Union leaders, lawmakers, mayors unveil progressive agenda. Saying “We need to reward work, not wealth,” a group of labor leaders, legislators and big-city mayors unveiled a massive grass-roots campaign for “A Progressive Agenda” to attack income inequality and allied issues.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio outlined initial goals of a $15 hourly minimum wage, paid sick leave and family leave, universal pre-kindergarten and after-school child care, and closure of tax loopholes. But several speakers expressed other aims, including holding presidential hopefuls to such objectives.
Presidents from the Steelworkers, Communications Workers, AFSCME and both teachers unions said they’re responding to national economic discontent and planning achievable goals.
Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota added strengthening unions and the right to collective bargaining; debt-free college education, expansion of Social Security, “financing schools, not jails”; DeBlasio added second chances at jobs for convicts who have served their terms; and Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee added equal pay for equal work.
Average CEO makes more in a day than average worker does in a year, according to the latest data compiled by the AFL-CIO’s Executive Paywatch report. The average CEO of the 472 publicly traded corporations on the Fortune 500 garnered $13.5 million in pay and perks in 2014, 373 times the average pay last year for a worker, of $36,134. And while an average worker saw pay rise by 2.2 percent last year, the average CEO got a 16 percent pay raise, not counting options.
AFL-CIO launches Baltimore voter registration drive in response to ‘systematic racism.’ A coalition of labor groups in May started “Forward Baltimore,” a voter registration drive to register 10,000 new voters in the troubled city’s poorest section before next year’s primaries, so they can influence those election outcomes. Organizers also set a goal of 75 percent turnout in those primaries.
“The best way to fight injustice is to organize,” said AFL-CIO vice-president Tefere Gebre, “and we will grow stronger together if we work together and build the power needed to make real change. This means taking anger and turning it into power to exercise [our] rights.”
Unions cheer as GOP-run House kills anti-worker amendment. The House of Representatives may be controlled by Republicans, but building trades and government workers’ unions successfully got a bipartisan defeat of anti-workers measures sponsored by right-wingers: repealing the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act, originally sponsored by Republicans requiring contractors on federal funded or assisted public works to pay the locally prevailing wage.
Dozens of Republicans defected from the party line and supported workers, as did all House Democrats.
Right-To-Work supporters ignore facts and research: sociologist. Sociology professor Tamara Kay of the University of New Mexico, where Right to Work failed in the legislature, recently reported that research shows the opposite of what Right to Work proponents claim.
“The debate about Right to Work laws across the country has misdirected our … focus and energy away from what solid evidence suggests will improve states’ economic futures: creating a solid infrastructure, equipping our schools and teachers with resources, and seeking out emerging and innovative industries that offer better and more permanent jobs,” she said. “Scientific research also suggests that improving wages and reducing inequality across the U.S. depends on the existence of strong unions.”
The Illinois House in May rejected Gov. Bruce Rauner’s idea to permit local Right to Work zones that would let people refuse to share union costs to bargain and enforce contracts for workers at jobs where unions are required to represent employees. The vote was 0-72, with 37 lawmakers voting “present.”
News briefs courtesy of The Labor Paper in Peoria