By Tim Robertson, California Fair Trade Coalition

As another round of behind-closed-door talks aimed at creating a massive new trade pact for the Pacific Rim took place in a posh Beverly Hills hotel on Wednesday, labor, environmental and public health advocates picketed outside to demand a voice for working people. During a press event and rally, they called on negotiators to release the negotiating texts, allow for greater public input and to ultimately deliver a "fair deal or no deal" on the Trans-Pacific Free Trade Agreement. Another rally is planned for today  at the University of California – San Diego, the site of more negotiations.

Maria Elena Durazo, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO:

It’s not right that Wall Street and big corporations have access to the negotiating documents, while the American public is kept in the dark. Past trade deals have put corporate profits ahead of working families both at home and abroad. Without more transparency, people are right to worry that this new pact will only deliver more of the same.

The Trans-Pacific Free Trade Agreement is currently being negotiated between the United States, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam, with bilateral discussions also under way for entry by Canada, Japan and Mexico. Unlike many other international negotiations, including even those at the World Trade Organization (WTO), these have been conducted with virtually zero transparency. While the American public is barred from knowing what their representatives are negotiating for and negotiating away, approximately 600 corporate advisors are given regular access to the negotiating texts and negotiators.

Many see a double-standard at work. When public health advocates attempted to hold a luncheon in the hotel to share their expertise with interested negotiators, they even had their room reservation revoked. Activists are angry that these negotiations have been so secretive, and warned that without greater public participation, the Trans-Pacific trade talks could deliver a corporate-backed "NAFTA of the Pacific."

According to AFL-CIO Trade Policy Specialist Celeste Drake:

Far too many Californians have already had their jobs shipped overseas, and now corporations are crowing that they need to find low-cost labor alternatives to sweatshops in China. We’ve heard talk about ‘labor and environmental’ standards ever since NAFTA, and so far nothing offered has been adequate to protect jobs at home and human rights abroad. President Obama has promised better, but American workers would be more confident if the process were more open. In his State of the Union Address, he promised to bring manufacturing jobs back to America, and we hope he does that.

It's hard to see the Trans-Pacific Free Trade Agreement as a reasonable way to boost our manufacturing sector, given how similar trade deals have decimated it. NAFTA alone cost the U.S. nearly 700,000 jobs, and since China joined the WTO in 2001, we've lost over 6 million manufacturing jobs, or 1 in 3. Americans have caught on, too, with 69% considering FTAs job-killers, according to a recent poll. And they're starting to voice their concerns.

Participants from across civil society participated in this week's events, from labor, health, education, and environmental advocates to Asian Pacific Islanders, Latinos, and students. There were even some “hacktivists” from around the country pitching in by amplifying the message online. People are beginning to understand how dangerous this deal could be, particularly if the negotiations stay secret. And the more folks get involved, the louder our voice can be as we demand a “Fair Deal or No Deal!”

Check out videos from the rally here, and find more info here. Stay informed by joining the California Fair Trade Coalition on facebook, or get involved by writing to tim@citizenstrade.org.

by Stacey Hendler Ross, South Bay Labor Council

What began as a class project has turned into a formal effort to get an initiative on the November ballot that would raise the minimum wage in San Jose by 25 percent, from $8 to $10 an hour. Students from a San Jose State University sociology class decided wages for working people in San Jose weren’t covering even the minimum needs, and they took the project into the real world.

Leila McCabe is a senior who was in Scott Myers-Lipton's Social Action class last semester and has worked several low-paying jobs. She told the San Jose Mercury News:

We're all struggling with paying rent and bills. To find out San Jose is behind in paying people better wages was a shock to us.

San Jose already has a “living wage” policy that requires businesses that contract with the city to pay workers at least $13.59 an hour, or $14.84 an hour if they do not provide health insurance. This new initiative would take things a giant step further to cover everyone who works in San Jose.

Cindy Chavez, Executive Officer of the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council:

Working people in San Jose desperately need higher wages. It's great to see San Jose State students take on this campaign.

Students filed paperwork with the city of San Jose last week, and the city just approved it for circulation. Next week, they will begin work to gather more than 19,000 signatures needed to get the measure on the November 2012 ballot. The students have six months to collect the signatures they need, but they plan on finishing by mid-May.

Visit www.atwork.org for campaign updates.

by Refugio Mata, Good Jobs LA

“Why is FedEx not paying its fair share?” That’s what more than 400 activists asked on January 25 as part of a larger national movement to hold big corporations accountable to get our economy back on track. People from struggling communities, labor groups, immigrant rights groups, Occupy LA, and others led by Good Jobs LA marched down Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood in a show of unity among the 99% movement. On its way to FedEx, protesters took the opportunity to stop by the branches of big corporations that are also either notorious tax dodgers or are infamous for their bad business practices in our communities. Starting with CNN, whose parent company Time Warner got a tax subsidy of $431 million in 2010, activists marched down Sunset Boulevard carrying signs and banners that read “We Pay Our Taxes, Why is the 1% Not Paying Theirs?” and “Tax Corporations, Build LA”.

