By Jobs With Justice

– Google is a multibillion-dollar corporation, yet workers at its Google Express warehouses can barely make ends meet. They say they’ve been pressured to work at unsafe speeds, in poor conditions, and with damaged equipment. That’s why they’re standing together for decent wages and a decent life.

Lazslo Bock, Google’s senior vice president for “people operations” is on the record saying that Google employees and contractors “have a legal right to organize without fear of retaliation.” But without pressure from people like you, we can’t count on Google to live up to those words.

Will you stand with the Google Express workers as they join together for a better workplace? Make sure Google knows you support its employees’ right to speak up for each other with a union. To Send your message, Go To: http://afl.salsalabs.com/o/4023/c/33/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=10360&tag=15812EM

Source – http://afl.salsalabs.com/o/4023/c/33/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=10360&tag=15812EM

By The Philly Public Record

– Sen. Vincent Hughes (D-W. Phila.) released the following statement in response to Pennsylvania House Speaker Mike Turzai’s recent comments on state budget negotiations:

“I am disappointed by recent comments made by Turzai, who once again tried to link the issue of education funding to the privatization of our highly profitable state liquor-store system.

“Republicans refuse to seriously address education funding or property-tax relief, two of the most-important issues. We know test scores are dropping, critical educational programs are being cut, and over 20,000 public-school employees have been laid off across the state. It’s unacceptable to hold our schoolchildren hostage for an ideological agenda that is a bad deal for the people of Pennsylvania. Republicans simply cannot run from the basic fact that education funding is the top priority for the people of Pennsylvania.

“It’s also a complete fantasy that there are Democratic votes in the Senate to override Governor Wolf’s veto of the phony Republican budget. Senate Democrats stand united to fight for a state budget that fully funds the needs of Pennsylvania, including public education. The Republican budget fails that test by only providing $8 million in additional funding for public schools.

“It’s time for Republicans to come back to the negotiating table and start talking compromise. Together, we can find a path to a state budget that addresses the many needs of Pennsylvania in a way that works for the entire Commonwealth. However, that agreement must include significant new dollars for public education to win any Democratic votes.”

Hughes is the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Source – http://www.phillyrecord.com/2015/08/heard-on-the-hillin-city-hall-hughes-slams-republicans-tying-ed-funds-to-lcb/

BY Pam Galpern

– Verizon wants to drive down costs, shrink its union workforce even further, and get out of the landline business. But in negotiations this summer it’s coming head-to-head with its unions, who want to protect gains won through decades of struggle.

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) began bargaining a new contract in June for 38,000 telecom workers in the Northeast from Maine to Virginia. (Full disclosure: The author works for Verizon and is a member of CWA.)

The company raked in $9.6 billion in profits last year, and paid its top five executives $44 million. Yet it opened bargaining with a laundry list of giveback demands.

It wants to eliminate job security language (which permits layoffs only in very specific circumstances), downsize retirement plans, allow more outsourcing, raise members’ health care contributions, increase how long and how far workers can be transferred, and take away the unions’ right to negotiate retiree health care.

After the first day, hundreds of members marched through Rye, New York, to the hotel where negotiations are being held.

“Enough is enough,” said Keith Purce, CWA Local 1101 president. “It’s time for the top executives to take the hit, instead of having the workers give back.”

“This corporation is making a ton of money on the network, and the revenue that’s been produced over the years by the wireline workers is now being dumped into all these other areas [like wireless] that they don’t want the union workers to be a part of,” said Ed Starr, business manager of IBEW Local 2321.

The unions are preparing for a possible strike. Members are holding informational pickets at Verizon garages before work, taking strike votes, building alliances to pressure the company to build FiOS, and highlighting the link between job cuts and customer service quality decline.

In mobilization trainings, CWA members are coming off the job for a day to discuss industry changes, bargaining strategy, and mobilization tactics. A big CWA/IBEW rally is planned in New York City for July 25, one week before the contract expires.

Jobs and quality

Verizon workers aren’t just up against one company. They’re fighting an industrywide corporate agenda that sidelines consumers and threatens to eliminate union jobs.

Most significantly, Verizon doesn’t want to be in the landline business anymore.

In 2005 the company’s landline division, which installs and maintains copper and fiber lines, employed 173,000 workers. By 2016 there will be fewer than 66,000.

It’s true that more households are going to wireless-only phone service: 44 percent last year, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, with another 15 percent “mostly wireless.”

But customers, streaming more content than ever, are also looking for reliable Internet connections. Verizon’s landline division is still profitable, largely because of its fiber product, FiOS, a dedicated high-speed Internet, phone, and video connection to the customer’s home.

High-speed Internet service is increasingly a universal necessity. And since FiOS is built and maintained by union workers, it’s also a source of good jobs.

Nonetheless, Verizon has announced it doesn’t intend to continue building FiOS—prompting CWA to join forces with consumer advocates and elected officials in the “Where’s my FiOS?” campaign.

Even wireless technology still runs over landlines, as workers are quick to point out.

