From Jobs With Justice

– Today, the New York Wage Board recommended raising the minimum wage for fast food employees to $15 an hour. The board said this increase should be implemented by 2018 in New York City and by 2021 in the rest of the state. If State Labor Commissioner Mario Musolino accepts its recommendation, nearly 180,000 New Yorkers who work in the fast-food industry will benefit from the policy.

The announcement is a clear sign that acting together and speaking up for one another for fair wages is paying off. Coming on the heels of major cities like Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles raising their minimum wage to $15 per hour, today’s decision by the Wage Board represents an important milestone in the national Fight for 15 movement. It was fast food workers in New York City, after all, who were the first to call for $15 nearly three years ago during their historic strike. Though it was audacious at the time, $15 has since become a rallying cry for working people across the economy, with home care aides, Walmart associates, and even adjunct professors including it among their demands.

New York is one of the few states that can enact a wage board to investigate and raise wages by industry. Governor Cuomo convened the wage board on fast food earlier this spring, shortly after an April 15th day of action that saw strikes and other actions in 200 cities across the country. The three-person board includes representatives of business (Kevin Ryan, chairman and founder of Gilt), labor (Mike Fishman, secretary-treasurer of SEIU) and the public (Byron Brown, the mayor of Buffalo).

The board members reached their decision after holding four hearings across the state, each of which drew hundreds to testify. At the Buffalo hearing, Coalition for Economic Justice led a rally of more than 500 fast food workers and allies from Western New York, while across the state at the Long Island hearing, the crowd of over 400 brought together by Long Island Jobs with Justice included strong labor and faith support. Public comment on the recommendations will be accepted for the next 45 days, after which Musolino will make the final decision.

For far too long, giant corporations like McDonald’s and Burger King have made it impossible for their employees to make ends meet, providing abysmally low wages and ignoring their collective demands for improving their workplaces with a union. The minimum wage in New York is just $8.75 an hour, far too little to raise a family in one of the most expensive states in the country. While opponents of minimum wage increases have long claimed that fast-food jobs are reserved for single teenagers who have few expenses, demographic analysis of the New York workforce proves them wrong. The average age of a fast-food employee in the state is 29 and nearly 40 percent have children. Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour means these men and women will not have to struggle so hard to meet their families’ basic needs.

”I’m not expecting to get rich off of $15 an hour,” McDonald’s employee Amanda Monroe said. “Just the ability to survive and take care of my family.”

This announcement is big news for everyone in New York, not just fast-food employees. When fast food companies refuse to pay a living wage, employees and their families are forced to rely on public assistance just to get by. In New York, 60 percent of fast-food employees receive public assistance. A study from the Labor Center at the University of California Berkeley found that states are spending $25 billion per year on public assistance programs provided to working families. That’s $25 billion of taxpayer money subsidizing wealthy corporations that refuse to pay their employees a living wage.

“Low wages in the fast-food industry cost New York taxpayers $700 million a year,” said Rev. Kirk Laubenstein, Executive Director at the Coalition for Economic Justice. “Fifteen dollars an hour for fast-food workers will relieve New York taxpayers of a huge public assistance bill.”

Putting additional dollars into the pockets of the people employed by the fast-food giants will also stimulate our out-of-balance economy. At a press conference last month, business representative Kevin Ryan explained that raising fast-food wages will lead to increased spending and potentially job creation. As fewer taxpayer dollars are shuttled towards subsidizing giant corporations’ low wages, more consumer dollars will be poured into the economy. Most importantly, the hardworking men and women who cook our food and ring up our orders will be able to care for their families and live decent lives. Everyone wins!

The willingness of New York State to use the wage board process to raise standards for the fast food industry opens up yet another potential strategy for the Fight for $15 movement, which has seen victories already through ballot initiatives, legislation and collective bargaining. Whether the NY wage board will move on to other industries is yet to be seen, but with 35,000 homecare aides in Massachusetts set to see a raise to $15 through their latest collective bargaining agreement, and ballot measures are underway in Portland, OR and Washington, D.C., it’s clear that the national movement shows no signs of slowing down. Rallies and events have just been announced to spread momentum for $15 and a better life across the country, click here to join an event near you.

Source – http://www.jwj.org/victory-ny-fast-food-wage-board-recommends-15-minimum-wage

By Hunter

– I find Jeb Bush’s consistent wrongness on basic economic and labor issues baffling. Not that he is so often wrong, but that he seems to put so much work into it.

Jeb Bush has created a flap with another statement about American workers. In an appearance in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Tuesday, he said Barack Obama’s proposal to expand overtime pay to millions more managers and white-collar workers would result in “less overtime pay” and “less wages earned.”

