Gary Beevers, United Steelworkers (USW) international vice president for Oil Bargaining, sends us this report. Beevers has extensive experience negotiating with major oil companies with the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers Union (OCAW).

A little after midnight on Good Friday last year, a heat exchanger on a naphtha hydrotreater unit at the Tesoro oil refinery in Anacortes, Wash., catastrophically failed.  The unit exploded, setting off a blast that shook homes five miles away and igniting a fire that could be seen anywhere in Anacortes.  Three oil workers died in the blast; four others died at the hospital from injuries sustained in the accident.

The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) said the explosion was preventable. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) reported that Tesoro failed to adequately maintain the nearly 40-year-old heat exchanger and that microscopic cracks had built up, making a rupture possible. 

Companies need to “make the investments necessary to ensure safe operations,” said CSB Chair Rafael Moure-Eraso to the press. “Companies that continue to invest in safety and recognize its importance will reap benefits far into the future.”

L&I Director Judy Shurke told reporters, “The bottom line is that this incident, this explosion and these deaths were preventable,” as she cited the company for 44 safety violations and issued a record $2.39 million fine. (Tesoro is appealing the fine.)

The Anacortes explosion was certainly not the only accident in the oil sector last year.  In just the months of April and May there were 13 fires, 19 deaths and 25 injuries in the oil industry.  That includes, of course, the Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 workers and created one of the most devastating ecological disasters in history. 

Our union has been working for years to pressure oil refiners to fix serious hazards and take real steps to improve refinery safety.   We’ve suggested standards for reporting incidents at refineries to improve transparency and we’ve proposed standards to address fatigue and eliminate excessive overtime caused by companies not replacing a worker assigned to another job duty. 

Our members have raised safety issues on the refinery floor, we’ve worked closely with fence line communities that are concerned with refinery safety, and we’ve taken these safety issues to Congress.  Now it’s time for investors to weigh in on refinery safety because it impacts the bottom line. 

This year, in collaboration with the AFL-CIO Reserve Fund, our union is presenting shareholder proposals at four major refining companies—Marathon, Valero, Tesoro, and ConocoPhillips.  Our proposal calls on each company to:

Prepare a report, within ninety days of the 2011 annual meeting of stockholders, at reasonable cost and excluding proprietary and personal information, on the steps the Company has taken to reduce the risk of accidents.  The report should describe the Board’s oversight of process safety management, staffing levels, inspection and maintenance of refineries and other equipment.

An identical report was filed at Sunoco, but it was withdrawn when the company agreed to fully comply with the request. 

Marathon, Valero, Tesoro and ConocoPhillips opposed our resolution.  After seven workers were killed, Tesoro said it was committed to safety so a report on their performance wasn’t necessary.  Valero said it was already disclosing numbers on its total reportable incident rate (TRIR) so information on process safety, staffing, and inspection and maintenance was unnecessary.  Valero also said that publishing a report would be too expensive. 

Refining companies usually don’t mind providing the public with data on reportable injuries.  The problem is that information provides a deceptive picture of refinery safety.  BP’s Texas City Refinery posted an incredibly low reportable injury rate just before the 2005 explosion that killed 17 people and led to the biggest fines in OSHA history.  Simply put, reporting slips, trips and falls doesn’t tell us anything about whether or not an explosion is likely to happen. 

It’s exactly this type of failed logic that led Transocean to give its executives ”safety bonuses” for turning in the company’s ”best year” in safety in 2010.  In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission management actually said “…we achieved an exemplary statistical safety record as measured by our total recordable incident rate and total potential severity rate.  As measured by these standards, we recorded the best year in safety performance in our company’s history.” 

Jon Stewart from “The Daily Show” did a great job capturing the absurdity.  He said:

Okay that’s just crazy.  You gave yourselves a safety bonus because statistically the Deepwater Horizon explosion, killing 11 people and pumping 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf Coast counts the same as Bob cut his hand on a bolt—it’s just one incident.

It’s worth pointing out that, out of embarrassment, the executives donated their safety bonuses to charities working to clean up the Gulf Coast. 

The real information that we need to know — whether or not a refinery is running safely — is the information we asked for in our shareholder resolution: the Board’s oversight of process safety management, staffing levels, and inspection and maintenance of refineries and other equipment.  To know whether or not there’s a risk of a deadly explosion, we need to know whether or not people at the top level of the company are directly involved in process safety; we need to know how much overtime people are working and what the risk of fatigue is; and we need to know whether or not the company is inspecting and maintaining its refineries. 

