AFL-CIO

The petition with more than 100,000 signatures calling on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from upcoming cases on the Affordable Care Act stretched from the sidewalk to the steps of the Supreme Court. The petition was circulated by Health Care for America Now ( HCAN) and The Other 98 % and unrolled last week.

Federal judges are required by law to recuse or remove themselves from cases when their “impartiality might be reasonably questioned.” Thomas’ wife, Virginia, not only has been an outspoken critic of the health care reform law, but Mike Sacks on Huffington Post points out that “she made a living lobbying against the law as the founder of the Tea Party group Liberty Central.”

HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome says if Thomas refuses to recuse himself from a series of Affordable Care Act challenging the law that the court will hear next month, “it will threaten the integrity of the entire Supreme Court.” He said that in addition to Virginia Thomas’s work against health care reform, Thomas’s impartiality also comes under questions for other reasons.

Justice Thomas personally has aligned himself with conservative zealots and extremist organizations dedicated to throwing out the law. Unbelievably, on the same day the high court took this case, he and Associate Justice Antonin Scalia were honored at a dinner sponsored by the law firmthat will argue the case before the high court. Justice Thomas spoke at a secret conclave run by the billionaire Koch Brothers to raise funds for extremist front groups like Americans for Prosperity.

Sounds like some pretty darn reasonable questions about his impartiality.

A proposed new pension system puts the retirement security of New York firefighters, teachers, police officers and other public employees at risk, and the New York State AFL-CIO is fighting back.

In this new video and in state-wide radio ad and newspaper op-eds, the state federation urges lawmakers to “rebuild the middle class, not attack what’s left of it.

A proposed new pension system, known as Tier 6, puts workers between “a rock and hard place,” says New York State AFL-CIO President Mario Cilento. In a column in Journal News, he writes the system would force new state and local workers to:

choose between a dramatically diminished defined-benefit pension plan and a defined-contribution 401(k)-style plan.

Strong defined-benefit pensions offer a reliable, predictable benefit based on a retiree’s number of years worked and salary. It allows workers to plan for the future and provides retirees with predictable income. It also pools risk for all members of the plan. Defined-contribution, 401(k)-style plans base a retiree’s benefit on how much he or she can save in an individual account.

He also warns that private employers will see the state’s shift “as an invitation to reduce or eliminate benefits.”  If you’re a New Yorker, click here to send a message to your state legislators to oppose the Tier 6 plan.

As we’ve written here, Apple’s record-breaking success in selling iPhones, iPads and iPods have come at a terrible cost: Workers at Foxconn, Apple’s largest supplier in China, have died from suicides, explosions and exhaustion from 30- to 60-hour shifts and many are students forced to work for the company to get their degrees.

Recently, Apple joined the Fair Labor Association (FLA) to arrange for inspections of its factories. These inspections will not expose—or  begin to solve—Apple’s problems. The FLA is funded and controlled by the multinational corporations it oversees, which means it is not at all  independent. As Scott Nova of the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) recently said, independence “means an organization is not funded and governed by the companies it is charged with investigating.”

Apple has been richly rewarded for its success. It is now the largest publicly traded company in the world, worth a whopping $465 billion. The company made $17.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011 alone—just shy of a 40 percent profit margin.

In fact, Apple could have tripled compensation for all the workers who make its products last year and still made $40 billion in profits.

Take a minute to sign our petition to Apple’s CEO Tim Cook. Tell him to ensure  that people integral to Apple’s success—workers who manufacture Apple’s  electronics—are treated fairly.

A couple days ago, Foxconn also announced a recent raise for some of its workers. But it looks like another PR smokescreen. According to Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior:

The new basic wage…only applies to the workers in Shenzhen. In inland provinces, where two-thirds of production workers are based, basic salary remains meager. Given that the inflation in China is high, Foxconn is just following the trend of wage increase in the electronics industry in China.

Apple needs to to immediately allow genuine unions, with truly independent factory inspections and worker trainings. Trying to brush this under the rug—or hide behind a front group like the FLA—only will make Apple’s PR problems worse.

Apple can be both innovative and ethical. Tell that to CEO Tim Cook by signing the petition.

AFL-CIO communications staffer Nora Frederickson sends us this.