Protesters also posted red poster-sized “Citizens Audit Final Notices” on the doors of these businesses. These posters brought attention to how the tax subsidies that these giant corporations received could have been redirected instead to invest in job creation programs and in strengthening public services. A poster that was posted on Verizon Wireless’ door, for example, pointed how that company in 2010 received a federal tax subsidy totaling $4.89 billion. If Verizon Wireless had instead paid its fair share of taxes, a portion of that money could have gone towards investing in job creation and in critical services to the public. 9,900 jobs could have been created from additional healthcare spending; over $548 million could have gone to fund Medicaid, and over $105 million to educational programs. At a time when every year budget cuts threaten public programs that open access to opportunities to average working families to reach for a better life, the excesses of corporate irresponsibility are reaching all time highs.  

The march culminated at the FedEx branch near the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street, where activists performed a little bit of street theater featuring a “FedEx Box Monster” delivering a giant Tax Bill on behalf of the 99% movement. FedEx is one of the country’s worst corporate tax dodgers. From 2008 to 2010, FedEx made $4.2 billion in profits but they paid less than 1% in federal taxes. During that time FedEx spent $46 thousand a day lobbying Congress - $13.8 million more than they paid in taxes. When rich corporations like FedEx fail to pay their fair share in taxes, local communities can’t afford teachers, firefighters, police officers, health care and other needed public services. 

Other corporations highlighted on the march were Bank of America and Chase Bank for their predatory lending practices and Well Fargo also for its tax dodging habits. Similar protests against corporate tax dodgers will be held all week in dozens of cities around the country, including New York, Chicago, Washington, DC, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Houston and Miami. The march in Hollywood was launched as a response to a newly released CBS/NY Times poll that revealed a strong majority of Americans believe the top 1% do not pay their fair share in taxes. According to a report by the Citizens for Tax Justice Reform, in 2010 249 of the country’s largest and most profitable corporations paid less than the U.S. corporate tax rate and instead received federal tax subsidies totaling more than $87.27 billion.

Check out more photos from the action.

For more information, visit our website.

by Valerie Lapin, Oakland Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports

Monday mornings are the busiest at any port, but this past one in Seattle the trucks were parked. Drivers spanning the major companies that do the most business in the Puget Sound simply turned off the engines, got out of their cabs, and stopped hauling. They had somewhere else they needed to be.

Steely determination led roughly 150 port drivers to sacrifice income and risk retaliation to make the hour-and-a-half trek to swarm the State Capitol in Olympia.

Commerce at the Port of Seattle slowed to a trickle, and hasn’t picked up since.

This week the truck drivers – who toil under the guise of false self-employment – are making it their job to sound the alarm on occupational hazards, overweight containers, shoddy equipment, risks to motorists, and the culprits responsible for these rampant safety violations: their employers and their giant retail shipper clients like Wal-Mart, Sears, and Target.

The trucking bosses at Pacer, Seattle Freight, Western Ports and others were stunned, but the state troopers weren’t. Washington’s top cops testified before lawmakers right alongside the workers, detailing a dizzying array of dangers associated with the drayage industry: Chronic safety violations so serious that an investigative journalist discovered late last year that officers pulled 32% of rigs they inspected outside the terminals off the road — double the rate for trucks throughout the state. When specially trained troopers conducted more thorough inspections in 2011, King 5 TV reported, 58% of Port of Seattle cargo vehicles were yanked. And according to Captain Jason Berry’s testimony, an astonishing 80% have been put out of service during certain recent time periods.

If the drivers’ collective action sent shockwaves throughout the shipping and trucking industry, then their demonstration equally uprooted a commonly held societal belief. During the Occupy Wall Street port shutdowns, activists and well-intentioned sympathizers debated whether the blockades would siphon wages from port workers – arguably one of the greatest symbols of the 99% — or if it would suck profits from the 1%, such as the Seattle-based global terminal operator, Goldman Sachs’ SSA Marine, and its West Coast trucking outfit, Shipper’s Transport Express.

What their protest proves is that port drivers, as inside agitators, are very much willing to lose pay as a means to powerfully reveal the crushing economic forces that literally put their lives and livelihoods at risk. Even, and especially amidst a severe economic downturn. Their historical ability to self organize, unite, and seize opportunities to improve their working conditions, is unfolding before our eyes. Hundreds more drivers have since joined the safety work stoppage, and some companies remain shut with too few workers to move the cargo.

As their trucks remain parked, they’ve asked allies and supporters to help amplify their voices by reposting this and spreading the word about why they flooded the legislative hearing room to standing room-only capacity. One by one, they ferociously spoke in favor of HB 2527, a bill to shift responsibility for fixing the hazards, paying fines, and correcting safety violations off their sweat-ridden backs, and onto the broad shoulders of the mega-rich corporate owners of the tools of the trade like chassis.