I honestly don’t know if the bankers and billionaire stockowners care about whether or not oil workers die.  But I do know that they care about making money.  And blowing up refineries is bad for business.  Not only do these accidents lead to months of downtime and cause insurance rates to go through the roof, they’re also bad for the public perception of our industry and drive down investor confidence. 

So whether they’re doing it to save lives or just to protect their investments it’s time for investors to weigh in on refinery safety.   Their profits, and our lives, depend on it.

    Lucas Benitez of the CIW, left, and Reggie Brown of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange sign the historic agreement last November, as Gerardo Reyes of the CIW looks on.        

“It’s like a time machine has suddenly whisked us from a Charles Dickens workhouse to an auto plant in the 21st century. The difference in attitude is that great.” That’s how one tomato worker, a member of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), reacted to a new training session for employees of Pacific Tomato Growers.

In the training, the first-ever of its kind, workers who pick tomatoes learned they are entitled to a minimum wage and breaks, what constitutes a full bucket of tomatoes and what to do if they have a complaint.

Writing for the Atlantic, Barry Estabrook, former contributing editor for Gourmet magazine, says the training is one of the first results of the historic agreement reached last November between the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE) and CIW.    

The agreement is taking effect in two stages. This growing season (2010-2011), all participating FTGE members will pay a penny more per pound for the tomatoes picked. At the same time, CIW and two growers, Six L’s and Pacific Tomato Growers, will hammer out a process for enforcing the code of conduct throughout the industry. The code will apply only to Six L’s and Pacific this season. Even though it does not go into full effect until the 2011-2012 season, the agreement already has had a lasting impact on the tomato industry.

Check out the article “Tomato Schools: Undoing the Evils of the Fields” here.

Paying back his corporate donors and allies and sticking it to working families once again, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) signed a bill that overturns Milwaukee’s paid sick leave law.

The law was passed with a 70 percent vote in 2008 and Milwaukee corporate interests soon filed suit against it, but in late March, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals upheld the law. Today, Walker went to the headquarters of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC), the business group that tried to block the law, and signed the bill that preempts all Wisconsin communities from approving ordinances requiring paid sick days.

The bill was passed at the urging of the MMAC by the Republican-controlled legislature and specifically designed to block the Milwaukee law.  Dana Schultz, lead organizer for 9to5, the National Association of Working Women, says Walker’s action is “an assault on democracy, local control, and working families.”

Voters can see that the governor and state legislature are more committed to paying back their corporate donors than creating good jobs for Wisconsin. 

Milwaukee Area Labor Council President Shelia Cochran says state government should be working “for the people that elected them, not for a narrow group of corporate interests.”

The governor and his associates have disregarded the will of the voters, the decision of the court and opened the door to reverse local control wherever they see fit.

Walker’s action comes just days after he cynically announced a program to recognize state employees for their hard work—the same workers whose collective bargaining rights he stripped—and after he appointed a union-busting attorney to head the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission.

Here’s a scary question. Who’s his next target?

On the eve of tomorrow’s unemployment report for April, we get this news from Fortune:

Profits of the 500 largest U.S. corporations soar by 81 percent ($318 billion), the third largest percentage gain in list history…Wal-Mart holds the number one spot for the second year in a row…Exxon Mobil leads profits with $30 billion, for the eighth year in row.

The stunning leap in profits is so excessive even Fortune writers are writhing in their leather chairs:

We’ve rarely seen such a stark gulf between the fortunes of the 500 and those of ordinary Americans….The profits derived partly from productivity gains, including workforce reductions. And many 500 companies are growing faster overseas than in the U.S.

Here’s the full list of the top moneymakers:  http://bit.ly/mnrPsI.

So what are Wall Street CEOs doing?

Screaming for more tax breaks. Listen to them holler about how the United States has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. And then read on to see why these corporations actually pay less—if anything—in corporate taxes than their counterparts in other nations. From the New York Times:

By taking advantage of myriad breaks and loopholes that other countries generally do not offer, United States corporations pay only slightly more on average than their counterparts in other industrial countries. And some American corporations use aggressive strategies to pay less—often far less—than their competitors abroad and at home. A Government Accountability Office study released in 2008 found that 55 percent of United States companies paid no federal income taxes during at least one year in a seven-year period it studied.