At a time when the tea party-driven Republican agenda in New Hampshire’s state capitol is more unpopular than ever with voters on both sides of the aisle, Republican House Labor Committee Chairman Gary Daniels and his allies have ramped up their attacks on working people. In a work session yesterday, the House Labor Committee took another step towards dismantling New Hampshire’s collective bargaining rights law by voting no fewer than five anti-worker bills ‘ought to pass.’

The bills voted out of committee included:

• A new right-to-work for less bill similar to last year’s bill.
• A second right-to-work bill that is a backup in case HB 1677 fails.
• A bill that once repealed collective bargaining rights for teachers,  firefighters and other public workers; was stripped and amended in  committee to allow employers to lead decertifications of public unions.
• A bill that strips the requirement for a union to be the exclusive  representative of a bargaining unit out of the collective bargaining law.
• A  bill that gives the Legislature veto power over state and municipal employee contracts.
• A bill that prohibits automatic payroll deduction of union dues, but was  stripped and amended to split increases in health insurance 50-50 between  employers and employees if a contract expires.

Mark MacKenzie, president of the New Hampshire AFL-CIO, said Daniels has “admitted that his plan is to throw this handful of bills to the wall and see what sticks.”

Clearly, they have not listened to the thousands of working men and women in New Hampshire who have pleaded with them to stop attacking workers and move on to fixing the economy and creating jobs.

The House Committee’s vote comes at a time when the tea party-driven Republican agenda in Concord is increasingly unpopular with voters on both sides of the aisle. More than half of New Hampshire voters oppose bills to eliminate or alter the collective bargaining rights law, according to a poll from the Beneson Strategy Group.

Since November, Democrats or pro-labor Republicans have won five of five special House elections, indicating that voters will take their frustrations with the tea party-driven Republican leadership with them to the polls in November.

Elizabeth Boomer of the AFL-CIO International Affairs Department sends us this report.

Burma needs to address chronic human rights abuses before sanctions are lifted says a new report from the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

Despite some positive signs of change in Burma, forced labor is still widely practiced, trade unions are illegal and hundreds of political prisoners remain in jail. The AFL-CIO agrees with the ITUC that the time is not ripe for a major revision of sanctions, and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton solidifying this position.

• The report argues that sanctions should only be lifted if the government of Burma:
• Eliminates forced labor. Widespread forced labor practices by civilian and military authorities in nearly all of the country’s states and divisions continue. The government of Burma has failed to fulfill any of the steps required of it to eliminate forced labor in the country, as recommended by the International Labor Organization (ILO) in 1998.
• Allows independent and democratic trade unions. Despite recently passing a Labor Organization Law, the government has yet to implement it. The law also contains significant flaws, and is undermined
  by other legislation. Further, the Federation of Trade Unions – Burma (FTUB), a member of the ITUC, is still a banned organization. The government of Burma, unions and employers and the ILO need to redraft the law and oversee its effective implementation.
• Frees all political prisoners. The government has released hundreds of political prisoners, yet more than a 1,000 remain in jail, and many more remain in exile. Prisoners need to be released unconditionally, and provided with rehabilitation. The laws that put them in jail in the first place need to be scrapped.

The report also calls on the Burmese authorities to end all other serious human rights abuses; enter into a nation-wide ceasefire and address the root causes of conflict; hold free and fair elections, including through amending the flawed 2008 constitution; and curtail the role of the military in government and the economy.

Specifically, the report calls for “a gradual, measured lifting of sanctions as the government of Burma makes progress on this complete list.”

The report has been developed in close consultation with the FTUB, and is in response to growing calls for the EU, US, Canada and Australia to lift their sanctions against Burma.

While the ITUC report mainly focuses on labor rights, it urges governments to be also guided by the recommendations of other civil society organizations that raise additional and compelling human rights
concerns.

Download the ITUC Burma sanctions benchmarks report.

For more information see also Are workers now free in Burma?
A note about Burma:  Although the military junta decided to change Burma’s name to Myanmar some years ago, the National League for Democracy, the Federation of Trade Unions-Burma, and all other exile and opposition groups continue to refuse to recognize this change and continue to use “Burma” as the name of the country.

This is a cross-post from Think Progress.

Though oil demand is at its lowest since 1997, oil prices (and gas prices along with them) are once again on the rise. Analysts are projecting gas prices will top $4 a gallon nationally and perhaps reach record highs later this year. Despite relatively low demand and surging production levels in the U.S., prices are of course rising due to myriad factors, including speculation and instability in the Middle East.

