AFL-CIO

Attention Rand Paul in Kentucky, Joe Miller in Alaska, Sharron Angle in Nevada and all you other Republican congressional candidates flopping around on the far right banks of the mainstream!  Phasing out, privatizing or otherwise eliminating Social Security does not sit well with the vast majority of the voting public.

The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that 68 percent of voters are “uncomfortable” with candidates who espouse such notions. Uncomfortable is putting it nicely. It’s downright painful to listen to U.S. Senate wannabes and other Republican hopefuls “babble into the vapors” about phasing out Social Security (turnabout’s fair play Alan Simpson!)

Of course, Simpson as co-chair of the federal budget deficit commission, is one of the leading howlers baying about the coming demise of Social Security (check out its real long term health here.) and the need to raise the retirement age and make other painful cuts. You might say he is one the biggest enablers of phase-out crowd.

Thanks to Bill Scheer at the Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) for highlighting the poll.

As world famous soccer announcer Andres Cantor would say  “Goooooooal!” We just got word that the Women’s Professional Soccer Players Union (WPSPU) won recognition today through majority sign up certified by an arbitrator.

The more than 150 players make up the seven teams in Women’s Professional Soccer  (WSP) that is now in its second season with teams in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Hayward in  Southern California, Philadelphia, Piscataway, N.J. and Washington  D.C.  It is the highest level of professional soccer for women in North America.

With just one month to go before the World Day for Decent Work, Oct. 7, trade unions across the world are stepping up pressure for decent jobs and social justice. And bloggers can play a big role in spreading the message.

 Bloggers Unite has set up a special World Day for Decent Work site here and is asking bloggers to submit blogs on or before Oct. 7 about events in their areas. Blogs about the hundreds of events planned for Oct. 7 around the world will show world leaders how determined workers are to get decent jobs with good pay, safe working conditions and benefits. Take part by signing up today to submit blogs to Bloggers Unite here. 

Organized by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), World Day for Decent Work is a day for mobilization around the world: one day when all the trade unions in the world stand up for decent work, at home and abroad.

“Working people are still paying a heavy price for the world economic crisis, as the banking and finance sector returns to business as usual,” says ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow.

This year’s World Day for Decent Work will be a peak moment in the global trade union movement’s action for fundamental reform of the global economy. We will be holding political leaders to account on jobs, financial regulation and quality public services, and governments would be well advised to heed the trade union call.

There’s plenty to blog about. Yesterday, millions of workers in India took to the streets in a national strike against national and state government employment and industrial relations policies. In France, unions organized national rallies and strike actions to protest major changes to retirement and pensions proposed by the Sarkozy government. And in the United States, corporate greed at the expense of workers at Mott’s and the efforts by America’s unions to push for job creation are just some of what’s going on here.  

Trade unions across Europe are planning a massive demonstration in Brussels, the capital of the European Union, on Sept. 29 to protest austerity measures. Some 100,000 demonstrators will join the march. The same day a general strike will take place in Spain and protests are also planned in the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Portugal. Massive protests across Germany are being organized by the ITUC affiliate DGB in the coming weeks over government finance, employment and social security policies.

The ITUC also launched a special interactive website for the World Day for Decent Work, with information from last year’s events and updates on this year’s actions. Organizations planning events can upload their information onto the multi-language site, which also features a Twitter feed, video and photo galleries and other interactive functions. It also will contain information on the main themes for the 2010 events.

Illinois AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Tim Drea knows what it’s like to be unemployed—he’s experienced it himself, as a laid-off coal miner.  He knows, too, how important it is to keep jobless union members involved in the union movement and the fight for working family-friendly policies. That fact turned out to be the answer to a little mystery that presented itself recently to Working America, the AFL-CIO community affiliate.

Working America staff was mystified when a stack of membership registrations arrived in the mail from the Illinois AFL-CIO. Although Working America had sent membership cards to many state federations and central labor councils around the country in 2009 as part of our effort to organize jobless workers through the Unemployment Lifeline, these registrations did not use those cards. Working America was not engaged in an active organizing drive on the ground in Illinois. How did the state federation there sign up so many people?