The problem, obviously, is that Bush’s statement is hokum. Closing the very frequently abused loophole that allows employers to require employees to work overtime hours with no overtime pay simply by declaring them so-called “exempt” managers will not result in reduced overtime or reduced wages. And experts in the field can’t even parse out where Bush is getting his abuse-of-workers-is-an-economic-win notions, much less Bush’s additional strange claim that the law promoting stronger worker overtime protections “won’t allow” employee bonuses.

Daniel Hamermesh, a University of Texas labor economist, said: “He’s just 100% wrong,” adding that “there will be more overtime pay and more total earnings” and “there’s a huge amount of evidence employers will use more workers.” […]

Ross Eisenbrey, a vice-president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-of-center research group, said: “Bush should be embarrassed about how misinformed he was.” Eisenbrey said the proposed rules do nothing whatsoever to bar employers from paying bonuses. “All of that is exactly wrong – and pretty much nonsense,” he said. Eisenbrey and Bernstein wrote a seminal article that helped persuade the Obama administration to change overtime rules.

Between this and his previous insistence that what the American economy really needed is for you workers to simply “work longer hours,” Jeb Bush seems to be aggressively obtuse on economic policy issues—as if his entire economic advisory team is made up of Montgomery Burns and Rich Uncle Pennybags.

Again, it’s not particularly surprising that Jeb Bush, of the Trickle-Down Bush school of economics, would believe that laws restricting the corporate exploitation of workers via an IRS loophole would be a dreadful burden on the ability of our magnanimous and benevolent job-creators to job create most effectively. I would not, however, have expected him to take such baldly anti-worker public stances. That suggests he’s still so mired in catering to the donor class that he has pursued exclusively, up until this point in the race, that he’s finding it difficult to switch to the more nuanced, theoretically populist rhetoric of an actual public campaign. Let them eat cake is what you say in the back rooms, complaining about the shiftless 47 percent and their shiftless ways. You’re not supposed to say that stuff when you’re propped up on a public stage.

Source – http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/20/1403990/-Jeb-Bush-says-preventing-unpaid-overtime-abuses-will-hurt-workers-What-planet-is-this-guy-from

By The PA. AFL-CIO

– Tom Conway, Vice President of the United Steelworkers International Union offers insights from labor negotiations in metals, rubber, paper, oil, chemicals and other industries at the Battle of Homestead Foundation’s Bernard Kleiman Lecture

Pittsburgh, PA: American industrial workers face formidable challenges from voracious foreign corporate competitors, and also home-grown anti-labor forces, said Tom Conway, United Steelworkers vice president and top union negotiator in steel, oil, aluminum and other key sectors. Yet there are encouraging signs as well, with promising new alliances and young union workers increasingly leading the union charge.

Conway shared his perspective with more than 60 people attending the annual Bernard Kleiman Lecture, named in honor of the former Steelworkers Union chief counsel, who also led many union negotiations. The Saturday afternoon, July 11th, event was hosted by the Battle of Homestead Foundation at the 19th Century “Pump House” building, the sole-surviving structure of the Homestead, PA, steel mill.

Conway was a worker and elected union officer at the sprawling Bethlehem Steel plant in Burns Harbor, IN, gaining experience representing industrial workers in negotiations to maintain and improve living and safety standards. Conway is now a respected expert on international trade and its effect on U.S. manufacturing and jobs. He has testified before Congress on many trade issues.

He spoke at the Homestead event in stark terms about the “continuing threat” of unchecked imports on domestic industrial production, and resulting pressure on workers seeking improvements. The Steelworkers’ vice president expressed indignation that young people face fewer job opportunities and that plant shutdowns are “tearing the fabric of one industrial community after another.”

Corporate competitors, frequently from China, have increasingly used espionage, patent and technology theft, threats, deception, and unequal backing from their own governments to take away markets from American steel and other producers. Conway was specific in not blaming every-day Chinese workers for unethical employers. But with John L. Lewis-like disdain, Conway lambasts United States government officials for repeated failure to safeguard the livelihoods of millions of American citizens.

He laid out a vision of an economy where the interests of working families and their communities are properly appreciated and protected, and imported products are checked at all borders, with tariffs in place to make up for any unfair advantages or disadvantages. He outlined the complex and frequently ineffectual trade rules that are currently in place.

Conway captured the audience’s attention – including local students, union members, educators, retirees and history buffs – drawing comparisons between the recent actions of an Allegheny River Valley steel company that is trying to gut the union contract for thousands of workers, and the better-known campaign of Frick and Carnegie in 1892 seeking to crush the workers’ movement in Homestead.