As our Executive PayWatch site points out,  U.S. corporations held a record $1.93 trillion in cash on their balance sheets in 2010.

But they are not investing to expand their companies, grow the real economy or create good middle-class jobs. Corporate CEOs are literally hoarding their company’s cash—except when it comes to their own paychecks.

Something to think about, because even if tomorrow’s job report shows improvement in the number of unemployed workers, more than 25 million will still be unemployed or underemployed.

The day after federal mine safety officials announced a series of “outrageous” safety violations at a Massey Energy West Virginia coal mine, mining industry officials were on Capitol Hill calling for fewer federal inspections and a voluntary safety program.

At the hearing before the Education and Workforce’s Workforce Protections Subcommittee, the Republican majority allowed just one worker’s witness, Mine Workers (UMWA) President Cecil Roberts, while three mine industry executives testified. Said Roberts:

The disaster at Upper Big Branch, as well as the other deaths and illnesses that continue to plague the mining industry make it clear that Congress must do more to protect miners. Operators should be required to make better efforts to prevent illnesses and injuries in the first place. After all, the mining industry has shown time and time again it is not very effective at self-policing.   

Roberts said the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) needs more enforcement tools, not fewer. He called for stronger safety rules, frequent and unannounced inspections and tougher penalties. (Click here for his full testimony.)

But Anthony Bumbico, vice president of Arch Minerals, the nation’s second largest coal company, lobbied for a voluntary approach to safety, patterned after an OSHA program known as the Voluntary Protection Program (VPP).

The Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward points out on his Coal Tattoo blog, “It’s worth remembering that most coal-mine deaths are the result of mine operators violating long established safety laws and regulations.”

He writes that the mining industry has been pushing for a voluntary approach, “basically eliminating MSHA” for years, and that the employer-based program was “a pet project” for Bush administration MSHA chief Dave Lauriski.    

something to either do away with required quarterly inspections or to create a program for “focused inspections” of only the mines with the worst previous safety performance. The National Mining Association, oddly enough, pushed for this previously just two months after the Sago disaster back in March 2006.

Backdropping the hearing was MSHA’s announcement Tuesday that it had issued 20 withdrawal orders and five citations following a surprise “impact” inspection at a Boone County, W.Va., mine owned by Massey, not far from the Upper Big Branch mine where 29 miners died in an explosion last year. MSHA chief Joe Main says:

The conduct and behavior exhibited when we caught the mine operator by surprise is nothing short of outrageous. Despite the tragedy at Upper Big Branch last year, and all our efforts to bring mine operators into compliance, some still aren’t getting it. The conditions observed at Randolph Mine place miners at serious risk to the threat of fire, explosion and black lung. Yet, MSHA inspectors can’t be at every mine every day. Our continuing challenge is counteracting the egregious behavior of certain mine operators.

Protesters rally outside the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., last week.

The nearly 100,000 workers who travel to North Carolina each summer to harvest the state’s tobacco crop are often repaid for their hard work with sub-minimum wages, dangerous conditions in the fields and inhumane living conditions, according to findings released today from a human rights assessment conducted by Oxfam America and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC).

The findings will be presented tomorrow to the annual shareholders’ meeting of Reynolds American in Winston-Salem, N.C., where supporters will call on the company to take action to end the abuses in its supply chain. Although Reynolds does not directly employ the farm workers on its contract farms, it sets the terms with its contract growers and profits from the farm workers’ labor. The full report “A State of Fear: Human Rights Abuses in North Carolina’s Tobacco Industry” will be released this summer. Click here to read the summary.

Key findings highlighted in the summary released today include:

• One-fourth of workers report being paid less than the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour.
• Most of the workers interviewed suffer regularly from symptoms of “green tobacco sickness,” which is caused by excessive absorption of nicotine through the skin.
• Nearly all the workers who lived in employer-provided housing described inadequate or nonworking showers and toilets, overcrowding, leaky roofs, beds with mattresses that were worn out or missing, insect and rodent infestations and lacking or inadequate cooking and laundry facilities.

FLOC Secretary-Treasuer Beatriz Maya said at a rally, in front of the company’s headquarters:

For years Reynolds has made excuses, and tried to either deny that there’s a problem or shift the blame somewhere else, and we’re here today on Reynolds’ doorstep to tell them that there is a big problem, to show them the facts, and to let them know that we are holding them responsible. It’s time for Reynolds to do right by the workers who harvest their tobacco, and to come together with the rest of their industry to make changes. We do not accept their excuses for the inexcusable conditions that tobacco farm workers are being forced to endure.  