Turns out that under Drea’s leadership, the Illinois AFL-CIO handed out fliers at dislocated worker workshops and at the local workforce investment centers, where dislocated and laid-off workers go for resources and assistance. Through its Member Assistance Program and the Peer Outreach Program, Illinois AFL-CIO staff designed a flier and sign-up form that got straight to the point. They then went out and held thousands of conversations with jobless workers and ultimately registered more than 2,000 new Working America members.  Those new members now have the ongoing opportunity—and will get reminders—to participate in the union movement and hear what important legislation is being debated that will affect them.

Secretary-Treasurer Drea told Working America Program Director Maggie Priebe that the effort came about as the Illinois AFL-CIO watched the repeated battles to renew unemployment insurance and COBRA benefits play out.  Those battles have been a constant reminder of the vast number of long-term unemployed workers—and, all too often, of the contempt elected Republicans have for working people who have been victims of a recession spurred by financial policies those same Republicans promoted.

People who’ve worked their whole lives, who have gone from being optimistic about their prospects to being desperate to settle for any job, at a fraction of what they used to make, and still can’t find work. So many of those people feel left behind, by their old employers, by the economy, by the government.

But the AFL-CIO isn’t leaving those people behind—and today, an additional 2,000 of them know that the Illinois AFL-CIO and Working America are with them, fighting for something better for working people.

Photojournalist David Bacon has captured the pride and determination in the faces of hotel workers at the downtown Hilton in San Francisco who have spent the past few weeks in a dawn to dusk picket line.

The workers, who chant to guests, “Don’t check in, check out!” are demanding that the hotel’s owners negotiate a new contract with their union, UNITEHERE! Local 2.

San Francisco’s largest hotels are demanding cuts in health and retirement benefits and increased workloads.

A typical San Francisco hotel worker earns $30,000 per year.

These are their faces—all races and ages, together on the picket line.

Most of us, especially the jobless among us, agree with Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), who yesterday said, “Jobs is Job One for this Congress.” But then there’s Sharron Angle.

The Tea Party/Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Nevada says that if she unseats Sen. Harry Reid, she’s not going to be wasting her time worrying about putting Americans back to work. After all, she’ll have to get started on eliminating Social Security and Medicare. Here’s what she says about jobs and Congress:

As your senator, I’m not in the business of creating jobs….People ask me, what are you going to do to develop jobs in your state? Well, that’s not my job as a U.S. senator.

So, if elected, just what is her job? Well, a new ad from Reid points out that among other items on  her “to-do list” are protecting tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas, opposing Wall Street reform (in fact, she says it doesn’t need any reform) and “other extreme ideas that will make thing worse.”

If she does win, maybe she won’t have time to free Wall Street from government oppression or throw a protective shield around job-exporting companies because she’ll be awfully darn busy protecting the nation from all the “domestic enemies” she says are serving in Congress. Maybe she can use Joe McCarthy’s old office.

People who desperately want to go back to work don’t want to hear the same old rhetoric from politicians this year—they want candidates to put politics aside and tell us all what they are going to do to get America working again.

Yesterday, the Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) launched a coast-to-coast “It’s About The Jobs” bus tour to connect IUPAT members across the country with the candidates the union believes are the best hope to generate and bring back jobs.

 The bus, wrapped in IUPAT signature black and gold, began its monthlong trip in Seattle and will make its way across the country, winding through the West and Midwest and New York City, before ending its trip in Delaware.

IUPAT President James Williams says the bus tour will educate candidates about the need for jobs for all Americans and their families.

You can follow the IUPAT bus tour here and get regular updates from the road on Twitter @GoIUPAT. Speaking of Twitter, even the ‘It’s About Jobs!’ bus driver is getting in on the action. You can read his thoughts on tour events by following @JakeTheDriver. You also can watch videos from the campaign on the IUPAT YouTube channel,  www.youtube.com/goiupat, or their Facebook page.

 The stakes for working people in this election are high. The entire U.S. House of Representatives and 37 Senate seats are up for election—and along with the hundreds of state and local races, the outcomes will determine how well all of us can shape a pro-worker agenda. AFL-CIO unions are working hard as part of Labor 2010 to mobilize working families across the country to make jobs the number one issue in the campaigns and to make sure candidates commit to creating real jobs to put America back to work. For more information on Labor 2010, click here.

