By The PA. AFL-CIO

– President Bloomingdale welcomed over 100 delegates to the opening general session of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO’s 55th Community Services Institute in Pittsburgh on Wednesday evening. He thanked those union activists in the room for their hard work in building stronger communities through their community services activities but also for helping to defend against the attacks being waged on workers in Harrisburg by right-wing politicians and groups.

“You know the right-wing sees this as their opening. They don’t want us grow again and get strong again. In the past six months, you – along with thousands of local union leaders and workers – have shown our legislators that we are more united than has been witnessed in years. You’ve taken that massive rally held on a very cold morning in January – a moment in history – and turned it into a movement of workers. You and your union brothers and sisters went back home and told your legislators’ offices to support workers and stop the attacks on our jobs, on our pensions and on our rights to strong unions,” Bloomingdale said.

“We cannot separate community services from politics and legislation. They are all connected,” he emphasized. “We are all fighters in this room we don’t run and hide from a fight, we stand up and fight back, that is who we are. We will need to fight just as hard over the next six months as we did in the past six months to protect our jobs our unions while we continue our partnership with the United Way and while we conduct our campaign to elect Tom Wolf for Governor and our endorsed friends to the legislature,” Bloomingdale said.

Secretary-Treasurer Frank Snyder will be joining the group on Saturday to deliver remarks at the Institute’s graduation luncheon.

Jack Shea, President of the Allegheny County Central Labor Council, said that community services is just as important an organizing tool as all of our other programs and activities we do. Jack, who is an organizer, said that people are more likely to remember you for helping them with a personal or family problem than winning a grievance or arbitration award. “From now until November we need to put everything we have into electing Tom Wolf Governor. We’ll have somebody to play shortstop so we won’t have to spend so much on just defending what we already have,” Shea said.

David Fillman, AFSCME Council 13’s Executive Director, urged the 15 freshman delegates to take this important opportunity provided by their unions to learn as much as they can over the next few days and share it with their unions and their membership. “If your union is not already involved in helping people in their community through local union community services, now is the time to start.” Fillman recognized a list of projects conducted by AFSCME members and locals over the past year in which several provided help to veterans who served and defended our country. The Governor’s budget cuts have created additional needs that we must fill. He noted that his union and the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO have made early and unanimous endorsements of Tom Wolf for Governor. “I’m asking you to resolve that making Tom Corbett a one-term Governor is your most important Community Services project for this year,” Fillman said.

Father Jack O’Malley gave the invocation, reciting a statement composed by the workers who participated in a week-long hunger strike in protest to the low wages paid by UPMC. The workers are trying to organize to improve their lives and living standards of the community. Father Jack also noted that we should be protecting the children who are crossing our borders into our nation. “We are a nation of immigrants. I don’t see any Native Americans in this room and there are very few in this country,” he observed.

The Institute which runs through noon on Saturday is also conducting a book drive for underprivileged children. Workshops and general sessions are also focusing on promoting literacy programs in for elementary and middle school students.

Source: http://www.paaflcio.org/?p=4303&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook

By Jared Shelly

– American Airlines (which recently merged with US Airways) has reached collective bargaining agreements with approximately 11,000 maintenance training specialist, fleet service and mechanic and related employees.

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers approved new contracts by 96, 86 and 67 percent respectively. The three-year accords provide significant wage hikes and industry-best job security while retaining affordable health insurance and preserving defined-benefit pension plans at the carrier, the union said.

American said the agreements will stay in effect for the US Airways workers until a joint collective bargaining agreement covering the 30,000 employees of the new American can be reached, according to the Dallas Business Journal.

American merged with US Airways back in December.

“We are now well situated to begin joint contract talks with our Transport Worker Union (TWU) sisters and brothers to achieve the best contracts in the airline industry at the world’s largest airline,” said IAM Transportation General Vice President Sito Pantoja.

Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/morning_roundup/2014/07/11-000-us-airways-union-workers-approve-new-deal.html

BY FRANK A. SIRIANNI, President of the Pennsylvania State Building Trades Council

– Lately we have all been reading that Gov. Tom Corbett is taking credit for the alleged “relatively low” unemployment rate here in Pennsylvania. As he runs for reelection, he says it is one of the lowest unemployment rates in the USA!

The percentage of unemployed Pennsylvania workers, according to the Pennsylvania Dept. of Labor & Industry, is claimed to be right around 6%, depending on where you live. That is the lowest since before 2008 and the Great Recession.

Well, as everyone knows, you can get any number you want from the Dept. of Labor, especially if you are running for reelection as Governor of an administration with a failed economic policy. All you have to do is call the Secretary of Labor that you appointed and tell her to do it.

The fact of the matter is the unemployment rate in Pennsylvania is significantly higher than what is reported to the media by the Department that works for the Governor/candidate trying to get reelected.

That way, the candidate doesn’t become part of the bogus unemployment statistics that his pay-to-play appointees are reporting. To understand the real numbers, you have to add a few people who were conveniently, or possibly intentionally, overlooked.

