adults also reflect the failure of public policy to address the changing realities of building a life in the 21st century. Government no longer has our back. As young adults today are working to get into the middle class, they're being hit by a one-two punch: The economy no longer generates widespread opportunity, and our public policies haven't picked up any of the slack.
Young people have gotten the message loud and clear that they need a college degree to get into the middle class. Today, three-quarters of high school grads continue their education with some type of college experience. The problem is that college has become a luxury-priced necessity. Over the last two decades, the cost of tuition has more than doubled, and federal financial aid has fossilized. As a result, young people from low-income households often can't scrape together enough loans, grants or cash to foot the bill.
Today, the average student loan debt for a college grad is close to $20,000. That's a $200 monthly bite out your paycheck for ten years. For those who continue on to grad school, the combined debt is about $46,000 -- a $500 monthly payment for ten years.
The problem is that the typical earnings for college grads have been flat for three decades, while the cost of housing, health care and education have all risen much faster than inflation. So essentially young people must figure out how to do more with less money.
Another layer to this problem is that about 1 out of 5 students who borrow money end up dropping out of college. So they've got the debt, but no degree. The enormous debt load means that today's generation has less money to save, whether for retirement or for a down payment on a home.
A generation ago, a young person entered the labor market on an escalator. Young workers could count on a swift and steady progression in their earnings. Today, young workers enter the labor market on one of those automated airport walkways. Productivity may be rising, but young workers' paychecks are staying flat.
Back in 1972, the typical 25- to 34-year-old male high school graduate earned just over $42,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars. Three decades later, male high school graduates are earning just over $29,000. But the earnings for college grads have remained fairly steady over the last three decades.
Young women's earnings have also declined, but not as steeply. Young female workers with college degrees have experienced growth in their incomes compared to three decades ago as career opportunities have grown, though women in this age group earn less than their male counterparts at every level of education.
The earnings picture is grim. But add to that the reality that while paychecks have been stuck in first gear, the price of housing has soared in the last ten years. This is especially true for young professionals because the hottest job markets are still clustered around our nation's largest and most expensive cities. Between 1995 and 2002, median rents in nearly all the largest metropolitan areas rose by more than 50 percent.
Over the last three decades, the triumph of conservative ideology has resulted in a major shift away from shared responsibility toward personal responsibility. States slashed their support of higher education, leading to steep tuition hikes.
At the federal level, financial aid shifted from being a grant-based system to a loan-based system. Guaranteed pensions got replaced with individual retirement plans. After Ronald Reagan's firing of striking airline workers, businesses ramped up their anti-union efforts, and states passed legislation making it more difficult for workers to unionize. The minimum wage lost its purchasing power.
Over the last three decades, we've witnessed a steady retrenchment from investing in the common good. We've failed to shore up the public structures that provide individuals with the opportunities to get ahead. In this era of hyper-individualism, our national spirit has shifted from "We're all in this together" to "Hey, look out, I'm about to step on you."
The policies of the Bush administration and Congress have made the future look even grimmer for young people. The soaring national deficit and debt will be our burden to pay. Three rounds of tax cuts have further constrained our nation's ability to get serious about shoring up our investments in education and health care. Most recently, Congress made major cuts to financial aid for college, including raising the cost of federal student loans. The Bush administration has taken the creed of selfish individualism to new heights -- and the public good has suffered as a result.
Our young people today are going to have to take government back, and seriously consider returning to the days of a strong labor union in order to ensure a future for the American middle class. The continued outsourcing of good paying jobs may be good for the working classes of China and India, but do little to help the working class here at home. A billion dollars a day being spent on the war in Iraq could be better spent on education, and the continuing tax cuts for the upper classes may be helping the corporate CEO's, but aren't helping the average worker.
On Dec. 31, 2004, AT&T replaced the Supplemental Retirement Income Plan with a new plan called the 2005 Supplemental Employee Retirement Plan. Under this new plan, Whitacre will receive a lump sum of $18.8 million on his retirement. This lump sum is in addition to his expected $5.38 million annual pension benefit that he accrued before 2005.
