AFSCME National/Politics Unions Dispute CBO Report on Impact of Higher Minimum Wage Melanie Trottman, Wall Street Journal, February 18, 2014, 7:34 PM Organized labor wasted no time responding to a Congressional Budget Office report that undermines one of unions’ top priorities: raising the federal minimum wage, along with wages in general. ..... Richard Trumka, president of union federation AFL-CIO, which is holding its winter meeting in Houston this week to strategize for the year, immediately challenged the study’s findings and said it echoed false claims by conservatives. “Every time momentum builds for lifting wages, conservative ideologues say it will cost jobs. Every time, they’ve been dead wrong,” Mr. Trumka said in a statement emailed during his closed-door meeting with labor leaders in a Hilton hotel ballroom. “This is more of the same noise,” Mr. Trumka said, adding that conservative economists don’t care about workers. “Our country is finally poised to lift millions out of poverty and make our country work for the people who work. Let’s raise the wage and we’ll prove the CBO wrong again,” he added. Related: New York Times: JARED BERNSTEIN: The Impact of a Minimum-Wage Increase CEPR: CBO Projects Employment Loss from Minimum Wage Hike Would be Comparable to Impact of Iraq War Size Increase in Military Spending Dealt A Recent Defeat, Union Organizers Plot A Future In The South DON GONYEA, NPR All Things Considered, February 18, 2014 4:00 PM The AFL-CIO executive committee is meeting in Texas this week to discuss the United Auto Workers defeat in efforts to organize a Tennessee Volkswagen plant. Committee member hope to decipher what it may mean for other union membership drives across the South. Related Wall Street Journal: Unions Say No Retreat in South After VW Defeat NPR All Things Considered: AFL-CIOs Trumka: Keep VW Union Vote In Perspective KHUF: First Texas Meeting Highlights AFL-CIOs Increased Focus On South BNA Daily Labor Report: AFL-CIO to Focus Organizing Southern States Despite Loss at Tennessee Volkswagen Plant VW workers may block southern U.S. deals if no unions: labor chief 6:38am Feb 19, 2014 (Reuters) Volkswagens top labor representative threatened on Wednesday to try to block further investments by the German carmaker in the southern United States if its workers there are not unionized. .... Chattanooga is VWs only factory in the U.S. and one of the companys few in the world without a works council. I can imagine fairly well that another VW factory in the United States, provided that one more should still be set up there, does not necessarily have to be assigned to the south again, said Bernd Osterloh, head of VWs works council. If co-determination isnt guaranteed in the first place, we as workers will hardly be able to vote in favor of potentially building another plant in the U.S. south, Osterloh, who is also on VWs supervisory board, said. The 20-member panel - evenly split between labor and management - has to approve any decision on closing plants or building new ones. Bob Corker Devastated Organized Labor in Chattanooga. Let It Be a Lesson. ALEC MACGILLIS, The New Republic, Feb 18, 2014 .... But the postmortems agree on this: much credit for the UAW’s defeat goes to Bob Corker and other Republican politicians in Tennessee who took the lead in making the case against the UAW even as the employer, VW, signaled that it would be amenable to unionization, and who thereby struck a bigger blow against liberalism than Cruz or any Tea Partier could claim to have done in recent years. .... Conservatives seeking to guard business interests are no less aware of how much the corporate bottom line has benefited from diminished bargaining power on the part of employees, which is why the Wall Street Journals victory-lap editorial declared that the last thing the U.S. economy needs is to import European labor practices. Related: Politico: Jefferson Cowie: Labor’s WTF Moment (ILR dean’s professor chair at Cornell University) Huffington Post: Dave Jamieson: Did Bob Corker Taint The UAWs Volkswagen Union Election? And If So, Will He Get Away With It? MSNBC: Why has Grover Norquist entered the union-busting business? Business Week: How Volkswagen’s Tennessee Plant Could End Up Organized Without the UAW The Hill: John Logan: GOP undermined workers’ choice in Tennessee American Thinker: The Suicide of Unions Washington Post: George F. Will: Breaking the grip of the unions Daily Tar Heel: What Tennessees union fight means for North Carolina National Review: Wheels Come Off UAW’s Chattanooga Challenge News Tribune: Small votes show direction of organized labor Institutional Investors Press Companies for Disclosure of Lobbying in 2014 Shareholder resolutions filed with 48 companies by 60 institutional and individual investors. AFSCME news release, Feb 18, 2014 Investors today announced the filing of shareholder resolutions at 48 corporations as part of a 2014 proxy season initiative asking companies to annually report their federal and state lobbying. That includes any payments to trade associations used for lobbying as well as support for tax-exempt organizations that write and endorse model legislation. .... Lee Saunders, president of AFSCME and chair of the AFSCME Employees Pension Plan’s Pension Committee, stated, “Lobbying disclosure is in both companies’ and shareholders’ best interests and will help ensure corporate assets are used in the best interest of the company and its shareholders. Jobless benefits: The GOP’s search for an exit Burgess Everett, Politico, February 19, 2014 A group of Senate Republicans is meeting quietly to plot an unusual strategy: passing a top Democratic priority. