PAGE

Category Archives: Uncategorized

Happy Holidays From Phillylabor.com – 2012 Year End PR Newsletter Coming Jan 2.

PhillyLabor.com would like to wish the entire Philadelphia area labor Community a happy and healthy holiday season. We’d also like to let you know that our 2012 year end Phillylabor.com PR Newsletter will be emailed out on January 2, 2013 and will feature the top stories in labor both locally and nationally from 2012!

Until then Enjoy Your Holidays!

Joe Dougherty

PhillyLabor.com

Note: If you do not already receive our Phillylabor.com PR Newsletter, you can sign up for it by going to the upper right hand corner of this page and adding your email address.

Community College of Philadelphia Offers JobTrakPA Certificate Training Programs

For Immediate Release

GET ON THE FAST TRACK BACK TO WORK

Out of work and looking for a new career, stronger résumé or skills enhancement that will lead to steady employment as soon as possible? Take advantage of JobTrakPA at Community College of Philadelphia, which offers free, hands-on, technical training for jobs in one of Pennsylvania’s high growth employment sectors.

This training — for Trade Adjustment Act-eligible, laid-off or dislocated workers — specializes in high-priority industry career sectors experiencing worker shortages. In response to workforce needs, the College is offering training in Energy Conservation and LEED certification. The College is accepting applications for classes starting in January 2013.

The program provides successful graduates:

Short-term, career-specific courses

Basic skills training

Intensive support from a dedicated career coach

Workshops for all aspects of employability and workplace competencies

Industry-recognized certifications

Job placement assistance

Students who complete training may be qualified for the following jobs:

Building Analyst

Envelope (energy conservation on building shells)

LEED Green Associate (credential for individuals who want to demonstrate green building expertise in non-technical fields of practice)

The application process is designed to select the candidates best able to complete the program and find work. Successful candidates should have at least two years experience in a skilled construction trade or in renewable energy, or a bachelor’s or associate’s degree or technical certificate in design construction or a related field. In addition, successful candidates should have a high school diploma or GED equivalent, strong math and reading skills, and be physically fit.

For a full description of the grant program and an eligibility form, visit https://www.jobtrakpa.com/OneFlow/PhiladelphiaCollege.aspx.

Prayers And Condolences for The Victims, Families and First Responders of The Connecticut School Tragedy

At this very difficult Time, we would like to send all of the prayers and condolences possible for the victims and to the families of those innocent young children and adults who were senselessly killed in the Connecticut school this past Friday, December 14, 2012.

We would also like to acknowledge the courage and heroism demonstrated by the brave teachers who gave their lives while trying to protect the children as well as the first responders who were left with the heavy burden of encountering such unthinkable circumstances.

There are no words available to describe what they are going through!

May God Bless Them All

In Solidarity,

PhillyLabor.com

How “Right to Work Shirk” Laws Kill Jobs – and Hurt All of Us

December 14th, 2012 | Richard Eskow | Today’s Workplace | Michigan’s recent battle makes this a good time to explain the union movement’s important role in our economy’s overall health. We’re about to explain why today’s war on unions is bad for all of us, no matter what we do for a living, and we’ll do it in four steps.

But first a word about language: “Right to work” is a misnomer for laws which let employees enjoy the benefits of union membership – at least for a little while, until they’re stripped away – without joining or contributing.

So we’ll call them “right to shirk” laws instead. And we’ll call the people who back these laws Shirkers.

And while we’re at it, let’s stop calling the states that have adopted this legislation “right to work.” They don’t give people any new rights. They take rights away, by making it illegal for employees to organize and negotiate together. They even take away employers‘ rights – to sign a certain kind of contract.

So let’s give the other states a name instead: In a nod to the Jim Crow origin of these laws, let’s call the ones which don’t have these laws “free states.”

Free Ride

Right to Shirk laws allow freeloaders to profit from the efforts of others – without contributing to the effort, and in a way that harms the common good. The billionaires and corporations behind these laws wouldn’t deliberately do anything like that, would they? Why, that would be like letting people make billions from the works of government – things like roads, the Internet and publicly-educated customers – without paying their fair share of taxes.

Oh, wait.

Right to Shirk laws are job-killers. Here are four steps to understanding why:

1. Think nationally, not just locally.

Advocates say these laws create jobs. They don’t. Their “evidence” is based on studies which show modest job growth in Right to Shirk states when compared to free states.  But all that proves is that places that are politically hostile to organized labor also offer other types of corporate favoritism.

It also suggests that Right to Shirk states can steal jobs from free states — as long as the jobs last, anyway.