Meanwhile, momentum is building for a mass march and rally tomorrow in Winston-Salem to demand better conditions in the tobacco fields. Thousands of farm workers, community, labor and student allies will call on Reynolds to meet with FLOC to discuss the conditions workers face in the tobacco fields. For at least four years, Reynolds has refused to meet with FLOC.

Last week, the workers gained a major victory when executives of British American Tobacco (BAT), which owns 42 percent of Reynolds American, agreed to meet with FLOC later this month. This is the first time any corporation with close ties to Reynolds American has agreed to meet with workers.

Also last week, farm workers, union members and members of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) protested at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., and at British consulates in nine cities in support of the tobacco workers.

Some might call it gall, others might say chutzpah.  I’m leaning toward calling it two-faced with several words preceding it that got me into a lot of trouble with my mother when I was a kid.

But whatever you decide to call Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s announcement that he has launched a series of state employee recognition awards rewards just weeks after his long and bitter fight to eliminate their collective bargaining rights, it’s hypocrisy at its worst. (Speaking of hypocrisy, check this out from Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich.)

Walker’s action comes just days after he appointed the partner in a union-busting Milwaukee law firm as the new commissioner and chairman of the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC). That’s the state body that decides disputes between state workers and management and now with Wisconsin workers’ rights eroded is even more important.

First the “coveted” awards and then a word about the new labor commish.

Walker says that his new State Employee Recognition awards program is his way of saying “thanks” for the hard work and dedication of state workers and to “highlight the most outstanding employees with recognition. ” Walker’s sincerity just oozes out of that quote. Brings the word “smarmy” to mind, doesn’t it?

Meanwhile, Walker’s new WERC chair, James R. Scott, comes to his post straight from the law firm Linder & Marsack S.C. which tells prospective clients:

Since our founding, we have aggressively represented our non-represented clients in pursuit of their goal to maintain a non-union status in furtherance of these goals.   

Read more from Judd Lounsbury at the Uppity Wisconsin blog, including cases where Scott “specifically fought against government workers.”

Protestors in Oakland, Calif., send a message to Rite Aid during a national day of action last December.

The 500 workers at Rite Aid’s distribution center in Lancaster, Calif., overcame a relentless five-year anti-worker campaign to eventually gain a tentative contract and union recognition.

The new three-year deal, reached  May 1,  guarantees fair health insurance rates, job security, a worker voice in production standards and wage increases in each of the next three years.

“We’re excited about winning this victory, even if it took longer than it should have,” said Carlos “Chico” Rubio, a 10-year warehouse worker.

The Rite-Aid employees decided to seek a voice through Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 26 more than five years ago. Rite Aid responded by hiring an expensive team of union-busting “consultants and threatening or even firing workers who supported the union, workers said.

But the Rite Aid workers stayed united and, in the end, won a contract and union recognition. “Rite Aid made this process much more difficult on workers and families than it needed to,” said ILWU Vice President Ray Familathe, who helped workers in the negotiations.

There was a time when Republicans claimed the “law and order” mantle was theirs and theirs alone.

But Republican senators’ recent cries of outrage against the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) issuance of a complaint against the Boeing Co. for trying to skirt federal labor law show they’re all for law and order as long as it’s not labor law.

With charges from Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and others that the NLRB is acting like “thugs” from a “third world country” and is bullying poor little old Boeing, you’d think the labor agency was taking rubber hoses to some poor schoolyard weakling.

Here’s the case in a nutshell.  In April, the NLRB issued a complaint against Boeing for moving a planned production line for its 787 Dreamliner from its unionized Puget Sound, Washington plant to a non-union facility in South Carolina.  The complaint alleges that the move was in retaliation against the Puget Sound workers for having previously exercised their federally-guaranteed right to strike against Boeing and to prevent these workers from striking in the future.

According to the NLRB’s fact sheet on the complaint Boeing allegedly violated

two sections of the National Labor Relations Act by making coercive statements and threats to employees for engaging in statutorily protected activities, and by deciding to place the second line at a non-union facility, and establish a parts supply program nearby, in retaliation for past strike activity and to chill future strike activity by its union employees.