Semere Woldu, who has been hauling cargo at the Port of Seattle for 8 years, told the panel:

Our work is extremely dangerous. So the safety laws are very important. Unfortunately though, we drivers are forced to pay for violations that we are not responsible for. We often get tickets or are cited for faulty equipment that we don’t own. One time, my boss knew I had a heavy load. He told me to go by the scale early in the morning when it was closed to avoid having the load weighed.

More drivers cited these illegal pressures their employers put them under, and shared their fears for their personal safety and the lives of motorists.

Aynalem Moba, a 14-year port veteran:

Every day, I haul two or three loads that are overweight, possibly putting myself and others at risk. The truck could tip over. I’m afraid I might kill myself or someone else. Sometimes we’re carrying hazardous materials, and we don’t know it.

Some explained the retaliation they face for blowing the whistle. They get banned from the terminals or are denied work by their dispatchers. They also told the legislators that if they get too many safety violations they risk losing their commercial drivers’ license and their livelihoods.

13-year driver Calvin Borders:

The shipping and rail lines force us to use faulty equipment. One time I got a load that was 4-5,000 pounds overweight, and it was on a chassis that was insufficient for carrying heavy loads. The company told me to take it anyway. I was really nervous about it. All that extra weight puts a lot of wear and tear on the truck. It blew my wheel seal…It cost me $450. My truck is my livelihood. If it doesn’t work, I don’t work.

Some of the protestors have already been suspended. That has only sparked their co-workers to walk off the job in solidarity – and disgust. On Wednesday, these non-unionized men and women who are desperately seeking the protections that collective bargaining rights would provide were leafleting the terminals and the docks, positively engaging the dockworkers brothers and sisters at the longshoremen’s union, vowing to stay united, keep fighting for their rights, and all of our safety.

by Joan Lichterman, UPTE-CWA 9119

Sheri Sangji, a 23-year-old lab assistant at UCLA, was fatally injured on December 29th, 2008 by a flash fire in the lab of chemistry professor Patrick Harran while transferring a highly hazardous chemical that ignites when exposed to air. She died 18 excruciating days later as a result of burns to 43 percent of her body and inhalation exposure. On the day of the fire, less than two months after her 23rd birthday, the recent Pomona College graduate was 11 weeks into a job she had taken to earn money to go to law school. Tragically, her acceptance to Berkeley Law School arrived on the day of her funeral.

UCLA's claim that Sangji's death was "a horrible accident, not a crime" and therefore no punishment is deserved, is not supported by the evidence provided by Cal/OSHA's Bureau of Investigations or by the state's labor laws. That's why the LA County District Attorney lodged three felony charges against the UC regents, UCLA, and Sangji's boss, chemistry professor Patrick Harran, on December 27, 2011. Harran could face up to 4 1/2 years in a state prison and UCLA could be fined $1.5 million.

Employers are responsible for providing safe workplaces. They control the workplace, establish the rules (in compliance with applicable laws), and ensure accountability – which all define its "safety culture." An accident is unforeseeable, despite taking precautions to prevent it.

UCLA had a long history of failing to take necessary precautions to prevent injurious incidents, and failed to act after two graduate students were seriously injured in the very same department a year before, and even a week before Sangji's fatal fire. Furthermore, UCLA officials had told Harran that his lab was unsafe, but he ignored the deadline to fix the problems, and UCLA let him get away with it.

With regard to UCLA's responsibility, the Cal/OSHA fatality investigator concluded:

It is apparent that the laboratory safety practices utilized by UCLA prior to Victim Sangji's death, were so defective as to render the University's required Chemical Hygiene Plan and Injury and Illness Prevention Program essentially non-existent. The lack of adequate lab safety training and documentation, lack of effective hazard communication practices, and repeated failure to correct persistent and repeated safety violations within University labs, were all causal deficiencies that led to a systematic breakdown of overall laboratory safety practices at UCLA.

The evidence against Patrick Harran is equally damning. Although Harran claimed Sangji "had been trained by senior [department] personnel in accordance with the [chemical manufacturer's instructions]" and that her undergraduate experience had prepared her to use this explosive chemical, the Cal/OSHA fatality investigator presents a very different picture based on a discussion of Sangji’s experience with her undergraduate advisor at Pomona College, and documents obtained from Norac Pharma, where Sangji had worked for several months before starting at UCLA, which stated

As a junior level chemist [at Norac], she was closely supervised and did not perform any independent experimental work in the lab without direct guidance from her supervisor due to her limited prior laboratory experience.

Harran confirmed that he had not discussed with Sangji the hazards of working with the chemical; failed to ask whether she was familiar with it "prior to directing her to use it"; and admitted that he never tried to determine whether she had actually been trained by his senior researcher, even though he acknowledged the chemical was extremely hazardous. The investigator continued:

More significantly however, was Dr. Harran’s failure to both provide appropriate personal protective equipment to Victim Sangji and to ensure that PPE was utilized by his laboratory personnel.