For their part, Republicans have latched on to these rising prices as proof that President Obama has pursued an “outrageously anti-American” energy policy. As with most other overheated conservative attacks on the president, the facts don’t line up in their favor.

Here’s FIVE key facts about rising gas prices, the GOP and Big Oil.

1. Domestic Energy Production Has Soared Under President Obama: The number of oil drilling rigs in the U.S. hit a record last week, having quadrupled in number over the past three years . Between oil and gas drilling rigs, the U.S. now has more rigs at work than the rest of the world combined. The current oil boom has buoyed the projections of some leading oil industry analysts:

“It’s staggering,” said Marshall Adkins, who directs energy research for the financial services firm Raymond James. “If we continue growing anywhere near that pace and keep squeezing demand out of the system, that puts you in a world where we are not importing oil in 10 years.”

2. President Obama Has Taken Huge Steps to Reduce Our Dependence on Oil: In addition to overseeing a dramatic increase in domestic energy production (including from renewable sources), the president has also taken steps to reduce the amount of oil we consume. Most notably, new modern standards requiring cars and light-duty trucks to achieve an average fuel economy rating of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 will cut U.S. oil use by 2.2 MILLION barrels of oil per day by 2025—a move that will save consumers $1.7 TRILLION and also cut greenhouse gas pollution by 6 BILLION metric tons. The 54.5 MPG standard by 2025 builds on an earlier Obama administration policy to increase fuel efficiency to 35.5 MPG by 2016, a one-third imrovement to fuel economy standards that had previously languished in neutral for more than 20 years. Even as gas prices are rising, Americans’ cars are becoming significantly more efficient.

3. Big Oil Made a Record $137 BILLION in Profits Last Year: Just the five largest oil companies—ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, BP, Chevron and Shell—booked a combined profit of $137 BILLION in 2011, even though these companies produced 4 percent less oil in 2011. And of course Big Oil’s record profits are directly related to increasing pain at the pump for American consumers.

4. Republican Politicians Oppose Ending Taxpayer Handouts to Big Oil: Every Republican presidential contender and nearly every Republican member of the House and Senate has signed a pledge to oppose ending taxpayer handouts to Big Oil—handouts that will add up to more than $40 BILLION over the next 10 years. In addition, Republicans have repeatedly voted in lockstep to block efforts to repeal the tax giveaways to Big Oil. President Obama, however, remains undaunted and has once again included repeal of these wasteful giveaways in his budget for 2013.

5. Republican Politicians Want to Cut Big Oil’s Taxes Even More: Both the House Republican budget plan released last year (and supported by nearly every Republican member of the House and Senate) and the tax plans of every GOP presidential contender call for cutting the corporate tax rate by one-third or more. This huge tax cut could result in another big windfall of billions of dollars for Big Oil. By contrast, President Obama has proposed closing wasteful tax loopholes and wants to clamp down on the use of foreign tax shelters (ExxonMobil uses at least 20) that allow huge corporations to avoid paying their fair share in U.S. taxes.

IN ONE SENTENCE: Instead of giving billions more in handouts to Big Oil despite the industry’s record-breaking profits, President Obama has presided over a dramatic increase in domestic energy production coupled with unprecedented efforts to decrease Americans’ spending at the pump by modernizing fuel economy standards.

Workers at two more Southern California carwashes won their first contracts with carwash owners after they voted last year to join the United Steelworkers (USW) Local 675.

The workers at Vermont Carwash and Nava’s Carwash in South Los Angeles came together in the CLEAN Carwash Campaign to fight for their rights. The CLEAN Carwash Campaign is a coalition supported by the USW, the AFL-CIO and more than 100 community, faith and labor organizations in Los Angeles. For more information, visit www.cleancarwashla.org.

Today, the carwasheros celebrated their victory at a ceremony with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Says Trumka:

The headline should read: “Carwash workers make history in LA.” The labor movement and Los Angeles community stand shoulder to shoulder with them and their brother and sister carwash workers across LA who are working to follow in their path.

There are thousands of carwash workers who face deplorable working conditions every day: violations of health and safety laws, wage and hour laws, and anti-discrimination laws. Most of these workers are immigrants who all of them are without the power to fight back against the horrible conditions in which they work.

