AFL-CIO

The UAW and American Axle Manufacturing have reached a tentative agreement to end a strike by 3,600 UAW members at American Axle plants in Michigan and New York. The workers have been on strike since Feb. 26. The tentative pact was announced late yesterday.

Says UAW President Gettelfinger:

Our members at American Axle have displayed extraordinary solidarity during this strike. the bargaining committee worked extremely hard to achieve this tentative agreement and they have voted to recommend it to the membership.

Relations between workers and employers don’t always have to be hostile and contentious. Yesterday, two awards at the 2008 America@Work Union Industries Show in Detroit prove that when corporations respect workers, everyone wins.

International Specialty Products (ISP) in Calvert City, Ky., and General Motors Powertrain (GMPT) in Defiance, Ohio, were honored with the 2008 Union Label and Service Trades Department's (UL&STD's) annual Labor-Management Awards.

Says UL&STD President Charles Mercer:

These two firms represent the best of modern labor-management cooperation, providing work environments that invite pride and participation among their workers while producing competitive products for a global marketplace.

Sen. John McCain took his campaign to Seattle and Bellevue, Wash., this week, and, as usual, he was confronted with AFL-CIO union members asking him for answers about the economy.

Union members in Washington State want to know what McCain’s role was in awarding a major military contract to a foreign company in March, costing good union jobs to the Seattle area and elsewhere. Workers in Washington are protesting the decision to outsource the building of an air tanker for the U.S. Air Force.

According to Time, McCain had a key role in the decision to send the air tanker contract overseas, and some of his current advisers, previously, were lobbyists for the European aviation company that won the contract. McCain also has a consistent record of voting for bad trade agreements that hurt workers.

Two new reports show today’s young workers are being squeezed by high costs of living and low or stagnant wages and they want the government to do more to solve this nation’s economic mess.

The Economic State of Young America by Demos presents a statistical study of the economic condition of young workers, and The Progressive Generation: How Young Adults Think About the Economy by the Center for American Progress (CAP) analyzes public polling of young workers. Click here for a copy of the Demos report and here for the CAP report.

Robert Masciola, deputy director of the AFL-CIO Center for Strategic Research, describes this week's Pulte shareholder meeting in the Detroit area.

Some 100 activists gathered on May 15 in Birmingham, Mich., at the annual shareholder meeting of Pulte Homes, with a straightforward message: Pulte must be held accountable for the conditions on its job sites!

Dissatisfied homeowners and workers were joined at the rally by supporters from the Detroit union movement, including many members of the Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA) and the Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT), along with members of the Detroit Metropolitan Interfaith Committee on Worker Issues and community supporters. Saundra Williams, president of the Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO, emceed the rally.

The House yesterday voted (256–166) a measure to help long-term jobless workers who face difficult times finding new work in the sputtering Bush economy with an extra 13 weeks to 26 weeks of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits. The UI extension was added to a supplemental spending bill to fund the war in Iraq.

Some 200,000 jobless workers a month exhaust their UI benefits without finding a new job and about 3.5 million unemployed workers will lose jobless benefits this year. The legislation would provide an additional 13 weeks of UI benefits for jobless workers in every state and an additional 13 weeks to those in states with high unemployment rates (more than 6 percent).

Poll after poll shows that most Americans believe this country is on the wrong track, going in the wrong direction. We’re worried about a failing health care system, stumbling economy, stagnant wages, disappearing jobs and an endless war.

How do we “Turn Around America?” Jesse from California says the first step in the right direction starts with each and every one of us. In his entry to the AFL-CIO’s Turn Around America Online Video Competition,” Jesse says:

Click on the video to see his full entry.

You still have time to enter the contest—the deadline is May 20.

Barbara Easterling, who in 1995 became the first female AFL-CIO officer when she was elected secretary-treasurer, has spent her life helping others. This week, she received two major accolades in recognition of her years of charitable work.

Last night, the United Way honored her with the Joseph Beirne Award for Community Service. Easterling, secretary-treasurer of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), stepped down from the United Way board last night, after serving on it for the past decade.

Earlier this week, the Faith & Politics Institute honored Easterling at its annual St. Joseph’s Day breakfast, calling her “a model of working people’s charitable commitment to human dignity in our communities and in the world.” The Faith & Politics Institute is a nonpartisan, interfaith organization to help public officials stay in touch with their deeper calling to public service. St. Joseph is the patron saint of the worker, and the institute's annual breakfast was founded to raise awareness of the spiritual and moral issues that affect economic life in America.

This week, while embarking on a national media tour, Sen. John McCain was asked directly about whether he’d privatize Social Security. Unfortunately, the presumptive Republican nominee didn’t offer any straight talk.

In an appearance on television’s "Live with Regis and Kelly," McCain offered confusing, vague remarks that don’t tell us where he really stands on retirement security. He denied that his plan meant privatization—and, in nearly the same sentence, backed private accounts. His comments aren’t consistent with his record and with other statements made during the campaign.

It leads to a clear question: Where does McCain stand on Social Security and the issues that matter to seniors?

John McCain paid a visit to Portland, Ore., this week. As usual, AFL-CIO union members came out to try to speak to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee about important issues—and, as usual, they were turned away.

In fact, McCain campaign aides were so unhappy to be confronted that they threatened these union members with arrest if they approached the room in which McCain was holding an event.