According to attorney Frances Schreiberg:

Patrick Harran could have been charged with felony manslaughter. The evidence in support of the felony Labor Code charges is solid. Harran’s utter indifference to the health and safety of his laboratory personnel, his heedless approach to basic precautionary standards and accident preparedness, and his inadequate laboratory management illustrate that he both acted and failed to act without due caution and circumspection and with reckless disregard for the lives of his employees. Harran's activities after the event evidenced his desire to protect himself from the consequences of his actions: Harran tampered with evidence to minimize his culpability and tried to hide what he had done both before and after being instructed not to disturb the scene.

Safety advocates at the University and across the country are concerned that at the arraignment (which will take place tomorrow, Feb 2nd at 8:30am at LA Superior Court) the DA will settle felony charges with misdemeanor plea(s) and inadequate or no punishment. Says Schreiberg, who previously headed the Cal/OSHA Bureau of Investigations:

This egregious case is one of the strongest ever referred by the Cal/OSHA Bureau of Investigations.

We urge the DA to ensure that UCLA is punished by a substantial fine and supervised probation, a condition of which should require payment for an independent nonprofit to ensure lab safety and training so others don’t die. Harran should not walk away without punishment. He should be given supervised probation, with conditions that include a substantial fine, jail or suspended jail time, and community service in a burn unit to experience what Sangji suffered for nearly three weeks before she died.

A drunk driver who kills can’t escape punishment claiming devastation and never again. Nor should Patrick Harran.

by James Geluso, SEIU 521

In one of the most conservative cities in California, thousands of workers went on strike last week to preserve their democratic rights as union members.

The Fresno County workers, members of SEIU Local 521, walked off the job for three days after the county Board of Supervisors imposed a contract while the members were still voting on the board’s last, best and final offer. The workers range from janitors to supervisors. The California Nurses Association, who also had been imposed on by the county, also joined the strike.

The strike started in the early morning darkness of the Juvenile Justice Campus, where workers didn’t report for their shifts starting at 6 a.m. Monday. Instead, they set up tents at two entrances and kept warm by chanting. As the day grew brighter, the two camps came together at the main entrance of the building.

Although county administration tried to claim that public services weren’t disrupted, it was clear that the public felt the effect. Reports from inside the Juvenile Justice Center said the probation officers called in to staff the facility promised the kids pizza and ice cream if they were good. Meanwhile, workers watched as parents trying to visit their kids were turned away. At the Public Health Department, residents trying to get their children vaccinated were turned away. Child Protective Services caseworkers’ cell phones buzzed all through the strike with phone calls about cases. And the county’s satellite office in the outlying town of Kerman was completely closed after all the workers refused to come to work.

While workers believed the strike was important, they all regretted that they were forced to stop working. As Kim Desmond, a social work supervisor, put it:

We would all rather be inside working and protecting children, but we feel very strongly about what the Board of Supervisors has done.

Kerman was the site of one of the strike’s defining moments. A resident told the workers that County Supervisor Phil Larson, the most anti-worker of the three anti-worker supervisors, has coffee with his friends every day at the McDonald’s near the office. Bargaining Team member Kevin Westbrook came to the McDonald’s to talk to Larson, and the dozen or so workers from Kerman went in and silently listened. While Westbrook was respectful, Larson let loose with lies, claiming workers had gotten 30 percent raises (not true), that SEIU had bussed in protesters (laughably untrue) and that the strike wasn’t affecting services (as he sat 100 yards from the county’s shuttered storefront). Then, in news coverage later, Larson lied more, claiming that 20 workers had surrounded him and all started talking at him. Too bad the video shows that all the jabbering came from Larson’s friends.

On Tuesday, rather than picketing worksites, the workers descended on the building where the Board of Supervisors was meeting. While a few dozen workers were at the meeting, more than a thousand rallied outside.

For all three days, workers kept up their energy, demanding one simple thing from the Board of Supervisors: That they come back to the table.

Show your support for the Fresno county workers by joining them on Facebook.

by Ben Field, South Bay Labor Council

Is it time for a great coming together of the movement for racial justice and the movement for economic justice?

During the Civil Rights era, the political agenda of the Left began to divide. Young, liberal activists and people of color gravitated toward a racial justice agenda while more traditional Democrats clung to a New Deal agenda focused on economic justice. As the racial justice agenda became dominant, the economic justice agenda lost support. We may now be at a historical turning point because of growing concern about economic inequality.

The chasm between rich and poor has surpassed race and immigration as the most important source of societal tension. According to a new survey by the Pew Research Center, two thirds of Americans believe there are “strong conflicts” between the rich and poor. That number has increased 50 percent since the 2009 survey.

Race also remains an important issue. Although only 38% of Americans believe there is a conflict between blacks and whites, large percentages of African Americans see both race and class as sources of societal strain. Many people of color experience economic inequality every day. What’s new is that whites are starting to catch on.