As part of the agreements, the carwasheros will receive a pay increase, additional safety equipment, and on-the-job training to prevent injury and illness.  The agreement also establishes rights that protect workers from being unfairly punished or dismissed by both car wash companies. Edwin Leones, a worker at Nava’s Car Wash, said:

We were able to negotiate fair schedules and a pay raise. But most importantly, we’ve been able to get a voice on the job and have a say in our conditions.

Villaraigosa says the contracts represent “a good paying job, a better standard of living, and a voice on the job for some of our city’s most exploited workers.”

Trumka is on a two-day California trip to highlight and support the efforts of low-wage, immigrant workers in Los Angeles and Sacramento. Earlier today he spoke at the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) conference in Los Angeles. In Sacramento tomorrow, he will join with domestic workers who are mobilizing to pass a Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights in the state legislature.

Locked-out workers from American Crystal Sugar and Cooper Tire will begin a 1,000 mile Journey for Justice tomorrow from Fargo, N.D., to Findlay, Ohio. The journey will highlight the corporate greed that marks their lockouts, and the growing drive by corporate CEOs to drive down wages and benefits to pad their own pockets.

More than 1,300 Crystal Sugar workers–members of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM)–have been locked out of seven facilities in Minnesota, North Dakota, and Iowa since last August. More than 1,000 United Steelworkers (USW) members were locked out of their jobs at Cooper Tire’s Findlay, Ohio plant in November.

The justice trek kicks off with a rally in Fargo and then workers and their allies will deliver tens of thousands of signatures on a petition to American Crystal CEO David Berg at company headquarters in Moorhead, Minn. The six-day journey will make stops in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana, before concluding in Findlay, with a “hands around the plant” action.  There will be rallies, fundraisers for the locked out workers and their families and other actions along the way.

The march will not only highlight the plight of the Crystal Sugar and Cooper Tire workers but also focus attention on the most recent wave of greed-motivated corporate attacks on workers and their unions including recent lockouts of thousands of workers at Caterpillar, Rio Tinto Alcan, HealthBridge and elsewhere.

You can follow the workers on twitter  @JourneyJustice and here on their blog.

On more than 120 college and university campuses around the nation, Occupy College activists will hold teach-ins tomorrow and Thursday focusing on vital education issues such as solutions to soaring student debt, reducing the cost of education, improving the quality of education and more. The teach-ins are in preparation the March 1 National Day of Action for Education.

You can follow the teach-ins on Twitter with the hashtag @occupycolleges, here on Facebook and here for more information.

The AFL-CIO stands in support with the students of Occupy Colleges as they fight to keep the cost of a quality college education affordable, oppose the corporatization of public education, support job creation efforts to increase the number of opportunities available to young people after graduation and organize to fight the influence of corporate money in American democracy.

A good college education has long been a critical step for many young people in their journey toward the working world. Similar to the way union membership provides working people with a ladder to the middle class, a college degree has long been synonymous with access to better paying jobs that allow young people the opportunity to establish themselves in the world after graduation.

But when the richest 1 percent crashed the economy in their attempts to add to their already large fortunes, they not only ruined the livelihoods of many working families, they jeopardized the futures of American college students as well.

Young people are well aware of the conditions that spurred the Occupy Wall Street movement, and they are taking action on campuses around the country to stand in solidarity with the movement to solve our country’s income inequality problem and hold Wall Street accountable for their fair share.

The success of our country’s college students and Occupy Colleges is a necessity for the success of our nation’s economic recovery as a whole.

Over at Forbes, Susan Adams notes that Steven Colbert took family medical leave to be with his mother, and asks: Does Law Protect Your Right to Do the Same?

While the unpaid Family Medical Leave Act is federal law, it covers only firms with 50 or more employees and contains other restrictions. Writes Adams:

Employees who need to take sudden leave to care for a loved one often try to  use accrued vacation days or sick days. Ellen Bravo, executive director of  Family Values @ Work, a network of 16 state coalitions that support family-friendly policies, says many workers don’t realize that federal law does  not mandate that employers provide either vacation time or sick days. Also, many employers who provide those benefits, require advance notice, and don’t allow workers to take sick days to care for family members.

A few states, like California and Minnesota, also have flexible care laws, which require employers who offer paid sick days to allow workers to use the time to care for family members.

Bravo’s group hopes more states pass such laws. In New York City, where Colbert lives, a paid sick day law is pending and statewide, there is a bill that would  provide family leave insurance, similar to California’s and New Jersey’s. “Our  goal is to have many more men do what Stephen Colbert is doing, and be present  for a parent,” says Bravo. “Many men would be better fathers, sons and husbands  if they weren’t punished for it on the job.”