South Carolina senators and the right-wing noise machine went in full-gear hysteria over the NLRB’s complaint and say that along with so-called government thuggery, it’s an insidious attack on right-to-work laws.   

But the NLRB charge has nothing to do with right to work.  Boeing’s move is  simply retaliation for workers’ exercising their rights by moving work to a state where workers’ rights and living standards are low. 

Myrtle Beach Sun News columnist, Issac Bailey says South Carolina leaders  leaders touted the state’s weak labor laws to Boeing.          

They said it was an attack on “right-to-work” states—a term that guarantees no one here a job and in some cases even a fair hearing to keep the one you have. Right-to-work really means right-to-keep-unions-neutered and little else, which is precisely why Boeing chose South Carolina, and which is precisely how South Carolina leaders pitched the state to the company as it was considering a move.

But to hear our leaders scream last week—you should have seen some of the email blasts sent out to the media—you’d think Armageddon had begun prematurely.

Tom Wroblewski, president of IAM District Lodge 751 in Seattle, which represents Boeing workers, says:

Taking work away from workers because they exercise their union rights is against the law, and it’s against the law in all 50 states.

Looks like Republicans are all for law and order as long is not a corporate scofflaw caught on the wrong side of the law.

Rebuilding America’s manufacturing base is central to rebuilding our nation’s economy and it’s time for Congress to focus on jobs, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said today. Trumka commended Democratic House Whip Steny Hoyer for refocusing attention on job creation by introducing the bipartisan “Make it in America” agenda, a series of proposals that together would create a national manufacturing strategy.

The nation has seen too many jobs move overseas, Trumka said, including research and development capacity. The loss of the nation’s innovative, technical and industrial capacity not only undermines opportunities in America, it also threatens our national security, he added.

The Make It in America agenda also would address the long-term issue of the Chinese government’s currency manipulation, which has had a devastating impact on our economy,  Trumka added.

“This nation can no longer live on legacy,” he said.

We need to invest trillions in the coming decades to build a 21st century infrastructure and we must ensure that we actually make the technology and materials for the things we are building and installing. The Make it in America agenda is a big step in the right direction to resolve our manufacturing crisis.

Read the entire statement here.

In a race that centered on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) attack on the rights of public employees to bargain for middle-class jobs, Democratic state Assembly candidate Steve Doyle easily won a seat that had been held by Republicans for 16 years.

In a special election to replace the previous assembly member whom Walker tapped for a top job in his administration, Doyle won 54 percent to 46 percent over Walker-backed candidate John Lautz.

The La Crosse Tribune reports that Doyle won despite:

a barrage of television and radio attacks by third-party groups, along with mailings from the Jobs First Coalition, a Brookfield, Wis.-based group tied to Scott Jensen, the former Republican state Assembly speaker who left office in 2002 amid misconduct allegations.

Before leaving to become Walker’s second-in-command, Rep. Mike Huebsch (R) held the longtime safe Republican seat since 2000 and won his six elections by an average of nearly 20 percentage points. This is just the latest backlash against Walker and his elimination of collective bargaining rights for teachers, nurses and other public service workers.

In April, Walker’s hand-picked successor to take his place as Milwaukee County executive, Rep. Jeff Stone (R), was trounced by Chris Abele (D) 61 percent to 39 percent. Abele was never shy about proclaiming, “I believe in collective bargaining for all workers.”

Meanwhile, six Republican state senators who voted for Walker’s bill to take away the rights of workers to bargain for a better life face recall elections. In each district, activists mobilized soon after the vote and quickly collected far more than the required number of signatures to trigger the recalls.

Jennifer Wright Dorr of Union Plus reports on financial aid available to union members facing hardships from the recent severe weather.

Union members who are facing financial hardship due to the recent severe storms, tornadoes and flooding, and who participate in Union Plus programs, may be eligible for financial help. 

As part of its Union Safe program, Union Plus is giving disaster relief grants of $500 each to help participants in the Union Plus credit card, insurance or mortgage programs who were impacted by the severe weather. The money does not have to be repaid.

To qualify for a Union Plus disaster relief grant, the union member must:

• Have a Union Plus Credit Card, Union Plus Mortgage or Union Plus Insurance policy for at least 12 months with the account or policy in good standing (be up to date on payments).
• Have experienced a significant income or property loss within the past six months, as a result of a natural disaster or emergency in counties designated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)  as qualifying for individual. Visit www.UnionPlus.org/Disaster for a list of qualifying counties in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee.
• Describe his or her circumstances and document the loss of income or property.