The Shirker movement was started in the late 1940s by a handful of Southern politicians who were in the palm of big textile mills. They were able to draw textile jobs away from free Northern cities like my hometown of Utica, NY – until those jobs left this country altogether.  That’s not “creating” jobs — that’s killing good jobs and replacing them with ones that don’t pay enough.

The concept of “solidarity” has been tarred with McCarthyite smears. But “solidarity” is just another way of saying “We’re all in this together.”  The Right to Shirk crowd wants to stop that kind of thinking so it can pit state against state and employee against employee, shredding our social fabric for personal gain.

It’s no accident that the Shirker movement was started by the reactionary white politicians of the Jim Crow South. Back then they were still pining for the days when they could offer some folks the “right to work” … for nothing.

2. We’re fighting over a shrinking pie instead of making the pie bigger.

Things are bad. We need millions of jobs – and the jobs we do have don’t pay enough.

The graphic which Business Insider likes to call “the scariest chart ever” shows how far we are from creating the number of jobs needed to make this country’s economy grow and thrive again.  Job growth like that we’ve seen recently is always welcome, but it’s not nearly enough to get us out of this ditch. How do we get moving again?

To answer that question we need to know what’s worked in the past.

3. The real “job creators” are people with jobs – good jobs.

How did this nation finally escape the after-effects of the Great Depression and begin its greatest decades of economic growth? Government spending  – on roads, bridges, schools, and other vitally needed services – played a key part.

Unions were a crucial part of this process, too. By fighting for higher wages and better benefits, unions ensure that working people have the means to purchase consumer items, housing, and other goods and services.  Companies have to hire more people to keep up with demand – and the good jobs keep coming.

That’s why the Republican Party platform of 1956 boasted that “unions have grown in strength and responsibility, and have increased their membership by 2 millions” during Dwight D. Eisenhower’s first term. Back then Republicans understood that a growing middle class was good for the entire economy.  That party platform also said that “America does not prosper unless all Americans prosper.” Their rule: No shirkers.

But then in those days our economy wasn’t dominated by Wall Street megabanks – institutions that don’t build or sell anything. And politicians weren’t completely in bankers’ pockets back then, because the public wouldn’t have tolerated it.

We shouldn’t tolerate it now.

4. When you kill unions, that reduces consumer income – which kills jobs.

The Shirker assault on unions has taken its toll. Only 25 states remain free to unionize, and union membership has fallen dramatically:

Their logic would suggest that the plunge in union membership we’ve seen since 1960 must have led to a rise in good jobs.  Did it? Let’s take a look at manufacturing:

That’s my freehand drawing in the thumbnail photo above (and therefore not exact) of the trend line in union membership, superimposed by the number of manufacturing jobs in the United States.  Manufacturing jobs kept on increasing for more than twenty years, even as union membership increased. These jobs experienced periods of decline and stagnation as union membership fell, even before the devastating impact of NAFTA.

Consumer demand is vital to growth. That demand is tied to consumers’ income, and to their belief that life in the future will be as good or better than it is today.  Those are the two things we need to reinforce, and unions are crucial to that effort.

We need to get our economy growing again. Until then most Americans, unionized or not, will continue to struggle with stagnating wages and an ongoing economic drag that can feel a lot like a recession.  As Paul Krugman likes to say (he said it in our radio interview), This isn’t rocket science. We know how to do this.

Destroying unions is just another way for the Shirkers to make sure that we never do.

This post was originally posted on Our Future on December 13, 2012. Reprinted with Permission.

About the Author: Richard Eskow is a well-known blogger and writer, a former Wall Street executive, an experienced consultant, and a former musician.  He has experience in health insurance and economics, occupational health, benefits, risk management, finance, and information technology.  He has a somewhat unique perspective on the current financial crisis, since he worked for AIG for a number of years (although not in its infamous Financial Products division). Richard has consulting experience in the US and over 20 countries. Past clients include USAID, the World Bank, the State Department, the Harvard School of International Public Health, the Government of Hungary, as well as corporations and investors. He has experience in financial and data analysis, systems design, operations, and management.

What do ‘right-to-work’ laws do to a state’s economy?

By Brad Plumer , Updated: December 10, 2012 – http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/10/how-right-to-work-laws-could-reshape-michigans-economy/

The most significant policy fight of the week is arguably taking place in Michigan, where Republican lawmakers are pushing through a “right-to-work” bill that would weaken labor unions in one of the country’s most heavily unionized states. President Obama traveled to Michigan today and criticized the bill, which Gov. Rick Snyder (R) has yet to sign.