Read the full article here.

Work—and laughter—does connect us all and that couldn’t have been more true than Sunday night in Portland, Ore., when the comedians of Laughter Works Comedy tour took the stage before a full house at the Helium Club.

The show was part of a three-day event organized by the Oregon AFL-CIO and Laughing Liberally to showcase strategies for infusing activism with comedy. And the reviews are in—courtesy of Facebook:

• Fabulous all the way around. They made some great comments about big money and issues, not just easy-target Republicans. Unions are for everyone, work joins us all. A terrific (and terrifically funny) night.
  Shawn Sorenson.
• It couldn’t have been smarter or funnier. The best comedy show I have ever attended.
  Julane Grant.
• Thank you for hilarious show. I didn’t stop laughing for 2 hours. My experience was super-fantastic!!!!xoxo
  Biba Mustafic.

The national and local comedians also conducted workshops yesterday for union and community activists and organizers on blending humor into the fight for social justice. The workshops continue today.

Last night, area union members and others were at Jimmy Mak’s jazz club and other downtown businesses, where they handed out thank you cards for the stagehands, ticket takers, wait staff, hotel workers and others who make the Portland Jazz festival run smoothly.

This evening at rush hour, the comedians will join union members and area activists in a demonstration supporting Portland cab drivers, many of whom make less than minimum wage while pulling 10-12 hour shifts to make ends meet and receiving very limited services and benefits from cab companies. Learn more here.

“Immigration policy is work policy,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) conference in Los Angeles this morning.

The AFL-CIO stands “shoulder to shoulder” with immigrant workers, Trumka said,

to beat back the enforcement of anti-immigrant initiatives on the state and local level that are a threat to the rights of all workers.

NDLON and the AFL-CIO partnered in 2006 to work together to fix the nation’s broken immigration system and fight for workplace rights, health and safety and other job-related concerns.

We turned back some horrible legislation since then, and we’ve kept up the struggle together to make sure that workers’ rights—your rights and all of our rights—are recognized and respected.

In a message to conference attendees, NDLON Executive Director Pablo Alvarado says, “These are not easy times but we are indeed on the road to justice.”

Turning the tide is not just about a campaign against immigration enforcement but also about day laborers leading a movement for dignity and justice. When we open a worker center and extend our open hand to our neighbors, we are turning the tide. When our promotion efforts bring new employers to hire ready workers, we are turning the tide. When humble workers refuse to allow this country to take our labor without also recognizing our full humanity, the tide has already begun to turn.

Trumka told the NDLON activists that as AFL-CIO unions, state federations and central labor councils have worked together with NDLON,

More and more, we have all come to see that work connects us all.  You’re working with the Laborers’ (LIUNA) in New Jersey, Texas and California to build unions. Day labor centers in Washington State have joined the AFL-CIO and are bringing the best of our movements together—your creativity, courage and strength, our experience and political power.

He reiterated the labor movement’s strong support of the DREAM Act and a legalization program for immigrant workers. He also outlined how the AFL-CIO and NDLON worker centers and other groups have worked together to pass wage theft laws in several cities and states to “hold employers accountable and secure the wages that you work so hard for.”

The selective enforcement of immigration law along with the e-verify program in its current form that is “the latest version of the raid on the workplace,” Trumka said.

We know all too well what the selective enforcement of immigration laws does for workers who are trying to form unions. Just a few miles from here, at Pomona College, 17 workers who have been organizing to join UNITE HERE Local 11 food service and restaurant workers union were fired for not having proper work documents—this is a clear case—the National Labor Relations Board found that the college targeted and punished workers who wanted to form a union.

Last year, for first time, the labor movement joined hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers around the country in celebrating May Day as immigrant workers’ day. This year, Trumka said, “We will celebrate May Day as a day to recognize the rights of immigrants and the rights of workers.”

This year, we’ll stand together again, but I’m talking about more than a rally. The AFL-CIO is embracing the future of America’s labor movement. We’re joining together with you to transform this great nation. We’ll celebrate the brave men and women who come to this country, who struggle here for a better life, because America draws its strength from that struggle.