Open the door to the future or slam it shut? That’s the choice in this fall’s elections as a new AFSCME ad makes clear. While Republicans in Congress blocked Democratic efforts to advance job-creating bills, they voted to lay off hundreds of thousands of Americans—while taking care of CEOs by closing tax loopholes.

The  two-week ad is running in Michigan, Nevada, Ohio and Pennsylvania to back Democratic candidates in those states now under attack, in part, because of their support for the jobs bill passed in August. The jobs bill provided states with $26 billion in emergency funding for vital services. The TV ad will be complemented by radio spots, Web ads, and this week, AFSCME is sending more than 300 staff to targeted districts around the country to engage in member education and get-out-the-vote drives.

Is the nation’s economy what we want now? No. Would it be far worse under Republican leadership? You betcha.

When AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker spoke Sunday at St. Margaret’s & San Francisco de Asis Episcopal Church in Miami Lakes, Fla., as part of Labor in the Pulpits, the service had just begun when a member of the choir slumped down in her chair and fell to the floor.

The service stopped while the clergy and members called 911 for emergency help. Within minutes, fire, police and emergency medical assistance arrived to give the woman medical care. Each one was a union public servant—the people whose jobs are in danger from state and local budget cuts.

After the medics left to take the woman to the hospital, the service resumed. The ministers led prayers for her swift recovery. 

Reflecting on the incident over the Labor Day holiday, Holt Baker said the situation showed that:

Prayer is good and it helps. But sometimes you also need public servants.

Dozens of newspaper, radio, TV and Internet media featured op-eds over Labor Day by union leaders on issues that workers care about—Social Security, jobs, young workers, immigration and job safety. While most columns ran in local media, several received national attention, including a piece on Social Security on AOL and job creation in the National Journal. A column written in Spanish on immigration appeared in several Latino publications and a column on workplace safety ran in newspapers in at least three states. Here are some samples. Click on the author’s name to read the full column.

Social Security: Wall Street and congressional Republicans are…pushing for Social Security benefit cuts, floating every idea from reducing the inflation adjustment to raising the retirement age.

 …if we truly want to fix what’s broken, let’s look ahead to designing an employer-based retirement system for future generations while strengthening Social Security. —AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka

Young workers: Are we raising a generation of kids who won’t be equipped to dream? How do we restore for them the promise of what America should and can be?

 We make the public investments that will put America back to work—rebuilding our infrastructure, jump-starting green energy technology and tackling the extreme problems of distressed communities. Workers with good safe jobs won’t need to bump younger workers off the escalator and out of summer jobs. This is the best way to bring our economy back to life, restore consumer demand and fix that broken escalator for America’s working people of all ages. —AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler

Job creation: Ultimately, our nation has to face a decision: Do we aspire for better for America’s families, or do we want to strip away the best of our nation to lower the common denominator? And are we okay with big corporations encouraging working people to form a circular firing squad when the target should be squarely on corporations themselves? —AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker

Workplace safety: We should remember that restoring the freedom of workers to organize unions also is an important piece of ensuring workplace safety, because there is no greater protection than empowered workers, on the job every day, looking out for each other. —Trumka and Georgia  AFL-CIO President Richard Ray. Similar pieces ran in several other states as well.

Putting people to work making things in America will be Democrats’ top priority when Congress returns Sept. 15, two House leaders said today. During a telephone press conference, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said House Democrats will present a series of bill in this Congress and the next to help revive manufacturing and to implement President Obama’s infrastructure rebuilding plan.

Rep. Xavier  Becerra (D-Calif.), vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said the Democrats want to put to rest the idea pushed by congressional Republicans that the only way to create jobs is to give tax breaks to the richest Americans.

We want to celebrate Labor Day. We want to make this a day for workers again by making products in America again. Jobs is Job One for this Congress and we’re going to continue to do this despite what the naysayers may say.

The  “Make It in America” initiative is a 17-bill package designed to help manufacturers recover from the Great Recession and the loss of 5.6 million manufacturing jobs in the past decade.

