When members of Congress return home next week for the Memorial Day recess, they will be greeted by thousands of SEIU members rallying for comprehensive immigration reform. SEIU janitors, security officers, healthcare and state workers–along…

Striking warehouse workers at Shaw’s Distribution Center in Methuen, MA marched for five days from Methuen to Boston. The 310 workers, members of the UFCW Local 791, have been on strike since March 7.   Shaw’s Supermarkets are owned by Supervalu.

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Cross-posted from Labor Notes.

Striking workers at the Supervalu- owned Shaw’s Distribution Center in Methuen, Mass., have been marching from Methuen to Boston for justice since Sunday, May 23.

The 310 workers, members of UFCW Local 791, have been on strike since March 7 over the company’s insistence that the burden of increasing health care costs be borne by workers.

As a resident of Somerville, I chose to meet up with the strikers on their march from Medford to Somerville, the third day of their four-day journey. While we marched, the 50 or so workers and supporters enjoyed broad support from passing motorists, as well as cheers from many residents in the neighborhoods along the route.

It was easy to see how bringing the strike into the community gets people mobilized in different ways than just walking a picket line. All kinds of people get involved. I especially liked the opportunity to meet up with other labor activists from Somerville.

I also had a surprising connection with one of the

Continue reading Strikers March from Methuen to Boston to Win Justice at Shaw’s

In this cross-post from the Huffington Post and Seminal, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee writes that attacks focusing on public employees are misdirected: the real culprits for the nation’s economic mess are Big Banks and Wall Street.

For more than a generation, America’s working families have been under a constant assault from the CEO’s and extraordinarily wealthy members of our society. While median incomes in the U.S. have stagnated since the mid-1970’s, incomes for those in the top five percent have more than doubled. Since the beginning of our new century—and aided by record-breaking tax cuts—incomes for the top 1 percent have tripled, while working families scrape by, working harder and longer and taking home less than they deserve in pay and benefits.

Last week, the very rich once again attacked the middle-class, this time in U.S. News and World Report. Billionaire publisher Mort Zuckerman decided to use his magazine to publish a rabid attack on public employees, the men and women who provide the services that keep our communities safe, teach our children, keep our streets paved and our water clean.

In his piece, Zuckerman would have us believe that the hunt is over and we have found the culprits who trashed America’s financial health. It was our nation’s librarians, corrections officers, teachers, cops and fireman who drove our economy off the cliff. Wall Street and a compliant Federal Reserve had nothing to do with it. There’s really nothing more to see here; it’s time to move on. Zuckerman’s short-sighted assault on public employees appealed to the editors of Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, who decided to republish it on their op-ed page. The billionaires are happy to amplify their anti-worker screeds in each other’s media empires.

Mort Zuckerman is one of the world’s wealthiest men. While never once mentioning the reprehensible behavior of the investment and banking community in causing an economic collapse that wiped out half a generation of retirement savings (including the home equity that many had counted on), nor acknowledging that wealthy Americans pay less in taxes than they did 60 years ago, Zuckerman launches a rant against public employee unions and the “extraordinary benefits” paid to workers that is long on hyperbole and short on facts.

AFSCME’s non-teaching public employee members earn, on average, $45,000 a year to protect the public and the most vulnerable members of our society. After a career of service, our members retire with modest pensions of about $19,000 per year. And, unlike most private sector workers, our members typically contribute towards this pension benefit. In fact, of the final pension benefit, taxpayers contribute just 25 percent of the cost. The fact that public employees have decent health benefits and pensions, now scarce in the private sector, is genuine cause for alarm. Zuckerman’s solution is for these benefits to be taken away from public employees. Of course, he has a net worth of more than $2 billion, so he’s not much troubled by such a sacrifice.

Zuckerman claims the benefits earned by public employees are “galling” to private sector workers. How would he know? What is truly galling for private sector employees is the outright refusal of our political and economic elites to recognize and deal with stagnant wages and eroding retirement and health security. Our nation’s problem is not that public service workers have decent pensions, it is that so many other employees don’t.

The cause of our fiscal problems is declining revenues, pure and simple. The fact that state governments have cut nearly half a trillion in spending over the past three budget cycles is ample evidence of this. Moreover, Zuckerman misrepresents the facts about public pension funds. The primary cause of our pension funding challenges is the failure of state governments to contribute required payments over many years. For example, the political leaders in New Jersey deliberately failed to make required contributions over a period of more than ten years. Of course, employees have been paying in full, year after year. The employees acted in good faith, the political leaders did not.