Trumka is on a two-day California trip to highlight and support the efforts of low-wage, immigrant workers in Los Angeles and Sacramento. He will meet later today with carwash workers in Los Angeles who recently won union contracts as part of the CLEAN Carwash Campaign. In Sacramento tomorrow, Trumka will join with domestic workers who are mobilizing to pass a Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights in the state legislature.

Emmelle Israel, AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow, sends us this.

A delegation of workers and a member of the German Parliament is in the United States this week to show solidarity with T-Mobile workers and shed a light on the double-standard practices of T-Mobile’s German parent company, Deutsche Telekom.

In Germany, a country with strong labor laws and a tradition of social dialogue, Deutsche Telekom workers negotiate contracts that cover working conditions and even sit on the company’s Board of Directors. Across the Atlantic, workers at T-Mobile, Deutsche Telecom’s subsidiary, endure stressful working conditions and disrespect from management. When they have attempted to join together in CWA-TU, their efforts have been met with brutal anti-union messaging, misinformation and fear tactics to discourage the workers from joining union. T-Mobile workers have struggled for years against their employer’s anti-union tactics in their efforts to win a voice on the job.

It was this extreme double standard in practices that led to Deutsche Telekom workers from around the world to unite in a global campaign to push Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile to respect the rights of workers in every country.

The delegation will visit Washington, D.C., Nashville, Tenn., and Frisco, Texas, to join American workers in workplace actions and to speak to the public about why they have come together to challenge Deutsche Telecom’s double standard. German workers will witness the dramatic difference in working conditions for T-Mobile workers struggling to gain a voice on the job.

Delegation members are blogging daily about their visit at: www.WeWorkBetterTogether.org.

One of the Affordable Care Act’s most important consumer protection provisions requires health insurers to spend at least 80 percent of premium dollars on actual medical care, not wasteful administration, marketing or executive pay and bonuses. The health care reform law requires insurers that do not meet the 80 percent threshold (also known as the medical loss ratio) to provide rebates to their customers.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) says consumers should receive those rebates later this year. HHS denied the requests by some insurance companies to be allowed to spend more on “overhead” rather than health care, a move that saved health care consumers more than $323 million in rebates. Says HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius:

Before the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies could spend your premium dollars on administrative red tape and marketing. With today’s notice, we’re taking a big step toward making insurers accountable to consumers.  Some of these insurance companies have already changed their behavior by lowering premiums or spending more on medical care and quality improvement, while the remainder will need to refund this money to their customers this year.

Overall, says Ethan Rome, executive director of Health for America Now (HCAN), insurance companies will refund more than $2 billion this year as the result of the law.

The 80/20 standard is one of the most effective consumer protections in the health care law and is already reducing premiums for individuals and small businesses. Step by step, this law is taking insurance companies out of the driver’s seat and giving consumers control over their health care.

Insurers will be required to make the first round of rebates to consumers by August based on their 2011 medical loss ratio. For more information on the medical loss ratios, click here.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the fight for free speech in San Diego after the city—in response to an organizing drive by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)—banned public speaking in a popular downtown area. In this cross-post from the California Labor Federation’s Labor’s Edge blog, Lorena Gonzalez, secretary-treasurer and CEO for the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, looks at the 100-year-old fight for workers’ rights and today’s struggle for worker justice.

It started as an organizing drive for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). But 100 years ago in San Diego, when the Wobblies took to their soapboxes, it turned into a battle to defend free speech that mobilized thousands across the country.

A city ordinance banned public speaking in a downtown area, and protesters were jailed, beaten, tarred and feathered, tortured and even killed for demanding their right to stand on a soapbox and speak. The fight attracted the likes of Emma Goldman, who was nearly attacked by a mob when she arrived in San Diego, and stretched until legal picketing was finally established three years later.

Free speech itself is on stronger footing today. We’ve seen across the country and right here in San Diego that the fight for real freedom continues every day. The freedom of earning a living wage and being able to afford a decent place to live, as well as the freedom of building a secure retirement and having access to basic health care.

Thanks to great work by AFT Local 1931 and our other partners, we’ve enjoyed a monthlong retrospective celebrating those who stood up against the rich and powerful to protect the basic rights of all.

Our celebration has included a fantastic museum exhibition, music, film screenings and readings. Just last week, we partnered with other community groups to commemorate the mass jailing of free speech advocates by occupying the same downtown intersection that saw pitched battles in 1912. It featured music, speeches and readings from atop our own soapboxes (constructed by union carpenters of course), remembering the fight one hundred years ago and the battle for basic rights that continues. Click here to view photos.