 The House Ways and Means Committee will hold important hearings soon on the issue of China’s manipulation of its currency. The AFL-CIO has been urging Congress to take quick, strong action to stop the unfair and illegal advantage against U.S. producers that China and other nations gain by undervaluing their currency.

 The AFL-CIO is backing S. 3134, the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2010, which would give our government the tools and resolve it needs to address currency manipulation.

Another major bill that may come to the floor is H.R. 5893, the Investing in American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010. Introduced by Ways and Means Chairman Sander Levin (D-Mich.), the bill would close loopholes that encourage companies to ship jobs overseas. The legislation would spur job creation here in the United States by extending successful Recovery Act provisions, including the Build America Bonds program to fund domestic infrastructure improvements and the Emergency Fund for Job Creation and Assistance program to help states immediately support job programs. 

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who joined in the conference call, told reporters “we desperately need decisive action from our leaders on both fiscal and monetary policy.”

It’s time for our leaders to show they are economic patriots. That’s what we’re looking for—economic patriotism. Leaders fighting to protect jobs, fighting unfair trade deals and putting us on a path to make things in America again. In short, to invest in America and American workers.

Dr. Pepper Snapple Group CEO Larry Young pocketed $6.5 million last year. But he thinks his employees at Mott’s applesauce plant in Williamson, N.Y., should make $20,000 a year. So, the corporate conglomerate has been trying to cut $1.50 an hour—$3,000 a year—from the salaries of the 350 skilled workers, while freezing pensions and health care.

But there’s no need to bring up CEO pay. Really. According to Dr. Pepper Snapple Senior Vice President Robert Callan:

Executive pay is completely irrelevant to the discussion.

Really. More from Callan in this great segment from PBS:

The Williamson employees have enjoyed wages that have exceeded 50 percent of the market for a very long time. The best example I can give you is one of our forklift drivers at the Williamson facility makes $20 an hour. Local market in the Williamson area a forklift driver will make about $9.90 an hour—about $20,000 a year.

The Dr. Pepper Snapple Group made $555 million in profits in 2009, another point that Thomas Culhane, a Mott’s forklift operator, says is not irrelevant:

I don’t think that’s fair that a multimillion-dollar company can tell us…you guys have to accept all these cuts, when they are making money hand over fist.

Workers at the Mott’s Williamson plant, who process half of the state’s apples into juice or sauce, have been on strike since May in opposition to the corporate-imposed $1.50 hourly pay cut. A pay cut that mostly likely will line the pockets of the Texas-based CEOs.

Northeastern University economist Andrew Sum says Mott’s, like most U.S. corporations, is keeping the profit.

It’s not been reinvested in new capital equipment. It’s not been used to help purchase new technology. So, this is the first time that we have ever had where basically all the gains in income went simply to corporate profits. 

Take action to support Mott’s workers. Go to www.NoBadApples.org and click on the Facebook Actions box.

And join others who are tweeting their support of the strikers to Mott’s. Sign up to follow Mott’s on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Motts.

Most people celebrate working people on Labor Day. But not the extremists on Fox News. There, hate-mongering never takes a day off.

Here are a few ugly examples of Fox from our friends at Media Matters for America:

• Tucker Carlson attacks autoworkers.
• Glenn Beck assails an 80-year-old labor activist because she spoke at a high school.
• Stuart Varney criticizes a union-backed Securities and Exchange Commission rule that would allow more shareholders of public companies to use proxy votes to nominate board members. 

Clearly Fox opposes opening up the election process to shareholders who have a financial stake in a company because it would mean less chance for corporate greed and mismanagement.

Meanwhile, the anti-worker crowd doesn’t like being called out by Media Matters. So what do they do—they resort to thuggish suggestions of violence, saying Media Matters employees should be “curb-stomped.”

More here.

While AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka was in Milwaukee Labor Day with President Obama and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler traveled throughout California, taking part in three Labor Day celebrations. In Los Angeles, she told an enthusiastic crowd at the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor ’s Labor Day breakfast:

There’s nothing wrong with good jobs in America. There’s nothing wrong with trade that creates jobs—instead of killing them.

At Detroit’s massive Labor Day parade and rally, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker told the more than 50,000 participants we must use our votes to ensure that jobs are created:  

For the next 57 days [until the election], the labor movement is going to be hard core about politics—the politics of change and not the politics of “No.” What we’re working for is jobs—jobs and the future.