Concern about income stagnation, the decline of the middle class, and the wealth of the richest 1 percent has reached a tipping point. It is time to come together around an economic justice agenda.

Every election year politicians say we are at the crossroads. This time, we really are. As a nation we can consciously move toward a society that embraces economic disparity or we can consciously move toward shared prosperity.

by Tim Paulson, San Francisco Central Labor Council

Last Friday night at about 10:00 pm I began receiving phone calls with alarming messages that there was about to be a strike on the San Francisco waterfront. I finally realized that workers had walked off an Italian cruise ship at Pier 35. I put on a warm coat and drove to the Embarcadero to see what was going on.

News cameras were interviewing a large group of men and women in red jackets and black bow ties who were on the Embarcadero outside the pier. I found out that they had left the cruiseliner after the dinner shift because they were getting paid wages less than what they had signed up for. Their compensation was being calculated in dollars instead of euros. A substantial difference. They felt that the company was ignoring them at port after port and finally took action in what they had heard was a “union town.”

With the diligence and help of Robert Irminger from the Inland Boatman’s Union (ILWU) and Alan Benjamin, a member of the San Francisco Labor Council’s Executive Board, we helped create enough of a buzz that we secured a meeting with the Costa Deliziosa’s Captain, Francisco Serra. I asked the workers to pick 3 or 4 representatives and Robert and I were escorted through the long corridors of the massive ship and up several flights of elevators to the Captain’s quarters. I later realized that the Costa Deliziosa is the sister ship to the notorious Concordia that recently ran aground off the coast of Italy.

The workers on this ship worked under a contract with the International Transport Federation (ITF) workers and the Italian Trade Unions so the Captain, Irminger and I initiated many international calls, woke up a lot of people in Europe, and eventually the Captain agreed that the compensation would be adjusted. He admitted that it was “a mistake.” During these conversations, negotiations, and calls between Italy, Seattle and San Francisco a settlement agreement was drawn up that locked up not only a wage agreement, but guaranteed that the workers who walked off the job and stood up for their rights would not be disciplined during their tenure with the company. The Captain and I were “deputized” to sign the agreement at approximately 2:00 AM Saturday morning.

I asked Captain Serra to invite the workers back onto the ship and he ordered his crew to prepare a dinner for the strikers who would have to be up by 6:00 AM to serve breakfast for the passengers.

The Costa Deliziosa’s security staff led Irminger, the worker representatives and I down to a dining room where the strikers were waiting. I read the agreement which included the security language protecting those who stood up for their rights and thanked the workers for their courage and diligence. The room went crazy with clapping and shouting. We ended with the “unity clap.”

Workers in a foreign port and a foreign land who felt disrespected had stood up for their rights. It wasn’t easy, but when workers have a union they have a voice at work. This was not a mutiny. This was a piece of our labor movement.

by Greg Good, Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy

On October 12, 2011, in Lamont, California, Armando and Eladio Ramirez went into a composting drainage pipe, wearing only painters’ masks for protection – and breathed in fatal amounts of hydrogen sulfide. Armando, 16 years old, went in first to clean out the pipe, and died almost immediately; Eladio, 22, went in after his brother to help him, and was rendered brain dead, dying the next day.

These deaths happened at a green waste processing facility run by Crown Disposal Services – a prominent player in L.A.’s commercial waste and recycling market – and are being investigated by Cal-OSHA, the CA Department of Labor and the United States Department of Labor.

Several weeks after Armando’s and Eladio’s deaths, a group of recycling sorters, waste hauling drivers and helpers filed a formal complaint with Cal-OSHA, chronicling a litany of severe health and safety violations taking place at American Reclamation, a waste and recycling company in Atwater Village that also plays a significant role in L.A.’s commercial waste and recycling industry.

How are these events connected?

Both companies are part of a Wild West industry in this region that gives rise to rogue, irresponsible players.  Irresponsibility in thisindustry translates into environmental degradation, neighborhood abuse – and injury and death.

While Cal-OSHA is now investigating American Reclamation as well as Crown, the Don’t Waste LA coalition isn’t waiting for inquiries or reports — the risks to our communities are too high. Last Thursday, LAANE, the Teamsters, NRDC, the L.A. County Federation of Labor, Pacoima Beautiful, CLUE and a host of other community, environmental and labor groups were joined by L.A. City Councilmembers Richard Alarcon and Eric Garcetti in rallying at American Reclamation.  The delegation marched to the doors of American Reclamation, demanding better health and safety conditions and calling for greater accountability and standards in L.A.’s commercial waste and recycling industry.

Simply put, we don’t want – and won’t tolerate – any more pain or death in this industry…and we’re not going away.

by John Beaumont, National Association of Letter Carriers

On January 17, 1962, President John F Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988. This granted Federal Employees, for the first time, the right to collective bargaining.

This action led to inspire many states and localities to follow suit, allowing their own workers to organize. This triggered a huge wave of unionization in the public sector that saw firefighters, teachers, janitors, social workers and many others form unions in the 1960s and '70s.