“They can talk all the shenanigans they want,” said Denise Campbell, a central office technician and Local 1101 steward in Manhattan. “Without landlines there is no wireless. A lot of people don’t know that. They still need us. We have to fight, or they’ll take everything we have.”

Verizon’s trajectory toward becoming strictly wireless is a choice. The company could stay in the landline business, while growing wireless at the same time, and still be profitable. It’s just choosing not to.

The industry is changing fast, largely because of deregulation. The 1996 Telecommunications Act changed or eliminated many of the rules that used to rein in corporate behavior.

Because it can, CWA says, Verizon is abandoning its copper lines and letting service quality slide. FiOS may be the future, but thousands of customers are still on copper lines.

Under past regulations, Verizon was heavily fined if customers were left out of service for more than 24 hours. In 2004 the company was fined $50 million in New York.

But in 2005 the state’s Public Service Commission eliminated the mandatory fines. And in 2010 Verizon got the PSC to agree that “core” customers (elderly, lifeline, and other “special cases”) were the only ones it had to ensure weren’t out of service more than 24 hours.

While landline is still somewhat regulated, wireless is entirely unregulated.

The company has also fought hard to keep Verizon Wireless non-union. A hundred technicians in New York City were the only ones unionized until last year’s breakthrough, when 70 workers at six Brooklyn wireless retail stores joined CWA. Retail workers at an Everett, Massachusetts, store followed suit.

CWA is bargaining the wireless technicians’ and retail workers’ contracts alongside the larger landline contract.

Another threat is Verizon’s ongoing drive to outsource call center jobs.

“The company wants to move call center work to vendors, either in the U.S. or in other countries like India and Mexico. They want to be able to do whatever they want with the calls, and we’re fighting to keep all our work here,” said Don Trementozzi, CWA Local 1400 president.

Overall, Verizon in 2005 was nearly 70 percent union. Today it’s about 27 percent.

On the job, landline workers’ daily experience has changed radically. In recent years the company is taking a much more aggressive approach to transfers, assigned weekend work, discipline, and employee monitoring.

Many upstate workers have been on consecutive weeks-long rotations to New York City, away from their families much of the year.

“Due to the company’s consolidating and closing work centers, we have people who are traveling a couple hours each way, all over Massachusetts and Rhode Island, to get to work every day,” Starr said.

Managers track technicians’ every move through GPS, often calling customers to question them and compare their answers to timesheets.

“I treat every customer like family. And/or a company spy,” said one technician.

This atmosphere, combined with the uncertainty created by sales rumors and the company’s clear intention to get out of landline, has created an extremely stressful work environment.

Fighting deregulation

Each step to deregulate the industry also weakens the unions’ bargaining power. So fighting for stronger regulations is key to the contract campaign.

New York’s PSC still has the ability to force some changes. For instance, when Verizon tried to make VoiceLink the only option for customers on Fire Island, the PSC ruled against the company in 2013, after a campaign by CWA and advocacy groups—though that fight is far from over.

CWA has been pushing state legislation that would protect workers and consumers in the event of a landline sale, and reinstitute fines when customers are out of service more than 24 hours.

Union members have picketed in Albany, delivered thousands of handwritten letters to the PSC, and spoken with legislators about how deregulation is hurting customers and workers.

In June the PSC announced it will hold eight public hearings across New York to assess the impact of deregulation on the industry—hearings that CWA and consumer-advocate groups requested in 2014.

CWA is mobilizing members and retirees to attend. Union reps will testify on what job cuts have meant for workers and customer service.

The fact that Verizon landline hasn’t hired in so long means almost everyone has worked there at least 15 years. These are longtime union members who came of age in an era when mobilization forged strong contracts. Almost everyone has been on strike at one time or another.

Workplace mobilization is still essential. But it has to be part of the larger campaign for a full FiOS build, good jobs, and universal access to high-speed Internet.

This article first appeared on Labor Notes.

Source – http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/18263/good_jobs_on_the_line_in_verizon_rematch

By The PA. AFL-CIO

– On Thursday, July 30, 2015 workers employed by Bowhead Support Group LLC at Letterkenny Army Depot in Chambersburg, PA voted overwhelmingly to form their union with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, (IAM), in a union election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board.

The group of nearly 1,000 workers at Letterkenny includes welders, electricians, and machinists in addition to vehicle equipment repair technicians. The vote was 485-144 in favor of the IAM. Under NLRB rules, results are determined by a simple majority of those casting ballots.

Stagnant wages, reduced benefits and sharp increases in healthcare costs were among the key issues that triggered the year-long organizing effort. Additional issues included job bidding and arbitrary layoffs without regard to seniority or ability.

“I’ve been a union member at another employer, and I’ve seen first-hand how collective bargaining can stabilize a workplace and give workers a voice on the job,” said Terry “T-bone” Young, a 7 1/2 –year Warehouse Specialist at the Letterkenny facility. “The only real way to protect our wages, healthcare benefits and seniority rights is with an IAM contract.”