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has vowed to press the GOP on unemployment benefits — forcing them to keep taking votes on a bill to extend aid to the long-term unemployed. But Republicans have rejected it twice since the program expired on Dec. 28. Sens. Dan Coats of Indiana, Rob Portman of Ohio, Dean Heller of Nevada and Susan Collins of Maine want a deal that could bring the Democratic drumbeat to an end. They gathered last week to plan how to revisit the cause when the Senate returns next week, hoping they can get Democrats to agree to their policy changes and finally move the red-hot issue off the Senate’s plate. Liberals mobilize against potential Social Security cuts GEORGE ZORNICK, Washington Post February 17 President Obama’s budget is due early next month, and already progressives inside and outside Congress are pushing back against one potential line in the document — the Social Security cuts, in the form of “chained CPI,” that Obama has included in his budget several times in the past. Late last week, 16 senators ranging from liberal independent Bernie Sanders to Democrat Mark Begich, who is facing a tough reelection in the red state of Alaska this fall, signed a letter to the White House asking the president not to include the cuts in his budget. African-American leaders meet with President Obama LESLEY CLARK McClatchy Washington February 18, 2014 President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder met Tuesday with a group of African-American civil rights leaders, discussing income inequality and jobs, voter suppression and controversial state laws like Floridas Stand Your Ground. ..... He said the leaders were especially pleased that Obama is pushing Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10. Why Theres an Even Larger Racial Disparity in Private Prisons Than in Public Ones Katie Rose Quandt| Mother Jones, Mon Feb. 17, 2014 .... But a new study by University of California-Berkeley researcher Christopher Petrella addresses a fact of equal concern. Once sentenced, people of color are more likely than their white counterparts to serve time in private prisons, which have higher levels of violence and recidivism (PDF) and provide less sufficient health care and educational programming than equivalent public facilities. ..... Private prisons claim to have more efficient practices, and thus lower operating costs, than public facilities. But the data suggest that private prisons dont save money through efficiency, but by cherry-picking healthy inmates. According to a 2012 ACLU report, it costs $34,135 to house an average inmate and $68,270 to house an individual 50 or older. In Oklahoma, for example, the percentage of individuals over 50 in minimum and medium security public prisons is 3.3 times that of equivalent private facilities. None of the Top 10 Biggest Political Donors are Republican Washington Free Beacon February 18, 2014 2:20 pm The Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) released its list of top all-time donors. It totaled contributions from 1989 to 2012 from PACs and individuals affiliated with the heavy hitter organizations. ..... 2. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees comprises 3,400 local unions representing 1.6 million members as well as 240,000 retirees. The organization donated $60,667,379 between 1989 and 2012, with 81 percent going to Democrats. Northwestern football players take union hopes to labor board hearing Sara Ganim, CNN Tue February 18, 2014 Kain Colter actually got this idea sitting in a college classroom at Northwestern University. The 21-year-old quarterback, soon to graduate with a degree in psychology, is taking the day off from training for the NFL draft to take the stand at a National Labor Relations Board hearing today and testify against his own university and on behalf of fellow football players. The goal: an attempt to revolutionize the way collegiate athletes are treated. Labor board stacks the deck for unions Jason Stverak, president of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. The Hill 02/18/14 05:27 PM .... The National Labor Relations Board, a five-member commission appointed by the president, recently resurrected a controversial rule that would provide the private phone numbers and email addresses of workers to union organizers. As part of a broader push to make it easier and quicker for unions to entrench themselves in workplaces, this proposal — which was struck down by a court in 2012 — violates the privacy of employees and shifts communicative power from the individual to the union. Editorial: Canadian right-to-work battle evaporates Feb 18, 2014 HR Reporter Just a few weeks ago, it looked like the next Ontario election would be the front lines in the battle to bring American style right-to-work legislation to Canada. Tim Hudak, leader of the provincial Tories, vowed to enact the law — which essentially gives workers the right to opt out of joining a union and paying dues in unionized shops — in the province if his government was elected. (Ontario currently has a minority Liberal government.) But the plan seems to be no more than a flash-in-the-pan, as Hudak has almost completely retreated from talking about it.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 17:40:13 +0000
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