We have a genuine retirement security crisis in this nation—the average 401(k) balance is just $35,000—yet we see nothing from Zuckerman or his billionaire buddies like Rupert Murdoch that would even remotely address the problem. Vilification of public employees may fit their anti-working-class agenda, but it won’t create good jobs in our economy. Nor will it solve the problems facing states that have failed to keep up with their pension obligations.

Failure to Include Funds for Jobless Health Benefits and Medicaid Will Cause Mass Job Loss

It’s time for the financial industry to stop concocting risky investments and gambling away our pensions.

(WASHINGTON)—The Acting Regional Director of the FLRA’s Washington Region today issued his ruling on the representation petition filed by AFGE in its bid to formally represent some 40,000 Transportation Security nationwide.

TWU President James Little addresses thousands of transportation union members at a Capitol Hill rally.

Unless the U.S. Senate passes emergency funding introduced in legislation (S. 3412) this week, working families who count on public transportation systems in communities across the country will face even more severe fare increases and service cuts and transit workers are looking at further layoffs.

State and local governments have been hit hard by the downturn in the economy and public transportation systems nationwide are experiencing major budget cuts as a result. Amalgamated Transit Union President (ATU) Warren George says that since January 2009, six out of 10 transit systems have cut services, raised fares, or both.

Thousands of transit workers have been laid off and millions of commuters have less access to public transportation. Without emergency action, the problems will only get worse—seven out of 10 transit systems are facing deficits in the coming year.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who introduced the $2 billion emergency funding bill, says that while families continue to struggle to make ends meet,

the last thing we should do is make it harder and more expensive for people to get to work. This bill will prevent disruptive service cuts and help put money back in the pockets of families when they need it most.

Transit service cuts often disproportionately affect those with low-incomes, people of color and seniors.  In many cases, people are cut off from accessing their jobs or health care.  And fare increases can have a devastating effect on working families and those on fixed incomes.

Transport Workers (TWU) President James C. Little says, “If we want to get the economy moving again,”

the last thing we need is more layoffs and more service cuts, which will make it harder for working people to get to work, and harder for businesses to have a steady flow of customers and employees.

ATU and TWU have joined together to form Save Our Ride, a nationwide coalition in support of public transit, with backing from civil rights, community and environmental organizations, as well as transit management in many cities.

Edward Wytkind, president of the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department (TTD), says that “Millions of Americans rely on transit as a safe and affordable way to get to work.”

Without this legislation, the deep service cuts announced or threatened nationwide will undermine working people and businesses still reeling from the effects of the deep recession.

Members from AZ, CA, FL, MA, MN, NY, TX to call on President Obama and Congress to focus on comprehensive solutions to immigration reform instead of pushing costly, ineffective enforcement-only policies

Washington, DC – When members of Cong…

When electrical car maker Tesla Motors begins ramping up operations in the now-shuttered New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI) plant in Freemont, Calif., the company should hire the workers “who give it the best chance for success,” says UAW Region 5 Director Jim Wells.

Those workers—more than 4,500 members of UAW Local 2244—lost their jobs when Toyota closed the award-winning plant in April. Tesla, based in Palo Alto, Calif., agreed last week to purchase the idle plant from Toyota and produce its electric sedan in partnership with Toyota. Says Wells:

Tesla should hire workers who give it the best chance for success: the workers whose productivity has garnered awards for the facility and who have turned out highly profitable automobiles. That means they understand how to work smart and work safe.

Established as a joint venture between General Motors (GM) and Toyota Motors in 1984, the NUMMI facility most recently built the Pontiac Vibe, Toyota Corolla and Tacoma pickup. As part of a structured bankruptcy, GM eliminated its Pontiac brand in 2009.

Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk told the San Jose Business Journal that the car maker initially will hire some 1,000 workers, with production beginning in 2012. He said the workforce could eventually grow to 5,000, with another 5,000 jobs being created down the supply chain.

Musk also said Tesla will remain neutral on the question of union representation. Says Wells:

It was also heartening to read Musk saying Tesla was “neutral” on any possible union organization drive—that Tesla will let workers decide for themselves whether they want a union. This kind of forward thinking will help Tesla hire the best workers and get this exciting venture off to a successful start.