Both the Supplemental Retirement Income Plan and the Supplemental Employee Retirement Plan are nonqualified plans that are only offered to a select group of highly compensated AT&T executives. Regular management employees participate in AT&T’s Pension Benefit Plan. Under this plan, Whitacre’s expected annual pension benefit after 44 years of service is $113,312.
In 1997, AT&T (formerly named SBC Communications) converted its Pension Benefit Plan into a cash balance plan. Cash balance plans can reduce older workers’ pensions by 20 percent to 50 percent. Then on January 2005, the cash balance plan was converted back into a defined benefit plan. While existing managers will participate in the new defined benefit pension, many of them will not have many years to build up a benefit.
Ironically, AT&T’s switch back to a traditional defined benefit pension for its management employees is expected to reduce the company’s pension liability and generate gains that will be recognized over time. With the announced change, AT&T said that it did not expect to make any pension contributions in 2005. Meanwhile during AT&T’s pension flip-flop, the nonqualified plans for senior executives were unaffected.
Whitacre’s employment agreement also provides him with retirement perks, including lifetime health and welfare benefits, 10 hours per month of flight time on the corporate jet, office space and support staff and an automobile. In addition, Whitacre’s contract provides for an annual consulting fee equal to 50 percent of his salary for three years.
It's never too early or too late to begin saving for retirement. A wealth of online resources can help you figure out how much you need to save and give you tips about how to do it.
The American Savings Education Council (ASEC) offers a Ballpark Estimate worksheet to use interactively or print out. It's also available in Spanish. Other tools from ASEC’s Choose to Save program include a range of additional financial calculators on saving, taxes, debt and more. Use the U.S. Treasury Department's savings bond calculators to determine how much your bonds are worth, set up a savings plan and figure how your bonds will grow.
Tips on How to Save How Do I Get There From Here? from the American Savings Education Council takes you through options for do-it-yourself retirement planning but also gives you tips for selecting an investment professional. Six Steps to Six-Figure Savings, from the Consumer Federation of America, shows that small savings over a long period can make a big difference. Over 40 years, for example, $25 a week earning 5 percent compound interest adds up to more than $166,000! 66 Ways to Save Money, also from the Consumer Federation of America, gives money-saving tips on everything from car-buying to home heating and funeral arrangements. Women and Retirement Savings, also from the PWBA, targets the special needs of women, whose lifetime earnings tend to be lower than those of men because of family-related career interruptions. Only 47 percent of women have pension plans.
* More than 3 million manufacturing jobs have disappeared since 1998, and the Economic Policy Institute estimates 59 percent—or 1.78 million—of these jobs have been lost due to the explosion in the U.S. manufacturing trade deficit over the period.
* Goldman Sachs estimates 400,000–600,000 professional services and information sector jobs moved overseas in the past few years, accounting for about half of the total net job loss in the sector over the period. A Deloitte Research survey found one-third of all major financial institutions are already sending work offshore, with 75 percent reporting they would do so within the next 24 months. A U.C. Berkeley study found 25,000 to 30,000 new outsourcing-related jobs advertised in India by U.S. firms in just one month in 2003.
* One service sector hard hit by job losses is information technology, especially software. The pro-outsourcing consulting firm Global Insight estimates we lost 104,000 information technology jobs to offshore outsourcing between 2000 and 2003, more than a quarter of the 372,000 jobs lost in the sector overall during the period. The Economic Policy Institute found employment in U.S. software-producing industries fell by 128,000 jobs from 2000 to early 2004, while about 100,000 new jobs producing software for export to the U.S. were created in India over the same period of time.
* States are outsourcing public sector jobs as well, though most state governments do not know exactly how many. At least forty states contract out administration of electronic benefit cards for the food stamps program offshore. In one audit, the state of Washington found 36 out of 41 agencies were contracting out work overseas. A recent study by INPUT Research projects outsourcing of state and local government technology contracts will grow from $10 billion last year to $23 billion in 2008.