Why the uproar? Under right-to-work laws, employees in unionized workplaces can no longer be required to pay unions for the cost of being represented. These statutes are broadly understood to erode the influence and power of organized labor — if unions have a harder time collecting money for the services they offer, they’ll have fewer resources to work with. Currently, 23 states have such laws on the books. Michigan would be the 24th — and, because of its long pro-union history, perhaps the most important.

So what effects do these laws have? There’s a dizzying amount of research on the subject, but a few broad conclusions have emerged over the years: Right-to-work laws do weaken labor unions. The laws appear to tilt the balance of power so that workers reap fewer of the gains from growth. And it’s still hard to find definitive evidence that right-to-work laws help (or harm) a state’s overall economy.

1) Right-to-work laws tend to weaken labor unions. This is one thing the left and right agree on. If unions are barred from requiring employees to pay the cost of representation, there’s a free-rider problem. Why bother sending money to my union if I’ll benefit from its bargaining efforts regardless? Pretty soon, unions are drained of funds and can’t launch as many organizing drives or wield influence.

And unions do get weakened. A 1998 survey of the econometric literature by William J. Moore found that right-to-work laws lead to more free-riding behavior among employees. That, in turn, leads to a decline in unionization drives, in organizing successes, and ultimately in overall union density. Recently, Idaho and Oklahoma saw their union densities drop after adopting right-to-work laws in the early 2000s.

Some labor backers have wondered if unions can overcome this adversity. They’ll just have to prove their worth to workers. “For example,” writes Rich Yeselson, “the most powerful local union in the country, Culinary 226 in Las Vegas — a political powerhouse that ensures middle-class wages and benefits for hotel housekeepers — operates in a right-to-work state and gets close to 100% dues compliance.” That said, this appears to be an exception, not the rule.

2) Under right-to-work laws, workers reap fewer gains from economic growth. Supporters of right-to-work laws often argue that they’ll help attract more businesses to a state. Opponents retort that weakening unions will lead to an erosion of wages. (A large Economic Policy Institute study from 2011 found that, after controlling for a host of factors, right-to-work states have lower wages on average than pro-union states.)

Both arguments might be correct. One careful study conducted by Hofstra’s Lonnie Stevans in 2007 found that right-to-work laws do help boost the number of businesses in a state — but the gains mostly went to owners, while average wages went down. ”Although right-to-work states may be more attractive to business,” Stevans concludes, “this does not necessarily translate into enhanced economic verve in the right-to-work state if there is little ‘trickle-down’ from business owners to the non-unionized workers.”

So business owners gain, and workers lose. One possible retort is that these states could simply set up new safety-net programs to compensate workers who are hurt. But that leads to another question: Without strong unions in place, who will push for these policies?

3) The broader economic effects of right-to-work laws are often difficult to disentangle. There’s all sorts of research back and forth on the impacts of right-to-work rules. But as economists Ozkan Eren and Serkan Ozbeklik complained in one major study last year, most of this work is plagued by the “difficulty of distinguishing the effects of the [right-to-work] laws from state characteristics, as well as other state policies that are unrelated with these laws.”

For instance: In 2001, Oklahoma passed a right-to-work law and soon saw its manufacturing base shrivel. But how much of that was due to the law and how much due to competition from China? Similarly, one 1998 study by Thomas J. Holmes found that companies in heavily unionized states often relocated just across state borders to right-to-work states. But is that due to the right-to-work laws or other policies?

One reason why it’s so difficult to determine cause and effect is that only about 7 percent of private-sector U.S. workers are currently unionized — a small (and dwindling) slice of the workforce. What’s more, companies make decisions on where to locate for a whole slew of reasons, from energy costs to infrastructure. The strength of unions isn’t the only factor. That’s why we’ll continue to be barraged by study and counter-study for years to come.

4) The laws should also be placed in broader context. But set all the research aside for a second. The right-to-work bill in Michigan is also an indicator of a broader trend in the United States. As Rich Yeselson details, Michigan is one of the most heavily unionized states in the country, with 17.5 percent of workers belonging to a union. The United Autoworkers is one of the most storied unions in the country. If Michigan, of all places, is no longer safe from a sweeping revisions to its labor laws, then none of the remaining pro-union states in the Midwest and Northeast are immune.

In a country where the strength of organized labor has already been dwindling for decades, that’s a major change.

Further reading:

–My colleague Sean Sullivan has an overview of the political fight around Michigan’s right-to-work bill, while Greg Sargent offers some reasons to think that Snyder may not sign the legislation after all.

© The Washington Post Company