First, you have to add back into the numbers the 44,000 workers who were made ineligible to qualify for Unemployment Insurance by Gov. Corbett’s Act 60, even though they and their employers faithfully paid their premiums into the Unemployment Insurance Fund.

That alone should be considered a crime! Can you imagine what would happen if you paid into a life-insurance policy yet your family couldn’t collect the benefit when you passed away? Well, 44,000 working citizens here in Pennsylvania, and their employers, are getting just that result. They pay in and they cannot collect; and the number will double, every single year, over the next decade, while out-of-state Marcellus Shale workers take home our unemployment funds.

Second, another number that was conveniently overlooked and not considered in Corbett’s announced bogus unemployment rate, are the roughly 100,000 people who had their Unemployment Insurance terminated by their government just before Christmas 2013.

The sad thing about this whole situation is: While we have a Governor who has lived off the taxpayers most of his entire adult life, right down to the taxpayer-funded SUV, to every steak and bottle of wine he and his family eats and drinks, yet he has the gall to now portray himself as a man of compassion!

So I want to give the Governor the credit he deserves. Way to go, Tom! You have successfully removed the food from the tables of over 150,000 working families in Pennsylvania.

Source: http://www.phillyrecord.com/2014/07/another-opinion-covering-up/

By John Ostapkovich

– PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — The Pennsylvania Convention Center is buzzing this week with members of the postal workers’ union, who are attending their biennial meeting, through Thursday.

About 8,000 members of the National Association of Letter Carriers are here, many with family members.

“This is a great town and we’re just happy to be here,” said Kevin Card of Portland, Ore., 27 years a letter carrier and now helping his colleagues injured on the job get health care and worker’s compensation.

He says convention sessions cover a wide range of topics: “Basic contract knowledge for our contract, but also political organizing, what’s happening in our community efforts to work with our food drive, and also anything having to do with the life of a letter carrier, whether it’s retirement, whether it’s health care, any of those things we cover in a very extensive manner.”

Card says the US Postal Service is not a dinosaur but doing very well, thank you, thanks to the huge upswing in package deliveries from online shopping. He says USPS finances dip into the red only because Congress ordered it to pre-pay 75 years of expected retiree medical benefits in ten years.

(In 1775 in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress founded the United States Post Office and named Benjamin Franklin the first postmaster general.)

Source: http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2014/07/22/postal-workers-visit-city-of-their-genesis-for-national-convention/

By Ned Resnikoff

– DETROIT – Minnesota Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison plans to unveil legislation that would make unionization into a legally protected civil right, the congressman said on Saturday.

The bill, which he plans to formally introduce on July 30, would make it easier for workers to take legal action against companies that violate their right to organize.

It is already illegal to fire workers in retaliation for union activities, but enforcing workers’ right to organize can be a tricky process under current law. Currently, wrongfully terminated employees must file an unfair labor practice claim with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which will then determine whether to represent the worker in a legal fight against the employer.

But workers are not able to directly sue their employers for anti-union retaliation, and the process of bringing forward a successful unfair labor practice claim can take years.

Ellison’s legislation would maintain the unfair labor practice system, but also allow workers to individually sue their employers over allegations of illegal retaliation.

“If it’s a civil rights action, it’s vindicating your personal right, first of all to freedom of assembly and freedom of expression,” Ellison told msnbc Saturday at the Netroots Nation conference here. “And it’s your individual right to say what you want. Whether or not there’s ever even a vote, you shouldn’t be fired for expressing an intent to support union activity.”

Ellison said he got the idea for the bill from a book called Why Labor Organizing Should Be A Civil Right, written by Century Foundation fellows Richard Kahlenberg and Moshe Marvit. Shortly before the book’s release in early 2012, the two authors presented a synopsis of its core argument in an op-ed for The New York Times.

“Our proposal would make disciplining or firing an employee ‘on the basis of seeking union membership’ illegal just as it now is on the basis of race, color, sex, religion and national origin,” they wrote in the op-ed. “It would expand the fundamental right of association encapsulated in the First Amendment and apply it to the private workplace just as the rights of equality articulated in the 14th Amendment have been so applied.”

The full details of Ellison’s bill remain to be seen, but the proposal set forward by Kahlenberg and Marvit would “provide that after 180 days, a plaintiff can move his or her case from [the NLRB] to federal court.” That’s how the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission currently operates with regard to accusations of workplace discrimination.

Kahlenberg told msnbc that he was “delighted” by Ellison’s announcement.

“I think it’s a terrific development and Congressman Ellison’s the right person to advance this idea,” Kahlenberg said. “He has a strong record on civil rights and a strong record on labor.”

Ellison had not spoken directly with either Kahlenberg or Marvit about the idea, but Kahlenberg said he had been in contact with Ellison’s staff. According to Ellison, a recent Supreme Court decision has made it more important than ever to strengthen collective bargaining rights.

“In the aftermath of Harris v. Quinn, there’s no doubt that organizing rights are under as much threat as ever,” he said. “And now even from the Supreme Court.”

Source: http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/keith-ellison-union-organizing-civil-right