* From November 2002 to January 2004, the U.S. Department of Labor certified 246,398 workers who lost their jobs due to trade for Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA). This is in addition to the estimated 1,112,775 workers who were certified for TAA between 1994 and the end of 2002. These figures are very under-inclusive: they only count workers who know about the TAA program, apply for it, and qualify under the program’s strict eligibility requirements. The numbers do not include most service sector workers or workers who have lost their jobs due to shifts in production to China—neither group is eligible for TAA. Nor do they include workers erroneously denied TAA certification by the Labor Department.
* The Economic Policy Institute estimates that between 1993 and 2000, our lopsided trade policies, reflected in the explosive increase in the U.S. trade deficit, cost Americans a net 3 million jobs and job opportunities. The growth in the NAFTA trade deficit alone is associated with nearly 900,000 lost jobs and job opportunities through 2002.
How Many Jobs Will Be Lost?
* Forrester Research Inc. predicts U.S. employers will move 3.4 million white-collar jobs and $136 billion in wages overseas by 2015. The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas estimates the number of service-sector jobs moving overseas each year will hit 588,000 by 2005. A University of California at Berkeley report finds 14 million jobs are at risk of being sent offshore, and predicts job losses will exceed the Forrester study’s projections.
* Gartner Inc., a high-tech forecasting firm, estimates 10 percent of computer services and software jobs will be moved overseas by the end of this year, while a study by Meta group projects 40 percent of corporate tech operations will move offshore by 2008. * A survey by Deloitte Research found the world’s 100 largest financial services firms expect to shift $356 billion worth of operations and about two million jobs to low-wage countries over the next five years. Another Deloitte survey of 42 global telecom operators projects 275,000 jobs in the sector will be sent off-shore by 2008.
What Are the Broader Impacts?
* Economic theory predicts increased trade will lower wages for lesser-skilled occupations, and thus increase income inequality. Though economists’ estimates vary, increased trade is likely responsible for about 20 percent of the recent increase in income inequality in the U.S. This translates into a decrease in real wages for the majority of American workers—roughly a 6 percent loss for the two-thirds of workers who lack a college degree.
* Recent wage trends confirm what economic theory would predict. Real wages have stagnated since 1973, even though productivity has grown rapidly. For the majority of the American workforce, real wages have stagnated since 1973 and have actually fallen in the last year. Since real wages are adjusted for inflation, they take into account any benefits workers enjoy from lower costs resulting from increased imports.
* The Economic Policy Institute reports wages in the industries in which jobs are being created are, on average, 21 percent lower than wages in those industries in which jobs are disappearing. In addition, expanding industries are less likely to provide workers with health insurance than industries cutting jobs. EPI also found jobs losses are hitting higher-paid software occupations even harder than other software jobs.
* Increased employer mobility also hurts workers by decreasing their bargaining power. As it becomes easier for companies to move work overseas, employers use the threat of sending work overseas to squelch union organizing drives and win concessions at the bargaining table.
* Trade-related job loss does not just hurt individual workers and their families. Entire communities are affected negatively as tax revenues fall, dependency on public assistance increases, and incomes stagnate. And as the off-shoring and job loss spreads to sectors with higher technology and skills that drive innovation and productivity, it puts the long-term competitiveness of the American economy at risk.
Let's see if we can't find a way to frame the question that would allow an answer from empirical evidence both sides can agree on. When it comes to many actions of the Republican Congress, there is now a substantial track record of results. The evidence is in.
For five years now, the Republicans have promised us that business tax cuts would strengthen the economy, create new jobs, spur growth, foster investment and bring beer and skittles for everyone. Over five fiscal years, the tax cuts have had a direct cost to the treasury of $860 billion -- with interest, $929 billion.
Lee Price of the Economic Policy Institute points out: "The fact that all major economic indicators are higher today than in early 2001 does not mean the tax cuts have been beneficial. Since the Great Depression, the resilient U.S. economy has always had gains over such four-year periods. The appropriate question to ask is: How well has the economy performed compared to similar periods in the past? If the last four years of tax cuts had worked as promised, the economy should have done better than in previous cycles, when taxes were either not cut or cut much less." We all down for that?