Tom Chamberlain, president of the Oregon AFL-CIO, says McCain has shown he’s not willing to listen to working families:

Alan Kistler, who held union cards as a hotel elevator operator, copy boy, cub reporter and steel mill laborer shoveling molten steel and spent 13 years as the director of the AFL-CIO's Organization and Field Services, died May 10 at his home in Silver Spring, Md. He was 87.

Said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney:

All of us in the union movement mourn the death of Alan Kistler, one of the most respected, creative, and best-loved leaders in our movement for more than a half-century.

Several thousand Detroit-area school kids will get a sneak peak at the 70th annual AFL-CIO Union Industries Show tomorrow when, before the doors open to the public, they get a preview of the more than 300 exhibits and interactive games at the Cobo Center.

The 2008 America@Work show, sponsored by AFL-CIO Union Label and Service Trades Department (UL&STD), runs through Sunday. It spotlights the skills and services of union workers throughout America and the Made-in-the-USA products they produce. The displays feature the latest technology and union craftsmanship.

A new report emphasizes the importance of a union contract for workers at every level, especially low-wage workers.

The report, The Union Advantage for Low-Wage Workers, released today by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), shows that union membership boosted the wages of workers on the bottom rung of the wage ladder (the 10th percentile) by 20.6 percent, from 2003 to 2007. For a worker at the 20th percentile, who earns less than 80 percent of the workforce, the boost from being a union member is 18.9 percent and for the average worker at the 30th percentile, the union benefit is 16.8 percent.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says:

For millions of workers who work hard and take home less to show for it, being part of a union that provides a say on the job is all the more important. This study proves that for workers on the bottom rungs of the pay scale, bargaining power is the best, and often only, means to gain a leg up to the middle class.

The United Steelworkers (USW) union has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for president. USW President Leo Gerard reported the union’s Executive Board unanimously voted to endorse Obama this morning.

The USW first endorsed former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) last summer. Edwards suspended his campaign in February and yesterday endorsed Obama.

Gerard says Obama will be a strong leader on working family issues and that he shares Edwards’ commitment to fair trade, workers’ rights and health care.

Sen. Obama’s call for a significant change of direction amounts to far more than a compelling rallying cry. It is buttressed by his record of consistent support for workers, by his call for sweeping changes to our health care system, by his unflinching support for Employee Free Choice, and by his insistence that America’s trade policies must, first and foremost, serve the interests of America’s working families.

The 800 office-technical and administrative-technical employees in Tulsa, Okla., now have a voice on the job after joining AFSCME Local 1180.

Says Laureen Gilroy, who works in the city’s Public Works Department:

Forming a union is our legal and democratic right, and we decided to exercise that right. Having a union means that we can work to improve conditions on the job and give employees a voice at work.

Guest workers who risked everything to come from India and work on the Gulf Coast, only to find abuse and injustice, now are risking the only thing they have left—their lives—to gain the justice they have been denied on the job.

The water-only hunger strike began today in Lafayette Park, across from the White House, with six of the more than 500 workers who came to this country beginning in 2006 in what turned out to be a human-trafficking scheme under the guise of the H-2B guest worker program. Some 30 more workers will join the hunger strike in two waves, on May 21 and on May 28.

The workers, who are welders and pipe fitters, paid $20,000 to recruiters who promised permanent residency and citizenship under the H-2B guest worker program, which business interests want to expand. When they got to this country, they say their employer, Signal International, held them in modern-day forced labor at its shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss. Signal makes the huge floating oil rigs for the offshore fields in the Gulf.

As the climate of fear and intimidation against union members continues in Colombia, the U.S. Congress must not approve the Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA), lawmakers and Colombian union leaders said today.

Seven Colombian trade union leaders traveled to the United States to lobby Congress to oppose the agreement. They say despite claims by the Bush administration and Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe that progress has been made in stemming the violence against union members, the reality is that violence has increased against labor leaders in Colombia.

Intensive care nurse Geri Jenkins says that a 67-year-old male patient with a history of four heart attacks, a quadruple bypass and an implanted defibrillator and about to take a high stress job "would be uninsurable for having a pre-existing condition."

Unless, of course, he was Dick Cheney and about to become the vice president of the United States in 2001. Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association/ National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), says Cheney

can have the choice of doctors. He can go to any hospital. He can have excellent standard of care. And he's alive today because of it. And there are a lot of people who aren't….We, as the public, pay for Dick Cheney's care. Why not—why is the government not providing the same type of care to all Americans?

New Jersey State AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech describes yesterday's municipal election victories by union members across the state.

The New Jersey State AFL-CIO is proud to announce the victories of four union members who were elected to public office yesterday, bringing the total number of rank-and-file union members elected to public office in New Jersey to 499 since 1997.

For the fourth time this year, an AFL-CIO-endorsed candidate has won a special congressional election. Last night, Travis Childers won a striking (54 percent to 48 percent) victory in Mississippi’s 1st Congressional District (CD), by emphasizing the issues that matter most to working families.

The Mississippi AFL-CIO endorsed Childers, a Democrat, for the seat left open by the appointment of Republican Rep. Roger Wicker to the Senate. Childers pledged in his campaign to support affordable health care for working families and to fight bad trade deals that would cost Mississippi jobs. He also pledged to support the Employee Free Choice Act.