Think tank defends crackdown on law-breaking contractors.
In Washington, a progressive think-tank is defending President Obama’s executive order cracking down on federal contractors who break labor laws. Karla Walter of the Center for American Progress reminded a House committee of widespread wrong-doing by firms that get federal cash. The law-breaking ranges from labor law violations and denial of overtime pay to refusal to pay workers and dozens of workers killed on the job, she said.
Obama issued an executive order last July telling federal procurement officers that they must take a company’s overall record in obeying laws into account when awarding federal contracts.
That’s important, Walter said, because “more than one in five American workers are employed by a company that contracts with the federal government” for some or all of its business.
As expected, the committee’s ruling Republicans and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce denounced the order as “executive overreach.”
Presidential hopefuls appeal to Fire Fighters.
Nine presidential hopefuls made their cases before more than 1,000 Fire Fighters last month. Six Republicans – Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), former Gov. George Pataki (R-N.Y.), Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), and, in a 15-minute video, former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) – appeared as did Independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (who plans to run in Democratic primaries) and Democrats Martin O’Malley and Jim Webb. Neither former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton nor Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) appeared.
The union didn’t invite Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.), who double-crossed New Jersey public workers on state pension fund payments. The day before, as part of the legislative session, Vice President Joseph Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., addressed the crowd. Warren says she won’t run, but after saying that the deck in D.C. is stacked against workers and their families, she was greeted by loud cheers.
Fire Fighters president Harold Schaitberger that week announced that the union is yanking all political funding on the federal level pending the outcome of fast-track votes on Capitol Hill. Schaitberger said, “Since money seems to be one of the only ways to get the attention of even friends of labor these days on Capitol Hill, we need to cut the spigot off.”
Communications Workers, AT&T at loggerheads.
As bargaining between the Communications Workers of America and AT&T started March 4, progress was slow. The talks cover 4,800 workers at “Legacy AT&T” (remnants of the old “Ma Bell”).
The company’s lead bargainer declared that AT&T faces huge competition from Dish and other networks, that its workers pay too little for health insurance, have wages above market rates, and enjoy old-style pensions that new employees don’t want. CWA’s lead bargainer, Laura Unger, replied that the union believes AT&T workers “deserve wages that keep up with the increased productivity of the workforce” and that they should have a secure retirement with healthy pensions not eaten away by health care costs,
“We cannot go into every detail here but you get AT&T’s message,” the union’s team added. “AT&T must also get our message: This company can afford to provide good benefits for all of its employees.”
The current agreement expires April 15.
Chicago voters to City Council: Pass paid sick leave.
Overlooked during the race for mayor, Chicago voters overwhelmingly told local government to enact paid sick leave, reminds the National Partnership for Women and Families.
NPWF president Debra Ness said paid sick leave would aid more than 460,000 Chicago workers, adding, “The City Council and mayor should now act quickly to honor the will of the people by approving a measure that will guarantee all workers in the city the right to earn paid sick days.”
Contract talks to cover 5 million unionists.
A record five million union workers, public and private, face negotiations this year, the AFL-CIO reports, and a panel of labor leaders expects some rocky bargaining.
The Postal Workers, the Amalgamated Transit Union and AFSCME faces tough bargaining with GOP-dominated states, said union President Lee Saunders. His union will hold talks covering 320,000 workers in Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Oregon and Pennsylvania and in Illinois.
There, “we have a governor” – new GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner – “who does not believe in the value of workers and who has been busy breaking laws” covering them.
News briefs courtesy of The Labor Paper in Peoria