Unfortunately, the EPI concludes, "By virtually every measure, the economy has performed worse in this business cycle than was typical of past ones, including that of the 1990s, which saw major tax increases."
In 2001, the economy entered a recession not long before the first Bush tax cuts -- what the economists call a "shallow recession" (why don't they ever talk to the people whose unemployment insurance ran out?). The economy has been in an expansionist phase since November 2001. EPI found an annual growth rate of wage and salary income of 1.3 percent, below all six previous cycles and nearly 2 percentage points below their average 3.2 percent growth.
As for the cuts supposed to spur investment: "Business investment in structures, equipment and software (so-called 'non-residential investment') was only 3.6 percent higher in the second quarter of 2005 than it had been in the first quarter of 2001. That is less than half of the 8.2 percent growth found in the worst of the six prior cycles, and but one-eighth of the 27.5 percent growth rate in the strongest prior cycle."
The EPI study goes on to provide charts, bells and whistles measuring all this six ways from Sunday. The series of major tax cuts enacted in the past four years has not strengthened the economy. Every broad measure -- GDP, jobs, personal income and business investment -- has fared worse over the period than in previous cycles, contrary to Republican predictions. It turns out the one tax cut that really did help snap the recession early was that middle-class tax rebate the Democrats stuck into the Bush bill.
OK, bad news. So, what did happen to all that money from tax cuts that was supposed to go into investment? It didn't go into higher wages -- that's the factor that accounts for the generally dismal public perception of this economy. People don't see their income going up. Well, shareholders got more. Executives continued to get staggering pay packages. The increases range from obscene to excessive. I'll say this for America's corporate executives, they certainly weren't cowed by the Enron, Tyco, etc., scandals. There were a lot of stock buy-backs and acquisitions, but not much investment that creates jobs.
Well, I'm sorry it didn't work out the way the Republicans thought it would -- that's why many argued against such cuts in the first place. The question now is, so why do it again? Why give the oil industry more tax breaks? Why do they keep doing it? Is it ideology, or is it stupidity?
Corporate tax revenues are now at historic low levels as a share of federal revenue, going back to the 1930s. That means individuals have a much larger share of the total tax burden.
One of my favorite happy horsepoop tax cuts was the six-month, one-time special "ally-ally-in-free" on foreign profits. Passed in 2004, this monumentally stupid piece of corporate pork (laughingly named the Incentive to Reinvest Foreign Earnings in the United States and part of the also laughingly named American Jobs Creation Act of 2004) was a special favor to drug and high-tech companies (read, big campaign contributions) who had been storing their profits offshore. Then-Sen. John Breaux said at the time, "The company that left Louisiana is going to pay a 5 percent tax on the widgets they make overseas, and the company that stayed in Louisiana is going to pay a 35 percent tax. If that isn't an incentive to leave, I don't know what is."
The Republicans specifically rejected an amendment to that break that would have required the companies to invest the money. So did all those foreign profits flow home and get invested in new plants and create lots of jobs? No. But sales of corporate jets are up.
Like Proposition 226, the infamous California "paycheck deception act" that unions defeated in 1998, Proposition 75 would restrict unions' ability to make political contributions while doing nothing to stop vote buying by huge corporations. Only this time, disguised as responsible government, the measure is aimed only at unions that represent public sector workers.
It would require locals to annually obtain a signed authorization form from each member who contributes to COPE programs and would require extra burdensome record-keeping procedures.
CWA's UPTE Local 9119, with 11,000 University Professional and Technical Employees at University of California campuses and hospitals throughout the state, and the 3,000-member California Coalition of Police and Sheriffs are major CWA units that are targeted.
However, the measure could have a broad impact. Many CWA locals represent a variety of occupations ranging from telecom to the public sector. "People think Proposition 75 applies only to public sector unions," says Tom Ramirez, legislative chair of the Northern California-Nevada Council of CWA Locals, "But what they don't realize is that you only have to have one public sector member in your local, and the whole local would be restricted as far as the use of its money."