ATI, also known as Allegheny Ludlum or Teledyne, has readied a multi-million dollar war chest for its anti-union campaign. ATI management has brought in paramilitary strikebreakers to five Pennsylvania steel towns, seeking to intimidate union workers, who nonetheless remain resilient and ready to fight back. And like the steel barons of old, ATI bosses demand a broad array of cutbacks, elimination of overtime pay and other hard-won benefits. Conway says the new “company line” from contract talks is that the steel firm no longer wants any “obligations” towards retired workers – who spent their lives making steel there – whatsoever.

Union workers at ATI are mounting an impressive campaign to defend their union and their voice in the workplace. Conway says “shame” can dissuade such belligerent employers. But “overshadowing” this dispute is the fact that “50% of stainless flat rolled steel (ATI’s main product) is imported now.” Like others, this company is facing unprecedented competitive pressure, and it’s trying to make up the difference at the expense of American workers.

Conway warned of dangers to the American people if political leaders allow the gutting of the nation’s industrial might, and also the “fallacy” of economists who think America’s economy and well-being can be sustained “by the buying and selling and trading of money.” He said the rules, or the lack thereof, causing this massive “hemorrhaging” of decent-paying jobs “are all a result of man-made laws, not an unobstructed free market.”

Even with the pressures facing working people and their unions, Conway pointed to many hopeful and positive developments. Young industrial workers are proving themselves capable and determined union leaders, as witnessed in last year’s oil industry strikes, where a new generation took command on the picket lines. He said the labor movement as a whole is “holding together” with demands for immediate action for fair trade, opposing the Trans Pacific Partnership and insisting on a level playing field. This point was affirmed by AFL-CIO Allegheny County Labor Council President Jack Shea at the event.

Conway said that labor has identified and gained many strong new political allies in recent fights. And with corporations and banks expanding from nation to nation, he spoke optimistically about the growing bonds between American unions and unions in countries around the world.

He feels the public is increasingly and rightfully outraged when unfair competition that drains America’s strength is revealed, such as last year when Chinese corporate-government-military computer hackers were discovered searching the emails of numerous local companies for industrial secrets, even vetting the emails of the Pittsburgh-based Steelworkers Union. Also worthy of indignation is the recent loss of advanced engineering innovations from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. “Once the technology and methodology was developed at Lehigh, U.S. companies transferred the technology to China which then developed the new bridge building industry and has exported it around the world.”

Even some top U.S.-based companies shy away from a strong public stand on trade issues, Conway said, for fear of reprisal by unethical foreign competitors. He feels this makes industrial unions all the more important as a reliable voice for working people on trade justice. The USW and some U.S. companies are promoting the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a group pushing for fair trade, rebuilding America’s infrastructure and the creation of a national manufacturing strategy. Tom Conway urges vigilance and solidarity on the issue of protecting good-paying American jobs and the industries that sustain them.

Howard Scott

Source – http://www.paaflcio.org/?p=6187

By The American Postal Worker’s Union

– WASHINGTON – The collapse of a planned merger between Sysco and US Foods puts a similar merger of office-supply giants Staples and Office Depot in serious jeopardy, says the American Postal Workers Union (APWU).

“The Federal Trade Commission made a very strong case against the Sysco/US Foods merger,” said APWU President Mark Dimondstein. “Swap out the words ‘food service distribution’ and replace them with ‘office-supply distribution’ and you have a description of the Staples/Office Depot deal. The same arguments prevail.”

Sysco abandoned its merger plans after a federal judge granted an injunction requested by the FTC, and will now pay more than $300 million to exit the deal.

“It’s clear that Staples and Office Depot is now in serious jeopardy,” said Dimondstein. “Both companies should cut their losses and get out of this bad deal sooner rather than later. Right now, they are wasting time and money trying to create an illegal monopoly that will reduce choices and raise prices for consumers, businesses and governments.”

On June 23, U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta upheld the FTC’s request for an injunction to block the merger of Sysco and US Foods, which are the two largest suppliers of food and supplies to U.S. restaurants, hospitals, schools and other customers.

An analysis of Judge Mehta’s decision in FTC v. Sysco Corp., carried out by APWU’s attorneys, shows striking similarities between the failed merger of two food-service giants and the proposed merger of Staples and Office Depot.

Judge Mehta summarized his decision by citing a previous case about a merger of organic supermarkets:

“[T]here can be little doubt that the acquisition of the second largest firm in the market by the largest firm in the market will tend to harm competition in that market.”

The same sentence could have been written about Staples, the largest firm in the office-supply superstore market, and Office Depot, the second largest firm.

