CONGRATS To President Pat Eiding and the entire Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO for Another Successful Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO Leadership Conference in the books.

Leaders representing Philadelphia area unions participated in the 11th Annual Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO Leadership Conference in Atlantic city this Past Sun, Mon and Tues and met on a variety of topics ranging from communications, politics and legislation to the 2014 electoral landscape in PA and worker’s rights etc all for the purpose of moving our Philadelphia area union community successfully into the future!

The conference was well attended by union officials from all across Philadelphia and vicinity further demonstrating why the Philadelphia area union community remains the premier union region in the America!

Kudos to all who organized and participated!

Philly Labor

By Richard Kline, President, Union Label and Service Trades Department (AFL-CIO)

– The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) threatens more than American jobs, its full impact could undermine the quality of life for all Americans.

This free trade agreement, if signed by the US, will undermine food safety, Wall Street regulation, Buy American requirements for government spending, and give corporations equal rights with the sovereignty of nations under the emerging “investor state” doctrine. TPP is comprised of 29 chapters covering the environment, food and drug safety, intellectual property, financial regulation, telecommunications and much more. Yet, details are sketchy, dependent upon Wikileaks and whistleblowers. If any national laws among any of the participating nations is challenged by one or more corporations under the investor state doctrine, corporate interests could prevail. No wonder this massive deal is a big secret, kept from the hundreds of millions of people it will affect.

Which countries are negotiating this Free Trade Agreement? Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam are at the table and China is reputed to be interested in joining them.

Perhaps it is a mistake to say that the countries are negotiating. The negotiations are in secret, open only to corporations, their lobbyists and agents, who are officially called “trade advisors.”‘

Civic groups, unions, common citizens are excluded, as are members of Congress.

We only know what they tell us. And we are only told that a lot of jobs and good fortune will flow from this massive agreement. Just like NAFTA.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama threw in one subtle but major demand: a renewed request for Fast Track Authority on the Trans Pacific Partnership. In other words, a demand for an up or down vote with no amendments admissible in Congress, which one recalls is a legislative body of some prominence and power. Congress can and should refuse to restore fast track authority which officially expired in 1997.

President Obama could have opened up about the TPP and told the American public what was at stake. Vague assurances and vapid promises from the White House or the US Trade Representative are unpersuasive. If corporations are going to be elevated to the status of sovereign nations workers and their unions need to be on an equal footing with corporations.

If the Obama administration were really concerned about the middle class, American jobs and American manufacturing, it would look elsewhere than race-to-the-bottom trade agreements.

Here’s an idea for the administration. Resurrect the Employee Free Choice Act to which it gave lip service some years back. A fight to make unionizing fairer for workers might give some relevance to an administration entering lame duck status ahead of schedule.

Source: http://www.unionlabel.org/index.cfm?zone=%2Funionactive%2Fview_blog_post.cfm&blogID=1183&postID=57790#.UvEx3ACVWTM.facebook

By Pat Loeb

– PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — The Philadelphia firefighters’ union is asking district attorney Seth Williams to reconsider his decision not to pursue criminal charges in relation to the fire that caused the death of two firemen in 2012 (see related story).

The union wants the building owners prosecuted.

Local 22 president Joe Schulle says the families of firefighters Robert Neary and Daniel Sweeney were devastated by the DA’s announcement yesterday that no charges would be filed in connection with the fire at the former Buck Hosiery Co. warehouse, in Kensington, where the two men died.

The families have filed a civil suit against the owners — Yechiel Lichtenstein (who also goes by Michael) and his father, Nahman, both of Brooklyn, NY — but Schulle says that is not justice for the victims.

“It’s just a huge injustice to our membership that the people that caused this tragedy to occur are just allowed to walk around like nothing happened. They actually put in a claim to collect on the million-dollar insurance policy on the building, so they are trying to benefit from this occurring,” Schulle said.

The building was deteriorated, unsealed, and tax delinquent when it caught fire (see related stories). DA Williams based his decision on a grand jury report that said the exact cause of the fire could not be determined.

Source: http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2014/02/04/phila-firefighters-union-demands-prosecution-of-building-owners-in-deadly-2012-fire/

By Daniel Denvir

– In his State of the Union address last Tuesday, President Obama touched on a number of issues critical to Philadelphians, particularly the plight of the poor and downwardly-mobile middle class. But with Republicans likely to hold Congress this November, federal initiatives to help people in this city stand little chance.

Watching the Capitol Hill pageantry, nothing feels more distant than national politics.

Except sometimes, perversely, local politics.
Fewer than 40 percent of Philadelphians voted for governor in 2010, when Republican Tom Corbett rode a Tea Party wave to power. Democratic turnout was pathetic: 246,000 fewer Philadelphians voted for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Dan Onorato than voted for Obama in 2008.

This is the sort of voter disengagement that Corbett is counting on to win reelection in November. But over the last four years, thanks to catastrophic budget cuts to public education, state politics has finally attracted some local attention, and anger.

In May, registered Democrats will have the opportunity to decide who they want to challenge Corbett. Get involved. Decide who you want to rule Pennsylvania in 2015.