Remember who told California residents when the Governor refused to staff nurses as required by law. Remember who told residents when the Governor wanted to eliminate death benefits for the families of police and fire fighters. Remember who told residents when the Governor "borrowed" $2 Billion from our schools, and then refused to pay it back...it wasn't big business, or the Governor...it was the unions.
Ramirez and CWA Representative Nancy Biagini, through a two-hour class, got the word out to about 80 activists who attended District 9's Northern California stewards' training, Sept. 30 to Oct. 2, to mobilize their members.
Said District 9 Vice President Tony Bixler, "We've got to stop this thing. The restrictions it places on public employee unions are bad enough. But it won't stop there. If it passes, it will become a model for other states, and they won't stop until they have silenced the political voice of all union members everywhere."
Biagini said stewards returned home with a thorough knowledge of Proposition 75 and other measures labor opposes, where to get materials and a plan to ask their members to vote "No."
Materials used in the class are available on the state AFL-CIO's website at www.calaborfed.org, including fliers describing the anti-union measures and sample letters local presidents can send their members. Information is also available through the District 9 website at www.cwa.cwa-union.org/district9.
CWA activists, through several central labor councils, are already participating in phone banking and precinct walks to inform thousands of union households about the threat to their political voice and will intensify their efforts as the election approaches, Bixler reported. Members are also participating in precinct walks coordinated by the Alliance for a Better America.
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"I've never seen anything like it in my life," said Rechenbach after touring Gulf Port on Sept. 8. "You go along that Gulf coast and as far as the eye can see, everything is leveled."
Seeing the devastation "gives you a much deeper sense of just how important our member relief effort is to these families."
He said the union doesn't know yet how many CWA members were affected by the storm and its aftermath, but knows that like many people he met on his trip, there are CWA families who lost everything.
Meanwhile, a network of CWA locals continued to send members' disaster relief requests to headquarters, as members nationwide stepped up contributions. As of Sept. 14, the CWA Disaster Relief Fund had received donations totaling $43,000. CWA Convention delegates voted $4 million for the relief effort. Money is already being disbursed to CWA families in need.
Mike Farenholt, president of Local 3410 in New Orleans, on Sept. 14 said Bell South technicians are working 14 hours a day and more, especially in Louisiana and Mississippi, to get service restored. Many others have been moved to Alabama and other locations to pick up additional work rerouted from Louisiana.
In the greater New Orleans area, about 18 Bell South central offices remained out of work, mostly because the standing water is still much too high. Some locations were covered by 30 to 40 feet of water, Farenholt said.
Several hundred technicians are working out of two locations -- Kenner and Marrero, La. -- and the Marrero garage has a huge tent city sleeping about 300 technicians. Many of them don't have a home to go to, Fahrenholt said.
Other Bell South employees have been temporarily transferred to other cities in the Southeast, as far away as Atlanta. The company's putting them up in hotels, and for some of the people, it's a blessing because they've got a place to take their families, he said.
Fahrenholt, a full-time president, has returned to working as a technician. The local's offices are still closed until water recedes from the streets, and he wanted to be out in the field working alongside his local's members, who got a big kick out of seeing him in uniform, on the job. "They tell me, 'just stay out of my way.'"
Among other reports that have filtered into CWA headquarters:
****Red Cross volunteer Carlos Flores, a CWA-NABET Local 59053 shop steward and member of the KVEA/KWHY negotiating committee, has been helping evacuate Hurricane Katrina victims from the New Orleans area. Because his employer wouldn't give him paid leave, the local's executive board as set aside funds to cover his time off, recognizing his long-standing involvement as a Red Cross volunteer and the many skills he brings to crisis management. The executive board also donated funds to be sent to the Red Cross on behalf of all Local 59053 members.
****Members of the CWA-Texas State Employees Union at state Health and Human Services offices are working late nights and weekends to get Katrina evacuees signed up for food stamps. Ironically, client needs are skyrocketing at the same time Texas is readying to close more than 100 eligibility offices and lay off thousands off state workers. They are to be replaced by four call centers across the state to "service" needy Texans, says Arthur Valdez of the TSEU Executive Board. "What if there are future disasters?" he asks. "How will people in need get services?"