Now all this is under attack. The nation's postal unions, whose employees combine to be the largest Federal union in the nation, are being attacked through proposed legislation in the United States Senate.

As early as next week, S. 1789, the so-called 21st Century Postal Service Act, is moving forward for a floor vote in the Senate. This bill, reported out of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security by Senator Lieberman, would do the following:

• Cuts mail delivery from six days a week down to five days in two years' time if the Postal Service is not turning a profit, but fails to give the Postal Service any flexibility to achieve that profit.  
• Phases out door-to-door delivery for consumers in favor of curbside and centralized delivery.
• Includes an anti-labor provision that would direct arbitrators to take into special consideration the financial condition of the Postal Service before rendering a decision. A direct attack on collective bargaining.
• Unfairly attacks injured postal workers by removing them from the OWCP rolls and forcing them into retirement without implementing a formula that would make these people whole. The reduction in compensation would be severe.

If Congress succeeds in this attack against the postal unions, it will shift its focus to the rest of the unionized federal workforce, including our newly certified brothers and sisters who are employed by TSA.

We need your help to stop this attack. Please call Sen. Dianne Feinstein at (202) 224-3841 and Sen. Barbara Boxer at (202) 224-3553 and ask them both to oppose S. 1789 in its current form. The legislation is deeply flawed and needs significant changes before the Senate should consider passage of this bill.

Changes to the bill should include provisions from S. 1853, which actually does take the necessary steps by addressing the issues laid out above to strengthen the Postal Service while maintaining the excellent level of service Americans have come to expect, preserving middle-class jobs and creating new opportunities for the Postal Service moving forward.

By Art Pulaski, California Labor Federation

This week, the U.S. Department of Housing and Development (HUD) and the Big Banks teamed up to propose a multi-state settlement to address the foreclosure crisis. But based on the terms described in numerous media reports, the deal appears to be a settlement for the banks, not a settlement for the middle class. The people of California need real relief, not a quick settlement that lets the banks off the hook.

California is home to nine of the ten cities that were hardest hit by the foreclosure freefall. The two million working families we represent have been at the epicenter of this crisis. Millions have been devastated by the loss of their homes. Many more have watched their home values plummet and now nearly one in three California borrowers are underwater, owing more to the banks than their homes are worth. California has the second highest foreclosure rate in the country, surpassed only by Nevada. For these reasons, our stake in the outcome of the settlement talks is great. Our families, our communities, our government and our economy depend upon a fair outcome.

Taxpayers revived the Big Banks from their self-inflicted crash with a $700 billion bailout in 2009. With the infusion, banks were directed to help homeowners recover from the mortgage crisis they created. Instead, bank executives took the money in big bonuses. The greed boggles one’s mind. Some should go to jail. Instead they again want to pay pennies on the dollars they took while foreclosing on millions of California homes.

On every level, the proposed settlement is inadequate: The total settlement amount is expected to be just $25 billion dollars, while the nation has $750 billion in negative equity. $25 billion would not even cover the loss of home equity to California families, let alone all homeowners across the country. The settlement is expected to help a million homeowners, when more than 10 million are underwater and millions more have been wrongfully foreclosed upon. The settlement needs to be in the range of $200 -$400 billion, not $25 billion.

Even worse, we are concerned that the settlement may not even come from the pockets of those who engaged in the misconduct. If the settlement gives servicers credit for writing down the value of investor-owned mortgage-backed securities without requiring them to write down the mortgages and liens they own, it will be our public pension plans, not the banks, that will take the hit. That means the same working families who have already seen their life savings go up in smoke will now face losses in their retirement funds. Not only is this a great injustice, but it fails to enact any real penalty against the bad actors.

It is difficult to overstate the harm that has been inflicted on our economy by the financial institutions now seeking to pay a relatively small sum and receive broad immunity. Foreclosures destroy families financially and emotionally, and blighted, abandoned properties destroy our communities. Cities, counties, and the state are unable to meet the needs of our most vulnerable, while banks sit on record reserves.

Any settlement must provide meaningful relief to homeowners and to the economy. We urge the Department of Housing and Urban Development to ensure that the rush for quick relief does not overshadow the need for an equitable settlement that provides:

• Widespread principal reduction for California homeowners and fair redress for those who wrongfully lost their homes.
• Reform of lending and servicing practices and penalties on those who broke the law to deter such wrongdoing in the future.
• Real enforcement to ensure compliance.
• Limited liability waivers for only those issues that have been fully investigated.

We stand behind California’s Attorney General, Kamala Harris, who has firmly and vigorously refused a settlement that falls far short of recovery for the state’s homeowners who have been forced into distress by the banks. And she wants to reserve the right to investigate wrongdoing in the mortgage debacle. She’s right. And we should have it no other way.

by Eric Tate, Teamsters local 848

Some 12,000 transportation workers employed by Toll Group in Australia are unionized, and are fairly rewarded and valued for helping make the logistics giant so profitable. But not here in the U.S. The company suspiciously sacked one-third of its Southern California truck drivers before the busy holiday shopping season, just two days after Toll’s pro-union workers donned Teamster T-shirts and partook in a peaceful community rally.