This month of celebration—especially our commemoration from atop our own soapboxes—has provided a fantastic launching pad for the latest round of challenges in this election year. Extremist mayoral candidate Carl DeMaio is hoping to make San Diego the “Wisconsin of the West,” with endless attacks on working families.

At the ballot, we’re up against attacks on public pensions, on project labor agreements and even the rights of workers to bargain for themselves. Not to mention our statewide effort to stop the Corporate Deception Initiative just like we did in 1998 and 2005.

Then as now, the fight pits the power of people standing up for our basic rights against rich corporate interests that want to strip those rights away. Then as now, the fight may be hard and may be bitter, but standing for basic dignity will prevail.

Mark your calendars for the 34th Annual Great Labor Arts Exchange and Conference on Creative Organizing. This year’s event—June 22-25—is happening at the Conference Center at the Maritime Institute in Linthicum Heights, Md.

Sponsored by Labor Heritage Foundation, the Great Labor Arts Exchange celebrates the rich cultural heritage of working people and serves as a forum that brings together talented labor artists, activists, cultural workers, educators and students.

They share experiences and offer advice on how to combine union mobilization and outreach with songs, skits, art, poetry, theater, posters, cartoons and film.

Participants will learn to use cultural tools to combat fear, get members involved, attract media attention, integrate contemporary or pop culture into organizing strategies and inject excitement into union and political campaign.

For more information, you may e-mail [email protected], call 202-639-6204 or visit www.laborheritage.org.

Sarah Seltzer writes for Alternet and other online publications and sends us this. Follow Sarah on twitter.

As the AFL-CIO documented in a study, the situation for immigrants in Alabama has grown increasingly dire: A “humanitarian crisis” has resulted from a draconian anti-immigration law, H.B. 56, one of the nation’s harshest.

The parallels between this law and the old Jim Crow laws (some call this new type of law “Juan Crow”) will be spotlighted in an upcoming reenactment of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery civil rights march next month. Sponsored by the National Action Network along with the AFL-CIO and other labor, civil and human rights organizations, the March 4-9 event will focus attention on recent attacks on voting rights, workers’ rights, education, and immigrants—all of which are modern-day assaults on civil rights.

This week, a high-profile Hollywood director, in collaboration with several nonprofits, lent his camera to the cause of immigrants in Alabama, creating a series of stirring and revelatory videos that ask: “Is This Alabama?” Chris Weitz is best known for directing the third Twilight installment and he recently traveled throughout the state and spoke with people to show the impact of the law and how citizens really feel about it.

This first mini-film, the “Two Faces of Alabama” depicts a teacher who is deeply concerned about the new law’s effect on her students, and a belligerent restaurant-goer who has the only scorn for immigrants. The teacher’s fears are real: The law’s enactment has left many classrooms empty.

In this second short film, clips of segregation-era George Wallace and Bull Connor are followed with those of an older Alabama man talking about how the law is dictating “who to be friends with” and noting that he’ll cry if his Latino neighbors are forced to leave. “We’re going backward instead of forward,” he says.

See two more short films at the Is This Alabama YouTube channel.

If comparing the situation now to segregation-era seems far-fetched, it’s not. Just before Valentine’s Day, it appears that some citizens protesting against HB 56 were let into the statehouse based on the color of their skin:

Alabamians from civil rights organizations, immigrant groups, faith communities, the labor movement, and other walks of life came out in force in Montgomery, carrying Valentine’s Day cards and signs professing messages of love for their home state. Their intention: to visit their legislators in the State House and ask them to reconsider a repeal of Alabama’s monstrous anti-immigrant law, HB 56…

Protestor Carole Edmonds, a dentist with a practice from Boaz, Alabama and her friend, both of whom are white, were permitted to visit the offices of their Senators but several Latino protesters were denied the same access. When Dr. Edmonds and her friend attempted to visit the same Senate offices a second time with several Latinos, they were told by security that while the white women could enter, while the Latinos who accompanied them could not. This was after Dr. Edmonds made it clear that they were all there for the same reason.

Unfortunately, instead of shying away from measures like Alabama’s, some other states are adopting similar ones.

Media projects like Weitz’s and the upcoming civil rights march in Alabama will aim turn the national spotlight towards the deep injustice of Alabama’s policy.