****Hundreds of CWA members at Verizon and their families volunteered their time the evening of Sept. 9 to take calls during a fundraising telethon broadcast on the six TV networks. Vickie Kintzer, the CWA District 13 health care coordinator at Verizon, said 500 Verizon employees have volunteered to work at the Robbinsville, N.J., call center, among 6,000 volunteering across the country. They include CWA and IBEW members.
****Suzanne Bradley, a member of CWA Local 1168, Nurses United, in Buffalo, N.Y., proudly reports that her local gave $100 from its Sunshine Fund and its Community Service Committee collected clothing, toys and school supplies after Bradley's sister's family was forced to evacuate their home in Slidell, La. "Our local has always responded generously to disasters when they touch union families across the country, but I never expected my family would be on the receiving end. I'm thankful to be part of a union that cares about all working families," she says.
****Malocca Hawkins, CWA member, steward, and member of her community services committee, is just one of hundreds of CWA volunteers who wanted to help out homeless families who will be coming to California for assistance. Hawkins remarked she wanted to help out the victims, but wasn't able to travel to them, so this was the next best thing -- helping convert a housing shelter in Bell, Calif. for families left homeless. The Bell shelter is expected to house 1,000 to 2,000 families.
****CWA members at SBC have helped the company's donations to Katrina victims climb to $1.2 million, the most money that SBC employees have ever raised so quickly after a disaster. The company is matching donations dollar for dollar.
****The SBC Yellow Pages office in Tulsa, members of CWA Local 6012, have "adopted" an extended family that includes a former Yellow Page employee and a present Bell South CWA member. Local Steward Yondi Benear said the 19 family members are now living in one house in Lafayette, La. They come from New Orleans, where two of their three houses were destroyed and the third was damaged. The workers are donating and collecting linens, toiletries, clothes and other personal and household items, as well as chain store gift cards to help family members buy what they need.
Reports of relief efforts in the field are being constantly updated on the CWA website, www.cwa-union.org . Just go to the home page and click on "Katrina Relief Honor Roll."
Many of us have talked for a number of years to key leaders of Congress about the possibility of introducing and passing such legislation. One of the possible avenues of doing that was to include it in legislation for labor law reform. Unfortunately, it never had legs. The fact that the vast majority of retirees never belonged to a union so legislation would not impact them was the major reason why it never had legs in Congress.
Today we have an NLRB that goes about destroying workers' rights and removing workers from union eligibility, such legislation is not even a dream. So, we need to do what we can to "persuade" employers to continue to bargain with us for those already retired. And, we do this against the backdrop of the continuing attack against defined benefit pension plans. In 1988 there were 112,000 defined benefit pension plans. Today there are fewer than 30,000 with only about 20 percent of American workers (union and non-union) covered. And, Bush's privitization of SS effort is a further weakening - as United Airlines termination of its Plan - of DB plans. I believe it is inevitable, as the number of DB plans diminish that we will be fighting at the bargaining table to prevent the conversion of our plans to 401K type plans.
With regard to health care, I believe there is little that can be done - even with a "good" company there is just no way to curtail the rising cost of health care in America. As an employer, CWA is experiencing the same problem. Today our health care costs for actives and retirees equates to 35 percent of our payroll!!!! That is the nature of the problem. That is why I repeatedly tell our retirees not to relax because they escaped a major bullet in the last contract. The problem is only getting worse and will be extraordinarily difficult to resolve in 2008 and later.
The Taft Hartley health plans are suffering similar experiences. Many of the building trades unions have virtually all of the first year's wage increases being allocated to the health care trust fund. We have 45 million uninsured and will be above 50 million within two years. States are cutting back on medicaid payments because the federal government has cut back on funds to the states....the president's prescription drug plan prohibits us from buying from Canada while he takes care of his friendly pharmaceutical industry by prohibiting the government from bargaining with them on prices. The courts, on many occasions, have upheld companies changing and even eliminating benefits for retirees. Here, again, legislation would be required I paint a bleak picture. And, it is indeed.