Eastern Territory General Vice President Lynn Tucker, Jr. stated, “I’d like to welcome the new members of Bowhead. They recognized that IAM representation and a collective bargaining agreement as the best way to improve their careers and the economic security of their families. This campaign had to overcome some very large hurdles to be successful, and I extend my thanks to GLR Gary Anthony, the Eastern Territory Staff, and District 1 DBR Danny Chmelko, his staff, the Grand Lodge Organizing Department and the Districts, Locals that assisted in this organizing effort.”

President Bloomingdale and Secretary-Treasurer Snyder called it another huge victory for the entire labor movement but especially for these workers who will now have the strength that comes with having a collective voice on the job.

On behalf of our affiliates and our Vice Presidents we congratulate the workers, the leadership, and the staff of the IAM in their huge victory which is not only important to them but is just as huge for the entire labor movement. “This victory demonstrates what working people can form their union in spite of the obstacle and hurdles they may confront. It provides additional momentum as we move forward in rebuilding our labor movement and the middle class,” Bloomingdale said.

Secretary-Treasurer Snyder described the huge the victory as another big step in rebuilding the labor movement in Pennsylvania which is needed to bring fairness and dignity to all workers. “Every working family that believes in coming together to improve their lives is celebrating your success. Let us know if we may be of any assistance in getting your first contract,” Snyder said.

The Pennsylvania AFL-CIO along with several unions sent letters of endorsement to help let the workers know they had the support of thousands of workers in their area and across Pennsylvania.

Source – http://www.paaflcio.org/?p=6227

By Richard Harris

– A Yale University study analyzed the experience of 60 million Americans covered by traditional Medicare between 1999 and 2013, and found “jaw-dropping improvements in almost every area,” the lead author says.
Ann Cutting/Getty Images

Here’s a bit of good news for Medicare, the popular government program that’s turning 50 this week. Older Americans on Medicare are spending less time in the hospital; they’re living longer; and the cost of a typical hospital stay has actually come down over the past 15 years, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Doctors, hospitals and government administrators have put a lot of effort into making Medicare more efficient in the past 15 years. Dr. Harlan Krumholz and colleagues at Yale University took on a study to see whether that effort has paid off.

“The results were rather remarkable,” says Krumholz, a cardiologist and leading health care researcher. “We found jaw-dropping improvements in almost every area that we looked at.”

The researchers looked at the experience of 60 million older Americans covered by traditional Medicare between 1999 and 2013. They found that mortality rates dropped steadily during that time, and people were much less likely to end up in the hospital.

“If the rates had stayed the same in 2013 as they had been in 1999, we would have seen almost 3.5 million more hospitalizations in 2013,” Krumholz says.

“People who were being hospitalized were having much better outcomes after the hospitalization,” he says. “They had a much better chance of survival.”

And the average cost of a hospital stay dropped too, he says, from $3,290 to $2,801 in inflation-adjusted dollars over the 15-year period for patients in the traditional Medicare program. (Researchers couldn’t quantify the experience in Medicare Advantage, the managed-care alternative to Medicare).

Krumholz attributes the improvement to a wide variety of measures designed to boost patients’ health, from prevention programs to advances in medical care. He says some of the savings also came about because medical care shifted from hospitals to less expensive outpatient clinics.

“They’re pointing out a very good thing in the medical system,” says economist Craig Garthwaite at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He says the recession, which helped slow rising health care costs overall, apparently played a minor role in this story of Medicare.

Costs really are being contained, Garthwaite says. One other reason that’s happening is that the federal government is reimbursing hospitals and doctors less for treating Medicare patients.

“That’s an easy way to get control of medical spending in Medicare,” Garthwaite says, but “it’s just not something we can do in the private market, and we have to worry about how sustainable it is for the Medicare program overall.”

With the post-World War II baby boom now reaching retirement age, more and more people are turning 65 and becoming eligible for Medicare. That growth continues to drive up the overall cost of the program, even as that average cost per illness or hospitalization comes down. And as older Americans live longer lives, they use Medicare for more years than previous generations did.

Medicare is still running a bit of a deficit, but the situation is improving. The program’s trustees say its trust fund will be solvent through 2030. Some adjustments would be needed to keep the program in good financial health beyond that date.

Garthwaite says other recent trends could make matters worse, with one especially worrisome example being sharply rising drug prices.

“Some of these [new cancer] products are providing only a few months of life for several hundred thousand dollars,” he says. And the system doesn’t do a good job of making difficult judgments in situations like that.

Joseph Antos, an economist in health policy at the American Enterprise Institute, agrees that the good news from the Yale study doesn’t assure a rosy future. He’s concerned about the financial health of Medicare if, for example, an effective drug for Alzheimer’s disease is developed.

“I would argue that if anybody came up with an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s today, that treatment would be hailed as a major breakthrough and we wouldn’t be looking at the cost,” Antos says.

And that would almost certainly break the pattern that’s been documented over the past 15 years, where improving health has actually helped drive down the cost of medical care.

Source – http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/07/28/426740179/happy-50th-birthday-medicare-your-patients-are-getting-healthier