Before traveling to Milwaukee, Trumka joined Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland (D) and Rep. Betty Sutton (D-Ohio) at the Lorain Labor Day Festival near Cleveland. Read Trumka’s remarks in Milwaukee here and in Ohio here.

After speaking in Los Angeles, Shuler also attended the Sacramento Central Labor Council’s picnic along with gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown. Later that day, she took part in the Alameda Labor Council’s Labor Day barbecue in Oakland. Shuler also took part in a Labor in the Pulpit service Sunday in Los Angeles, while Holt Baker spoke to worshippers in North Miami Lakes, Fla., on Sunday. Read Holt Baker’s remarks in Florida here.

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

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

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

It was folks like you, after all, who forged that middle class. It was working men and women who made the 20th century the American century. It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today—the 40-hour workweek, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans, those cornerstones of middle class security that all bear the union label.

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

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

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

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

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

According to the White House the plan would:

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

Click here for a fact sheet on the infrastructure plan.

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

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

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

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

It’ll be you.  It’ll be us.  Together

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

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

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

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

Click here for President Obama’s full remarks.

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

A 13.5 percent wage cut is “like stealing,” says a California school employee—and more news from the “Bargaining Digest Weekly.” The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily, bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 1,300 subscribers. Union leaders can register for this service through our website, Bargaining@Work.

NEGOTIATIONS
CSEA, Saddleback Valley Unified School District: “It’s like stealing,” said one worker at the Saddleback Valley Unified School District after the board imposed a two-year contract that amounts to an average pay cut of 13.5 percent. The cuts affect more than 1,200 non-teaching classified workers, members of the California School Employees Association (CSEA). 

MNA-NNU (Mass.), North Adams Regional Hospital: Nurses at North Adams Regional Hospital in Boston, Mass., called off a planned strike after two days of mediated talks led to a tentative agreement. The 102 nurses are members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA-NNU).

MNA-NNU (Minn.), St. Luke’s Hospital: Nurses and St. Luke’s Hospital in Duluth, Minn., last week reached a tentative agreement, averting a one-day strike by members of the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA-NNU).  Some 1,000 MNA members at St. Mary’s Medical Center, however, may still strike, as they remain without a contract.

UAW, Oshkosh Corp.: Members of UAW Local 578 in Wisconsin unanimously rejected a one-year contract extension offered by Oshkosh Corp., a truck manufacturer which is busy filling government contracts. Local 578 said its 2,750 members were concerned with the short term of the contract and want greater job security.

IAM, Alaska Airlines: The Machinists (IAM) District 143 and Alaska Airlines will begin federal mediation this week, after six months of negotiations have failed to produce a contract. IAM said the top priority for the 2,700 Alaska Airlines workers it represents is job security. 

ALPA, Air Transat: The Air Line Pilots (ALPA) has reached a tentative agreement with Canada’s Air Transat, after nearly nine months of negotiations. The more than 300 Air Transat pilots will vote on the deal next month.

WORK ACTIONS
IAM, Pratt & Whitney: In its ongoing dispute with Pratt & Whitney, Machinists (IAM) District 26 has filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against the aircraft engine manufacturer. IAM alleges the company’s recent announcement to lay off workers at its Cheshire, Conn., plant is in retaliation for the union successfully challenging the closure of the plant before the December expiration of the labor contract.

RWDSU-UFCW, Dr Pepper Snapple Group: Responding to U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis’ call for the union and Mott’s to return to the bargaining table, the president of Retail, Warehouse and Department Store Union/UFCW (RWDSU/UFCW) Local 220, Stuart Applebaum said, “[T]he union is ready to negotiate immediately, and to go around the clock until this dispute is resolved.” Unfortunately, for the 300 workers on strike for a fair contract since May 23, Mott’s owner Dr Pepper Snapple Group refused to resume negotiations.

Disclaimer: This information is being provided for your information only.  As it is compiled from published news reports, not from individual unions, we cannot vouch for either its completeness or accuracy; readers who desire further information should directly contact the union involved.

By Rev. Jim Sessions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Visit Diekhans’ website here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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