– AFSCME District Council 33 is hosting a Food for Families Holiday Food Drive from now through January 8, 2014. Help them help families in need this holiday season! Please bring NON-perishable items to the Drop Boxes on the main floor and the 4th floor of the DC 33 Offices located at: 3001 Walnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19104

HIGH PRIORITY ITEMS INCLUDE: Canned or shelf-stable tuna, Macaroni & Cheese, Canned pasta, Canned beef stew, Creamy peanut butter, Canned chili, Jelly, Canned green beans, Canned corn, Canned fruit, Breakfast Cereal and Hot Cereal

Help a Family in Need This Holiday Season with AFSCME District Council 33!

Source: http://www.afscme33.org/index.cfm?action=article&articleID=f6774120-e45e-48fc-9846-803343fe4a9b

By AP / Josh Boak

— U.S. workers boosted their productivity from July through September at the fastest pace since the end of 2009, adding to signs of stronger economic growth.

The Labor Department said Monday that productivity increased at a 3 percent annual rate in the third quarter. That’s up from an initial estimate of 1.9 percent and much stronger than the 1.8 percent rate from April through June.

Productivity rose because economic growth was much stronger than previously estimated in the third quarter. Productivity is the amount of output per hour of work.

Labor costs fell in the third quarter, evidence that inflation will remain low.

Higher productivity enables companies to pay employees more without sparking inflation. But greater productivity can also slow hiring if it shows companies don’t need more workers to boost output.

However, productivity growth has been mostly flat over the past year. That’s because the gains from the past six months have been offset by declines in previous six months.

Worker productivity is improving along with economic growth. Hiring has accelerated since the summer and wages are gradually rising. The economy grew a 3.6 percent annual rate in the third quarter, much faster than the 2.8 percent rate previously estimated.

But productivity gains have slowed in the past three years after jumping in the aftermath of the recession. Worker productivity grew just 1.5 percent in 2012 and 0.5 percent in 2011. Those gains followed much healthier increases of 3.3 percent in 2010 and 3.2 percent in 2009. But productivity improved because companies ramped up output after having laid off many workers during the Great Recession.

The Federal Reserve monitors productivity and labor costs for any signs that inflation could pick up. Mild inflation has allowed the Fed to keep short-term interest rates at record lows and to buy bonds to try to keep long-term rates down. Fed officials meet Tuesday and Wednesday to assess their stimulus policies.

Read more: U.S. Worker Output Rises at Best Pace in 4 Years | TIME.com http://business.time.com/2013/12/16/u-s-worker-output-rises-at-best-pace-in-4-years/#ixzz2neX6abXr

Source: http://business.time.com/2013/12/16/u-s-worker-output-rises-at-best-pace-in-4-years/

In Their Memory – On this, the one year anniversary of the tragedy in Newtown, Philly Labor dedicates all posts to the memory of the brave teachers and beautiful children who senselessly lost their lives that day.

In honor of them, WE WILL NEVER FORGET AND WE SHALL FIGHT TO MAKE SURE WE DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO PREVENT IT FROM HAPPENING AGAIN!

Fight For Safer Schools! Protect our Children and our Teachers!

By Heather Boushey, Jane Farrell, and John Schmitt

– Twenty years ago, the Family and Medical Leave Act, or FMLA, was signed into law. The FMLA granted certain workers new and important rights, including the ability to take up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave after a birth or adoption, but it fell short in at least two important respects. First, the leave guaranteed under the law is unpaid, making it difficult for many covered workers to take advantage of their new rights. Second, the FMLA does not cover about 40 percent of the American workforce. These workers don’t meet the law’s eligibility criteria, the most important of which are requirements that the worker have been on the job for at least 1,250 hours in the year preceding the leave and that the worker’s employer have at least 50 employees. Moreover, since employers mostly control access to time off and there are no federal laws that set minimum standards, time off has been seen as a perk for higher-paid employees. Thus, even within the same firm, some workers may have more access to time off, or paid time off, than others.