The truck drivers didn’t buy for one minute the claim that work had simply slowed down at America’s largest port, so instead of being silenced—they mobilized! To date, the workers have successfully pressured the company to rehire 15, but management instituted an arbitrary 90-day deadline that could put the remaining pink-slipped drivers out of work for good if they are not recalled in the next week.

For months, L.A. facilities have been raising concerns to management about their Third World-like workplace conditions— filthy, fly-ridden outhouses, and no access to clean, running water. Then suddenly, 26 were canned, without notice. The top federal labor agency has been investigating the company and recently found that drivers were being intimidated, harassed, and put under surveillance in retaliation for organizing themselves.

The finding is a powerful symbol, but it won’t help the 11 workers who are underwater since their unemployment in October. Let’s tell Toll Group they can’t play dirty here. Demand that they drop their arbitrary deadline just as swiftly as they manufactured it to keep their American workers silent. Click here to take action and demand that Guess and Polo’s trucking carrier treat their American workers like they do in Australia – fairly!

by Stan Sorscher, SPEEA/IFPTE Local 2001

I work for a labor union in the aerospace industry. We are 100 percent in favor of trade. We make products the rest of the world wants to buy.

With increased trade we expect more prosperity. Instead, we see the American economy de-industrializing and job security at historic lows. So, what’s going wrong?

[The chart above] tells the story. Since the [North American Free Trade Agreement] (NAFTA) and [the World Trade Organization] (WTO) took effect around 1995, our trade deficit has widened steadily, except for the 2008 crash, which cut imports more than exports.

The language for trade is deceptive. We speak of “free trade agreements,” which sounds like freedom, and evokes the image of prosperity. Maybe we should call them “trade deficit agreements,” since that’s what they do.

We have alternatives. Today, many countries take a different approach to trade, and they run trade surpluses. Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Germany run trade surpluses and they have high living standards. China’s very effective industrial policies are the opposite of free trade. Their growth is phenomenal. It could be even more impressive if workers and communities in China had more say in how their gains were allocated. (Please finish this post, then get a cup of coffee, sit down and listen to this sensational radio piece.)

When America industrialized, we rejected free trade (trade deficit agreements), and our living standard rose dramatically.

Since NAFTA and WTO took effect, factories in America closed, entire industries declined, and millions of good jobs moved offshore. China’s industrial policies are a credible threat to our aerospace industry—one of the last bright spots in our trade profile. Technology and capital for new industrial capacity goes to China, India, and Russia, rather than Michigan, California or Pennsylvania.

In America, workers are pressured to accept wage cuts, loss of job security, elimination of pensions, and more shifting of medical costs. Maybe we should start calling free trade agreements “de-industrialization agreements.”

Why do we insist on an underperforming trade policy that enriches a few, and undermines civil society in America and abroad, while doing little good or real harm to workers and communities?

What if we could have trade AND prosperity? We should be thinking about different and better trade agreements, not more NAFTA-style de-industrialization agreements.

A different trade policy should reflect our own values and history. We forbid child labor and sweatshops. We have minimum wage laws and labor laws with basic worker protections that helped build a strong middle class. We protect clean air and clean water, which are essential for public health. We regulate food and drugs, which builds trust in the most basic interactions between businesses and consumers. We set a high standard (maybe not high enough) for regulation of banks and financial markets. As we industrialized, we chose policies and values for our own domestic economy that created a prosperous middle class and raised living standards.

Free trade policies create trade deficits because they are designed to protect U.S. companies who want to move production to countries that ignore human rights, punish workers for forming unions, silence dissent, pollute the environment, and put public health of their own citizens at risk. The Korea-U.S. trade deficit agreement specifically strips away legitimate and prudent financial controls enacted by Korea to prevent financial bubbles. Maybe we could call free trade agreements “agreements to undermine civil society at home and abroad.”

Each time we pass a new trade deficit agreement, we are endorsing bad behavior that we would never accept in our domestic policy. Worse than that, we are putting our own domestic producers at a disadvantage for keeping their production in America.

Remember: the question is not free trade versus protectionism. Members of my union and everyone I know, really, are 100 percent in favor of trade. We support exporting apples, wheat, airplanes and cars. We support importing coffee and flat screen TVs. We support foreign investment in new industrial capacity. We are 100 percent in favor of trade.

The question is good trade policy with an upward spiral, or bad trade policy with a downward spiral. Other countries are doing a good job of playing the cards they were dealt; we are playing our cards badly. We look like the sucker at a poker game.

American trade negotiators are working on the next big trade deal, called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Already, multinational companies are demanding that worker protections in TPP be as weak as possible. They prefer no protections at all.