One of the biggest tax loopholes that helps keep hedge fund managers in the top 1 percent would be closed by new legislation introduced this week by Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.).

Currently, people who manage other people’s money—like 1 percenter Mitt Romney did at Bain Capital—only pay 15 percent tax on the income they receive as compensation, compared with the up-to-35-percent many Americans pay on their income. Says Levin:

There is absolutely no reason why income earned for managing other people’s money shouldn’t be taxed in the same way as income earned teaching or working in a factory. This loophole for years has unfairly enabled some of the highest-paid individuals in the country to sharply reduce their tax bills and it is time to close it once and for all.

The technical term for those earnings is carried interest. In exchange for providing the service of managing their investors’ assets, fund managers often take a portion of a fund’s profits, or a carried interest, usually equal to 20 percent of such profits. When a significant portion of funds profits are long-term capital gains, the carried interest is taxed at the 15 percent capital gains rates.

Levin’s bill—The Carried Interest Fairness Act—would force the 1 percenters to pay taxes on that income at the same rate we all pay on our income.

In a recent editorial, The Los Angeles Times wrote:

Romney’s ability to pay a lower percentage than many taxpayers who aren’t wealthy will only feed the concerns about widening income inequality in the United States. But this isn’t a case of the rich playing by a different set of rules than everyone else. It’s a case of the rules benefiting them far more than most.

Have you heard the one about the corporate CEO and the duck? Or how about the classic description of what happens when three shop stewards walk into a bar?  If you’re in Portland, Ore., Sunday night, you just might hear these and more when Laughing Liberally and the Oregon AFL-CIO showcase strategies for infusing activism with comedy.

The Laughter Works comedy tour will present a free show at the Helium Club, where nationally known comedians Lee Camp, Negin Farsad and Katie Halper, along with Portland’s own Gilbert Brown and Kyle Harbert will explore how laughter and work connect us all. Click here for information.

The comedians will remain in town and conduct workshops Monday and Tuesday for union and community activists and organizers on blending humor into the fight for social justice. A good laugh can draw the public’s attention and open the door a bit wider to more serious conversations and actions.

With the Portland Jazz Festival also under way, area union members and others will be on hand Monday at Jimmy Mak’s jazz club and Tuesday at the Mission Theater to remind showgoers that they are connected to men and women behind the scenes who make the festival possible. They will hand out thank you cards for the stagehands, ticket takers, hotel workers and others who make the festival run.

Click here to find out how “Work Connects Us All.

The House (293-132) and the Senate (60-36) passed legislation today to extend federal unemployment insurance (UI) benefits and the pay roll tax cut. UI benefits were set to expire Feb. 29 and the legislation that President  Obama will sign extends the program for the nation’s nearly 13 million jobless workers through the end of the year.

In letter to lawmakers this morning, the AFL-CIO said that not extending UI and the payroll tax cut would compound the hardship of jobless families and jeopardize the recent signs of job growth.

But the bill not only reduces the number of weeks of benefits for the unemployed, it unfairly penalizes federal workers. “Shared sacrifice should start at the top, with a surtax on millionaires, not with unemployed workers or middle-class working families. The AFL-CIO does not support the bill.”

Here is the full text of the letter:

Dear Representative:

Federal unemployment benefits and the temporary payroll tax cut need to be extended through the end of this year because the jobs crisis is far from over and the economic recovery is still fragile.  Withdrawal of these critical economic supports would compound the already unacceptable hardship of jobless families and jeopardize the recent promising signs of job growth.  By contrast, the conference report for H.R. 3630 would reduce the number of weeks of unemployment benefits available for unemployed workers and gratuitously penalizing federal employees.

Any offset to this package will reduce its effectiveness in stimulating economic growth and creating jobs, and for this reason federal extended benefits have historically not been offset.  However, if there has to be an offset in this bill, it should be a surtax on incomes over $1 million.  Republicans in Congress have insisted on protecting millionaires at the expense of jobless workers and middle income working class Americans.

Unemployed workers and federal employees continue to be blamed for problems they did not cause.  Meanwhile, the people who did cause the crash of 2008, from which our economy is still slowly recovering, have largely gotten off scot free.  Shared sacrifice should start at the top, with a surtax on millionaires, not with unemployed workers or middle class working families who provide vital services to the federal government.

For all of these reasons, the AFL-CIO cannot support H.R. 3630.