Union Plus Credit Cardholders should call 1-877-761-5028 to speak directly with a specially trained representative. Representatives in the United States handle all customer service calls to the Union Plus Credit Card Program.

Union Plus mortgage and insurance holders should call 1-800-472-2005. For more information about the Union Plus disaster benefits, click here.

Registered nurses at Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C., who have been fighting for safe patient care and strong nursing standards for nearly a year, reached a tentative agreement last night on a new contract with the hospital. The nearly 1,700 nurses are members of National Nurses United (NNU).

Lori Marlowe, RN, a cardiac nurse who is a member of the union’s bargaining team, says:

We are pleased to have achieved an agreement with the hospital that strengthens our ability to effectively advocate for our patients and protects RN professional and economic standards.

Details of the settlement are being withheld pending membership meetings with the nurses before they vote on the contract.

The nurses at the largest hospital in the nation’s capital—owned by the MedStar Health chain—have been without a contract since June. In October they voted by a 15-1 margin to join the NNU. In March hospital management temporarily locked out the nurses. With the proposed agreement, the RNs are canceling picketing at the hospital that had been scheduled for Friday.

The Pennsylvania AFL-CIO communications team, Jim Deegan and Karen Gownley, sent us this report.

Some 5,000 private- and public-sector union workers came together in Harrisburg, Pa., yesterday to rally for a responsible budget. Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President Richard Bloomingdale called it an incredible event because it

“wasn’t just about public sector workers—this was about ALL working men and women in our state. Today they all came together and demanded that the budget not be balanced on the backs of working  families.

Gov. Tom Corbett’s recent budget proposal slashes millions from public education and other vital public services. Meanwhile, big corporations like Marcellus Shale gas drillers, pay little or no taxes to the state. As Pennsylvania AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Frank Snyder put it:

The corporate loopholes must be closed. It is time corporations pay their fair share.

The rally was sponsored by the CLEAR Coalition, which is made up of labor organizations across the state, and represents more than 1.1 million people. AFSCME Council 13 Executive Director David Fillman emceed the event, in which workers from SEIU, UFCW, PSEA and others spoke about their experiences.

This is a cross-post from the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO by Karen Hickey in AFL-CIO Field Communications.

One hundred years ago today Wisconsin’s Republican governor put aside partisan politics to sign a law protecting workers. On May 3, 1911, Wisconsin Republican Gov. Francis McGovern signed the nation’s first constitutionally upheld workers’ compensation law.

The law, which helps workers who have been hurt or injured on the job, was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in both the state Senate and Assembly, reminding us that Wisconsin has a progressive history of coming together to protect the working people of the state. This law also was passed because workers and their unions organized, fought and demanded action from employers and their government.

“In a drastic turn of events, 100 years after the legislature put aside party politics to ensure fair treatment of workers, we are seeing severe political attacks on Wisconsin’s working families,” explained Phil Neuenfeldt, Wisconsin State AFL-CIO president.

Instead of working together to ensure the safety of all workers in our state, our current governor is pushing through a partisan agenda, which punishes workers in order to pay back corporations and political allies.

“What we are seeing in our current administration is shameful,” said Stephanie Bloomingdale, secretary-treasurer of the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO.

Wisconsin has a progressive history where our elected leaders put aside party differences for the good of the state. On this day, the 100th anniversary of the passage of the nation’s first workers’ compensation law, we commit to fight the assault on workers’ rights to bargain for fairer workplaces, safer workplaces and a better life and a brighter future for all.

For more information on workers’ compensation, visit the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development by clicking here.

Wow. I’m blown away. The only-known video and audio recording of Mary Harris ”Mother” Jones is in the clip at left. Recorded in 1930, on what possibly was her 100th birthday (historians aren’t sure of her year of birth), it shows even at an advanced age, she hadn’t lost any of the spark that fueled her life-long activism on behalf of improving the lot of workers.

After much personal tragedy, Mother Jones went on to become a union organizer, and was so effective, the Mine Workers (UMWA) sent her into the coalfields to sign up miners. She was banished from more towns and was held incommunicado in more jails in more states than any other union leader of the time. In 1912, she was even charged with a capital offense by a military tribunal in West Virginia and held under house arrest for weeks until popular outrage and national attention forced the governor to release her.