In attempting to defend its failed merger proposal, Sysco used many of the same defenses Staples has raised in support of its planned merger with Office Depot. For example, Sysco argued that there are many types of food-service distributors and, therefore, many markets with various competitors. But Judge Mehta ruled in favor of the FTC, holding that the relevant market had to be defined more narrowly, by distinct customer needs.

Customers who need one-stop shopping and immediate delivery cannot be grouped together with those served by different forms of distribution. This differentiates Internet retailers from brick-and-mortar office-supply stores.

A compelling similarity between the Sysco-US Foods and Staples-Office Depot mergers is that both would result in a single broad line supply chain for national customers. National customers – including Fortune 500 companies and local, state and federal units of government – negotiate long-term supply contracts with Staples and Office Depot.

Internet retailers and regional suppliers do not compete in this large business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-government (B2G) market. Therefore, a merger of Staples and Office Depot would leave just one company as the only source of large-scale office-supply contracts – the very definition of a monopoly that U.S. anti-trust laws are intended to prevent.

The FTC is currently reviewing the proposed Staples and Office Depot merger and has requested additional information from both companies.

The APWU has opposed the merger due to the negative impact of reduced choice and higher prices on union members, other consumers and U.S. businesses and governments.

In May, the union released “No Sale: Why the Staples Office/Depot Merger Should Be Blocked.”
In June, union representatives met with the FTC to discuss key findings of the report.
On June 12, APWU representatives attended the Office Depot shareholders meeting and briefed South Florida media about its concerns about the proposed merger.

# # #

The American Postal Workers Union represents 200,000 employees of the United States Postal Service, and is affiliated with the AFL-CIO. For more information on the APWU, visit www.apwu.org
– See more at: http://www.apwu.org/news/press-release/failed-syscous-foods-merger-puts-staplesoffice-depot-deal-%E2%80%98serious-jeopardy%E2%80%99-says#sthash.a8VPRklG.nACDL4IM.dpuf

Source – http://www.apwu.org/news/press-release/failed-syscous-foods-merger-puts-staplesoffice-depot-deal-%E2%80%98serious-jeopardy%E2%80%99-says

By The PA. AFL-CIO

– What started as an ordinary work day at a sewage treatment plant, quickly went wrong. Franklin Pound, who usually worked in the concrete pit at the Sewickley Borough facility was installing a pipeline a short distance away when he heard a commotion. Pound, along with two other workers, rushed to the scene, hoping to lend a helping hand, only to find that they were too late. They found the victim, a fellow worker at the plant, dead at the bottom of the concrete pit. The men, with immense heaviness, began to climb the ladder that led out of the pit. Pound, however, was unable to make it the whole way. He was overwhelmed by a cloud of methane gas, causing a 20 foot free fall that resulted in numerous injuries to his body.

The unfortunate rescue attempt resulted in hefty hospital bills, which Pound hoped to settle through the help of worker’s compensation. Pipeline Systems Inc., Pound’s employer, along with the Continental Western Insurance Company pushed to appeal the claim. They declared that Pound was not performing his assigned duties. The insurance company based their appeal on the claim that Pound’s “compulsion to act as a Good Samaritan was not employment-related,” according to Senior Commonwealth Court Judge James Gardner Colins, who ultimately presided over the case.

Take a moment to think about that claim – essentially that Pound should have ignored an industrial accident 30 feet away from where he was working, and not tried to render assistance to a fellow worker who had been severely injured.

Thankfully, common sense and basic human decency won a victory this week in the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court, when Judge Colins found that Pound’s participation in the rescue attempt fell “within the course and scope of his employment.” He, along with a Commonwealth Court panel, rejected arguments made by Pound’s employer. Because of Colins’ idea of justice and equality, Pound was able to be reimbursed for his attempts to rescue the life of a fellow worker. Colins explained that Pound’s “attempts to render aid to another do not, in and of themselves, constitute an abandonment of employment.”

Remember this case when someone asks “why bother to vote in these judicial elections?” Having good judges on the bench impacts the lives of workers every day in Pennsylvania. If a different judge – one who tended to side more often with business than with workers – had presided over this case, the results could have been disasterous. That’s because a case like the one of Franklin Pound not only impacts the worker bringing suit, it also sets a precedent that makes every employer in the State take notice.

The Pennsylvania AFL-CIO has made endorsements in all of the Statewide Judicial elections coming up in November, supporting David Wecht, Kevin Dougherty, and Christine Donohue for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Please CLICK HERE for a complete list of all of our endorsements, and protect your rights as a worker by voting in November and by encouraging all of your co-workers, friends, and family members to do the same!

Source – http://www.paaflcio.org/?p=6143