Philadelphians have proven similarly disengaged from city politics. Fewer than 25 percent bothered to vote in the 2011 mayoral election, despite the fact that most Philadelphians didn’t think Michael Nutter deserved re-election. Since then, his approval ratings have tanked amid his thumb-twiddling during the public schools crisis. Oh well.

We will elect a new mayor in 2015. Can we demand more?

Philly might respond to a grassroots campaign that spoke to critical issues: fighting for public education and continuing the reduction in violent crime, lifting up poor neighborhoods and stabilizing those in the middle class, investing in parks and rec centers and clamping down on police misconduct. But such a campaign would require a major citywide coalition, and it would also require a challenge to the city’s political establishment — though not one, like Nutter’s, that leaves a mayor isolated from City Council.

For all that seems impossible in Washington, we leave so much undone in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania.

Source: http://citypaper.net/article.php?Philly-apathy-helped-elect-Corbett-governor-19426

By Joel Mathis

– A labor war is brewing in Pennsylvania. Bills are circulating in Harrisburg that would ban the state from deducting union dues from the checks of public employees. Supporters say it would empower workers by making it easier for workers to opt out of unions; the unions and their allies say the bill is intended to undermine labor’s political power in Pennsylvania.

Rick Bloomingdale, president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, led a rally in Harrisburg Tuesday, bringing out several thousand workers to oppose the bill He spoke to Philly Mag afterward, about the bill, about labor’s strength in the state, and why public and private sector workers should be allies instead of enemies.

Some excerpts:

There is a proposed bill that would end the practice of the state collecting union dues for public sector employees. Why is this so alarming to you and your membership?

What it does is outlaw our right to negotiate dues collection at the bargaining table. It’s an attack on workers’ rights, and it’s an attempt to silence workers. They’ve worked 37 and a half or 40 hours or whatever it is their working week is, and that money is now theirs and they choose to have their dues deducted out of their paycheck. And we negotiate that, and the employers get something back to offset that. It’s a negotiation, a give and take.

One of the reasons that this historically has happened is because the employer didn’t want lots of union reps on the work site doing hand collection of dues. So we’ve gotten to this automatic deduction that’s negotiated.

Your website published a letter from the Commonwealth Foundation suggesting that the purpose of the legislation is to “slay labor unions in Pennsylvania.” This has been, until now at least, a pretty labor-friendly state. Are the stakes really that high?

They are that high. I mean, Wisconsin and Michigan were states with high union density as well. These billionaires, they come in and they they ask these conservative legislators to dance to their tune. And they do, for the money. And as a result, you get these things that weaken the voice of workers.

Just as an example, in Wisconsin, they want to move everybody to a seven-day work week with no pay on weekends, no guarantee that you’d have two days off in a row. It would be a straight seven-day work week. So we’ve always said, “We brought you the weekend,” and now you have right-wing politicians, as labor gets weaker in Wisconsin, trying to take away the weekends.

Let me play devil’s advocate for a second, or at least let me use Grover Norquist as devil’s advocate. He had an op-ed with Reuters here in the last couple of days, and he suggests that this legislation would empower workers by making it easier for them to choose not to pay union dues and let them choose whether they want union representation. Why is that notion wrong?

Well, because they’ve already chosen union representation. They voted the union in. And unlike elections of our politicians, where they need 50 percent plus one of the people voting, we need fifty percent plus one of the entire bargaining unit. So if you have a bargaining unit of one hundred people, we need f51 votes — not if only 60 people vote we don’t need 31 votes, we need 51 votes. That’s how union elections work.

So they’ve already made a decision that they want their dues taken out. We do get elected in these positions and Norquist, he’s just wrong.

Public unions in particular get a lot of grief these days. We’re in an era where private sector middle class salaries are shrinking or stagnant. There is, as a result of that perhaps, a fair amount of resentment at robust government sector salaries. And there’s also an additional concern about whether public sector pensions are unsustainable. Knowing that those sentiments are out there, what is your case to the public for the value of public unions?

Well, first of all, public salaries aren’t robust. The average public sector worker makes less than the average private sector worker doing the same kind of work. The idea that pensions aren’t sustainable, it’s only because workers’ wages have been stagnant. And the reason workers’ wages have been stagnant isn’t that our companies aren’t making enough — they’re sitting on billions of dollars of cash — the problem is that workers haven’t gotten a share of their increased productivity.

They pit worker against worker, union against non-union, black against white, woman against man, gay against straight — they are very adept at pitting workers against each other in order to make sure that they run off with the money. That’s the real problem here. It’s not some workers make a couple of hundred dollars a week more than other workers. The problem is you’ve got companies that are sitting on billions in cash, almost I guess it’s trillions in profits, and they are not sharing those profits with the workers who actually produced the goods that have made them all that money.

What are the chances that we are going to get a nuclear Wisconsin-style battle out of this debate?

Well, I hope not. We continue to work with Republicans and Democrats on this issue, and we hope that folks will see the truth. If they really do believe in the free market, then they should let employees and employers bargain without interference from the government to restrict which issues can and cannot be bargained. Why they would take something like dues deduction off the table, for management to get something back, is beyond me, but that’s what they want to do.

And, like I’ve said, we’ll keep pushing on this issue. We’re gonna keep fighting it.

Source: http://www.phillymag.com/news/2014/01/29/5-questions-can-labor-unions-survive-pennsylvania/