Without downplaying the historical significance of the FMLA’s guarantee of job-protected leave for a majority of U.S. workers, this review of Census Bureau data from the first two decades of the FMLA suggests that the law had a limited impact on the frequency of parental leave and no impact on the likelihood that parental leave is paid.

For the women workers between the ages of 16 and 44 that we focus on here, the usage rate of parental leave—whether covered by the FMLA or not—is low. In any given week, about 0.7 percent of women in this age range are away from work to care for a newborn or recently adopted child. This rate has remained remarkably stable over the last 20 years, with no trend toward greater use of parental leave in the wake of the FMLA.

The share of women taking parental leave is low across groups defined by age and education. Even so, disparities between these groups are still large and persistent. College-educated women, particularly those in full-time and union jobs, are much more likely to take parental leave than less-educated, part-time, nonunion women.

Even two decades after the FMLA, so few men take parental leave that they are almost undetectable in the large government survey that we analyze here. By our estimates, over the past five years, nine women took parental leave for every man who did so.

The story is similar when we look at the share of workers whose parental leave is paid. Less than half of workers on parental leave are paid for their time off—a proportion that has not changed in any meaningful way over the past two decades. Older and better-educated women in full-time and union jobs are much more likely to be paid while taking parental leave, but even among college-educated women, only a little more than half are paid during their parental leave. The small share of men who do take parental leave, however, are substantially more likely than women to be paid during that leave.

We analyze data from the Census Bureau’s large, nationally representative Current Population Survey, or CPS. The CPS gathers detailed information on a wide range of household demographics and labor market activities. We focus on worker absences where parental leave was cited as the reason for absence from work and on whether that leave was paid. While this analysis does not tell us whether the individual was covered by the FMLA or whether the pay they are receiving is only for family-leave benefits (as opposed to accrued paid sick or vacation leave), it is still valuable in understanding how rates of use of parental leave have changed in the two decades since the passage of the FMLA. Two additional limitations are that the CPS only started asking respondents about parental leave in 1994—which means we cannot compare before and after the implementation of the FMLA—and that it only identifies workers who took at least a full week of leave away from work. We explain these limitations more fully in our “Data and methodology” section.

Source: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/labor/report/2013/12/12/80889/job-protection-isnt-enough/

From the PA. AFL-CIO (Richard W. Bloomingdale, President – Frank Snyder, Secretary-Treasurer)

– Closing federal tax loopholes, enacting tax fairness provisions would raise revenue and support job growth in Pennsylvania

Today the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 13 and the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO released a study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) that found 152,077 jobs could be created in the Pennsylvania. As a special Congressional budget committee reached a tentative agreement that must be approved by Congress, before adjourning for 2013, the analysis, “The Perfect Match for Pennsylvania: Coupling tax fairness with Job Creation for a Stronger Economy,” shows how enacting three tax proposals would spur job growth in Pennsylvania.

The last congressional battle over budget priorities led tea party politicians to shut down the government and keep America from paying its bills. Members like Congressmen Keith Rothfus (R-12) and Mike Fitzpatrick (R-8) could support closing federal tax loopholes for corporations and Wall Street and making sure everyone pays their fair share of taxes. Instead, Rothfus and Kirkpatrick continue to support a budget that ends Medicare and Medicaid as we know them and would force deep cuts to Social Security.

“While middle class and working class Pennsylvanians are suffering, the federal government is helping billion dollar corporations and the very wealthy make exorbitant amounts of money through tax breaks and loopholes. Congress needs to make American families their priority and that starts with supporting tax fairness,” said Rick Bloomingdale, President of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, during today’s conference call.

The three initiatives; closing corporate tax loopholes, making the wealthy pay their fair share, and making Wall St. bankers pay a fee on trades, could create 3.3 million jobs nationally and 152,077 jobs here in the Commonwealth. According to the EPI study, pairing job creation policies with permanent tax changes would substantially reduce the country’s deficits over the medium and long term, providing a better economic future for Pennsylvania and the nation.

To read the full analysis go to: https://afl.salsalabs.com/o/4002/c/51/images/PerfectMatchPennsylvania.pdf

Source: http://www.paaflcio.org/?p=3249