This Administration is determined to roll back all of the New Deal values - and, they are succeeding. Unfortunately, they still have 2-1/2 years in office - and, if they can pick up five senate seats next year, they will have a filibuster proof senate and will bring us back to the days of Herbert Hoover.....I wish I could be more optimistic with regards to the issues - but unless and until your anger beomes contagious and milllions of retirees, union and non union- supported by younger workers are ready to put everything on the line and determine that it is these issues that are the real values rather than gay marriage and a woman's right to choose. And, that goes for our members as well....30 percent of whom voted for Bush. The answers lie at the ballot box.
About 40 CWAers, from Locals 3176, 3680, 3681, 3871, 4473, 4700, 6325, and 6372, along with AFL-CIO supporters, gained significant shareholder support for that proposal, introduced by the AFL-CIO, reported Robert Richhart, assistant to Telecommunications Vice President Jimmy Gurganus.
Richhart outlined for shareholders the special credits, enhancements and supplemental benefits available to Sprint senior executives and pointed out that these costs increase the overall cost of the company's retirement plan to shareholders.
The granting of such benefits should take place only to support the interests of shareholders and should receive shareholder approval, he said. Further, "we believe these extraordinary pension benefits are unnecessary, given the high level of executive compensation" at Sprint, he added.
That proposal received 39 percent of votes cast.
Shareholders ok'd the proposed merger with Nextel Communications Inc., which still must be approved by the Federal Communications Commission, the Justice Department and the 18 states in which the company operates local telephone service.
CWA, in its filings with the FCC and other regulators, has stressed that the merger should be approved contingent upon a fair distribution of the companies' debts and assets to the local telephone division at the time of its proposed spin off.
Currently, Sprint uses profits from its local division to support investment and pay expenses of its long distance and Internet division, CWA told the FCC, noting that the policy already has caused the deterioration of service to local customers.
Co-sponsored by more than 100 members of Congress--Democrats and Republicans--a new bill on Capitol Hill would place a six-month moratorium on companies in bankruptcy, including United, to keep them from dumping their pension plans on the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC). This bill, H.R. 2327, would give independent analysts time to sort out what's really going on with United's pension plans. And it would give United employees the chance to negotiate over their retirement benefits--we hope while Congress gets busy and passes pro-worker pension funding reform.
Please take a moment now to urge your members of Congress to support this important protection for our retirement security.
The United Airlines pension disgrace would cut United workers' promised retirement benefits by 25 percent to 50 percent. These workers are trapped in what would be the largest pension failure in U.S. history. But it won't be the last if United's pension dump goes unchallenged and leaves a roadmap for other employers that want to dodge their pension obligations.
Please tell your members of Congress to support H.R. 2327 and protect our retirement security.
The studies, paid for by the department, concluded that several countries the administration wants to be granted free-trade status have poor working conditions and fail to protect workers' rights. The agency dismissed the conclusions as inaccurate and biased, according to documents reviewed by The Associated Press.
"In practice, labor laws on the books in Central America are not sufficient to deter employers from violations, as actual sanctions for violations of the law are weak or nonexistent," the contractor, the International Labor Rights Fund, wrote in one of the reports.
The studies' conclusions contrast with the administration's arguments that Central American countries have made enough progress on such issues to warrant a free-trade deal with the United States.
The administration and its congressional supporters argue that the elimination of trade barriers for U.S. products would open new Central American markets for U.S. farmers and manufacturers. Critics argue the trade agreement would allow serious labor violations to continue in Central America.
Hoping to lure enough Democratic votes to win passages, U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman earlier this month promised to spend money and arrange an international conference to ensure "the best agreement ever negotiated by the United States on labor rights."
But behind the scenes, the administration began as early as spring 2004 to block the reports' public release.
The Labor Department instructed its contractor to remove the reports from its Web site, ordered it to retrieve paper copies before they became public, banned release of new information from the reports, and even told the contractor it couldn't discuss the studies with outsiders.