Respected mainstream economists argue that under our “agreements to undermine civil society at home and abroad,” low-wage countries will eventually enjoy prosperity, perhaps with civil unrest and violence along the way. Probably so. Wouldn’t we prefer that developing countries achieved a better life because of our good trade policy, rather than in spite of our bad trade policy?

When we ask for trade policies that encourage investment in our domestic economy, and set reasonable standards for human rights, labor rights, the environment, public health and legitimate financial regulation, we are helping ourselves by balancing the interests of workers and communities in America and elsewhere, with the interests of businesses and investors. That’s the way we built a strong middle class in America. It should be the foundation of our trade and economic policies.

by Pedro Morillas, CALPIRG

With the second anniversary approaching of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case – which opened the floodgates to corporate spending on elections – it’s worth a look at whether playing in politics actually pays off for corporate interests. As it so happens, it does.  

Between 2008 and 2010 at least thirty US corporations spent more to lobby congress than they paid in federal taxes over the same time period. Clearly, when it comes to politics, corporations really do spend money to make money.

In addition to the “Dirty Thirty”, 280 consistently profitable Fortune 500 companies paid about half the statutory corporate tax rate while spending $2 billion to lobby Congress on tax policy and other issues. Twenty-nine of these corporations actually received a net tax rebate simply by exploiting special provisions and loopholes in the tax code.

All told, the “Dirty Thirty” companies made $163.7 billion in profits while paying zero dollars in federal income taxes and collecting a total of $10.6 billion in various tax rebates. Meanwhile, they collectively spent $475.7 million in lobbying expenses for the three year period. Mattel, a California based company, spent $800,000 on lobbyists and was rewarded with $366 million in subsidies.

One of the most egregious ways these corporations skirt their taxes is by shifting profits legitimately earned in America to offshore tax havens, where they are subject to little, if any taxes. At least 22 of the thirty companies studied had subsidiaries in tax haven countries. Wells Fargo, another California based company, has 58 tax haven subsidiaries.

The solution to closing offshore tax havens is simple. Congress should end the rule that allows U.S. corporations to “defer” U.S. taxes on their offshore profits. “Deferral” of U.S. taxes on these profits is often more like a blanket tax exemption for any U.S. profits that are dressed up as “foreign” profits using myriad accounting gimmicks. Failing that key reform, there are some other steps that Congress can take that will lessen, if not eliminate, the problems associated with corporations shifting their profits to offshore tax havens:

-    Treating the profits of publicly traded “foreign” corporations that are managed and controlled in the U.S. as domestic corporations for income tax purposes.

-    Requiring full and honest reporting by ending the ability of multi-national corporations to hide the identity of their owners and the origins of their profits behind layers of shell companies and requiring a full reporting of profits, country by country.

-    Closing the loophole that allows foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies to deposit profits in U.S. financial institutions, thereby benefiting from the stability of the dollar while skipping out on U.S. taxes.

The data show that corporate power and influence was already on full display when it comes to our tax code, which is riddled with special carve outs and loopholes won through decades of corporate lobbying. This is just one of a thousand reasons why, with one of the most expensive elections in history on the horizon, we need bold action from both the states and the federal government to end corporate influence in our elections.

The Supreme Court needs to reverse its decision to clarify that when our founding fathers wrote “of the people, by the people, and for the people” they did not mean “of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations.”

by Ben Field, South Bay Labor Council

At a time when economic inequality has reached record levels and unions face existential threats, you would think the Labor movement would refrain from eating its own, but no.

In a recent article in the online newsletter Counterpunch, “long time unionist” Alberto Ruiz attacks the AFL-CIO sponsored Solidarity Center, whose mission is to strengthen unions in countries like Colombia, as an “imperialist organization.” Pointing to a half dozen WikiLeaks cables that document meetings at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Ruiz claims that Solidarity Center staff are working to undermine the very unions they are supposed to support.

After reading the WikiLeaks cables, a very different picture emerges. The reality is that Solidarity Center staff meet with Embassy officials in order to draw U.S. government attention to the dangers facing unionists in Colombia. There have been 2,837 murders of union members since 1986. The murderers are paramilitary assassins, who avoid prosecution 96% of the time. Colombia is the most dangerous country to be a unionist. That is exactly why the Solidarity Center is active there.

Two summers ago I attended meetings at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota and the Colombian government’s Office on Human Rights after a fact finding trip to the Magdalena Medio region of Colombia. The primary purpose of those meetings, which were organized by the Solidarity Center, was to report our observations of the risks to union organizers and to advocate for improved security for them. We had seen firsthand the threats they faced. We heard their stories and saw the pictures of the “fallen ones” on the walls of their union halls.

The dangers extend to Solidarity Center workers as well. One member of our delegation was followed by a known paramilitary operative, and we had a run-in with the secret police, who were trying to secretly photograph us. Ruiz’s article, which repeatedly names Solidarity Center staff, lacks sensitivity to the real risks they face. The article’s inaccuracy is bad enough, but even worse is its recklessness.

This article originally appeared on the South Bay Labor Council blog.