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Labor Targets Unionbusting Firms, Front Groups Profiting from Fear of Workers' Rights

As political wars broke out yesterday over union rights, at a hearing before the Senate health and labor committee, economic experts were joined by union members -- an electrical line repair woman from Alaska and others -- who explained the benefits of joining a union as a gateway to the middle class.

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Green Jobs Gets a General: Mr. Jones Goes to Washington

Van Jones, 40, came into public life in the 1990s as a community organizer with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights in Oakland, California. In 2007, he founded Green for All, "a national organization dedicated to building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty."

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Open Letter to the Republican Traitors (From a Former Republican)

You Republicans are the arsonists who burned down our national home. You combined the failed ideologies of the Religious Right, so-called free market deregulation and the Neoconservative love of war to light a fire that has consumed America. Now you have the nerve to criticize the "architect" America just hired -- President Obama -- to rebuild from the ashes. You do nothing constructive, just try to hinder the one person willing and able to fix the mess you created.

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Scare Tactic Recycled: Unionizing Kills Jobs

Anti-labor forces this week are reprising an old argument about the Employee Free Choice Act: Making it easier for employees to join unions will cost employees their jobs.

The latest entry in this fusillade of propaganda comes from something called the Alliance to Save Main Street Jobs—an alliance that happens to include that bastion of "Main Street," the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The author, Anne Layne-Farrar of the consulting firm LECG, writes that "if EFCA passed today and resulted in an increase in unionization from the current rate of about 12% to 15% ... unemployment a year from now would rise by 1.5 million, to 10.4 million."

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Huffington Post: Obama's Next Gauntlet: Reviving The Middle Class

We can't go back to the old economy. That economy -- marked by booms and busts, Gilded Age inequality, declining wages, growing household debts, and unsustainable trade deficits -- didn't work very well for most Americans. President Obama is faced with the difficult task of creating the structure for the new economy even as he works to lift us out of the collapse of the old.

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A Good Piece on the Workplace Wars and Majority Sign Up

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 gives most private sector employees three rights by law. 1. The right to organize. 2. To be able to engage in collective bargaining. 3. And to be able to take part in a strike. For anyone to form an argument that would make any of this unfair to employers would be baffling to me. My opinion would be that it's an argument that would never be able to be substantiated.

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EFCA in International Comparison

Seth Michaels notes that not only do countries with strong economies feature strong unions even according to the Heritage Foundation, but specifically they feature the kind of labor-friendly legal environment that progressives are trying to bring to the United States.

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Chao's Distortions of Epic Proportions

Labor Secretary Elaine Chao's Jan. 14 Wall Street Journal op-ed ranks among the most preposterous distortions of reality ever to appear on that newspaper's editorial pages -- and that's tough to do.

In it, Chao claimed the Bush Administration wanted to protect workers and their jobs. "Our record speaks for itself," she wrote.

It sure does.

Click over to General President Hoffa's piece on Huffington Post to read about Chao's delusions.

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A Secretary of Labor for Workers

The proud daughter of a Teamster took a big step on Friday toward becoming President Obama's secretary of Labor. California Congresswoman Hilda Solis testified before the Senate committee that will vote on whether she should head the Labor Department.

Solis promised that she would work hard every day to make sure that middle-class families don't lose hope.

We can believe that promise.

A Jan. 9, 2009 LA Times profile of Solis tells the story of how she fought against sweatshops as a freshman California state senator.

According to the Times, in 1995:
"Solis held high-profile hearings, called garment manufacturers to Sacramento to explain themselves and pushed for heavier enforcement of laws against sweatshops."

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Wal-Mart Agrees to Pay Workers up to $640 Million

From the Huffington Post

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, said Tuesday it will pay as much as $640 million to settle 63 lawsuits over wage-and-hour violations, ending years of dispute.

The discount retailer, which has more than 1.4 million employees, said the amount it pays will depend on how many claims are submitted by eligible workers and could range from $352 million to $640 million.

The agreement the company announced Tuesday ends the vast majority of such cases against Wal-Mart. Each settlement still must be approved by a trial court.

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