The Labor Department has now worked out a deal with the contractor that will allow the labor rights group to release the country-by-country final reports -- provided there's no mention of the agency or federal funding. At the same time, the administration began a pre-emptive campaign to undercut the study's conclusions.
Used as talking points by trade-pact supporters, a Labor Department document accuses the contractor of writing a report filled with "unsubstantiated" statements and "biased attacks, not the facts."
The contractor's deputy director, Bama Athreya, blamed U.S. Trade Representative officials for circulating the document and citing passages that won't be included in the final versions of the reports.
One lawmaker said he was shocked that a federal agency charged with protecting the rights of Americans workers would go to such lengths to block the public from seeing its own contractor's concerns before Congress votes on the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
"You would think if any agency in our government would care about this, it would be the Labor Department," Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said.
Dorgan said he would use the contractor findings in an attempt to defeat the agreement, known as CAFTA.
Dirk Fillpot, spokesman for the Labor Department's Bureau of International Labor Affairs, said the agency and an independent evaluator concluded the contractor "failed to meet the academic rigor expected to fulfill its contract" and the relationship was terminated June 10.
The competitively bid contract totaled $937,000, but Fillpot said $250,000 will be refunded to the Treasury.
Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, who supports the trade agreement, said he is familiar with drafts of the reports and believes they will be "widely dismissed as a fraud." He accused the contractor of producing "a propaganda piece" and concealing "its rabid anti-CAFTA bias."
Athreya, the contractor official, has testified in Congress against the agreement.
The documents show the studies came within a whisker of widespread release in March 2004, when the labor-rights group posted them briefly on its Internet site.
The Labor Department quickly and successfully demanded the reports be removed on grounds they weren't approved by the agency. Officials also demanded the group retrieve a limited number of paper copies that were distributed at a hearing of a Latin American human rights body.
Shortly after that incident, Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., began a yearlong effort to pry the studies from the department through a Freedom of Information Act request. The department rejected his request until two months ago, when Levin received -- and released -- early drafts of the reports.
The Trade Representative's spokesman, Richard Mills, said trade officials referred to the Labor Department's critical document after receiving
inquiries about the studies. "From our perspective, nothing has changed. It's a great agreement that will improve labor conditions in Central America," Mills said.
CWA and other unions are among members of the non-partisan coalition, which also includes large and small businesses, consumer, religious and primary care provider groups, and the country's largest health and pension funds.
Laying out four scenarios for change at a recent press briefing in Washington, D.C., Coalition President Henry Simmons said the findings are "unambiguous" in showing enormous cost savings while improving health care and providing coverage for all Americans.
"In short, health care reform is a good investment, a crucial investment, for our nation and our people," said Simmons, a medical doctor who served various posts in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations.
The proposals for change include requiring employers to provide health care coverage, expanding public health insurance programs, creating new public programs and establishing a universal publicly financed system.
In all cases, independent analyses by a researcher specializing in health care financing showed billions in savings through cost management and covering the uninsured, with the universal system providing the largest savings, an estimated $1.136 trillion by 2015. The analyses used conservative fiscal assumptions and Congressional Budget Office methodology, the coalition said.
Without changes researcher Kenneth Thorpe, head of the Department of Health Policy and Management at Emory University in Atlanta, said not only will costs continue to skyrocket but also the number of uninsured Americans will rise by at least another 8 million within 10 years, to more than 54 million.
CWA President Morton Bahr urged union families to put pressure on government leaders to review the proposals and begin taking action. "The health care crisis is one of the gravest threats to our country," Bahr said. "It affects not only the physical health of our citizens, but the fiscal health of our states, communities, schools and households. Unless we get the costs under control soon and ensure that everyone has medical coverage, our standard of living is destined to decline."
Robert Ray, coalition co-chair and former Republican governor of Iowa, agreed. "The materials released today make a strong case that for serious economic, as well as health, reasons, we - as a nation - must act on health care reform now," Ray said.
Real pensions (defined-benefi