 

Mother Jones also was very concerned about child workers. During a silk strike in Philadelphia, 100,000 workers—including 16,000 children—left their jobs over a demand that their workweek be cut from 60 to 55 hours. To attract attention to the cause of abolishing child labor, in 1903, she led a children’s march of 100 children from the textile mills of Philadelphia to New York City “to show the New York millionaires our grievances.” She led the children all the way to President Theodore Roosevelt’s Long Island home.

Mother Jones still inspires: A student writes on the YouTube page with her video: 

• AMEN i didnt even know she exsisted until mr. williams made us do an essay on someone and dress up like them…she has really inspired me to make a difference

H/t to the Wisconsin Labor History Society for pointing out the video, and Washington, D.C.’s own labor activist, Concarbon, for uploading it.

The  Letter Carriers’ (NALC) annual national food drive this month comes at a time when millions of Americans are still struggling to put food on the table. More than 50 million people—including 17.2 million children—live in households that are hungry or at risk of hunger, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s a 30 percent increase in one year and represents more than one in seven households in the country (14.6 percent).

You can help “Stamp Out Hunger” by collecting canned goods and dry food, such as tuna, canned meat, soups, pasta, rice and cereal, and leaving them in a bag or box by your mailbox on Saturday, May 14. Your letter carrier will pick them up as they deliver your mail. NALC members will deliver the goods to local food banks, pantries and shelters to help needy families in 10,000 cities and towns in all 50 states and U.S. jurisdictions.

Last year, the Letter Carriers collected a record 77.1 million pounds of non-perishable food.

NALC President Fredric Rolando says the union members will ratchet up efforts this year.

Letter Carriers have never backed away from a challenge. Millions of Americans depend on the food we collect to help carry them through the summer months. We cannot—we must not—let them down.

Rolando noted that donations are particularly critical at this time since most school lunch programs are suspended during the summer months and millions of children must find alternate sources of nutrition.

This is NALC’s 19th annual food drive, which is held on the second Saturday in May in more than 10,000 cities and towns in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam.

   

Postal employees and rural letter carriers are assisting in the effort, as are members of other unions and thousands of volunteers. More information about the drive is available at helpstampouthunger.com. In addition to “liking” the Facebook page, you can also follow StampOutHunger on Twitter.

To date, 682,900 U.S. jobs have been lost or displaced since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect in 1994, a new Economic Policy Institute (EPI) study finds. The main reason for the job loss is a $97.2 billion trade deficit with Mexico. In 1993, one year before NAFTA was implemented, the United States had a $1.6 billion trade surplus with Mexico that supported nearly 30,000 U.S.  jobs.   

All 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have seen jobs lost or displaced to Mexico in the past 17 years, says Robert Scott, EPI’s senior international economist and author of  “Heading South: U.S.-Mexico trade and job displacement after NAFTA.”

 

During a phone conference today, Scott said NAFTA supporters argued the pact would create jobs in the United States. Backers of proposed trade deals with South Korea and Colombia are making similar claims, he said. But his research has shown that each trade agreement would cost thousands of U.S. jobs. In the first eight years, the current deal with Korea could cost 159,000 jobs, he said, and Colombia could swallow up 60,000 U.S. jobs.

Scott found the five states that experienced the largest percentage of local jobs displaced by trade with Mexico since NAFTA began are Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. The five that have the largest actual number of jobs displaced due to Mexico trade deficits are California, Texas, Michigan, Ohio and Illinois. (Check out the map above.)  

NAFTA made outsourcing to Mexico much more attractive for U.S. companies, Scott said. Mexico eliminated a wide range of longstanding that companies claimed were expensive, he added.   

Most of the jobs displaced by trade with Mexico—415,000 jobs, or 60.8 percent of the total—have been in manufacturing. The hardest hit manufacturers have been in computer and electronic parts (150,300 jobs lost or displaced, or 22 percent of the total number of jobs) and motor vehicles and parts (108,000 jobs, 15.8 percent). There has been a huge surge in motor vehicles and auto parts in the last three years that cost 30,000 U.S. jobs, Scott said.

     

Students graduating from college this spring will face the worst job market for graduates since the Great Depression, a new report says. “The Class of 2011: Young Workers Face a Dire Labor Market Without a Safety Net,” by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), found that unemployment among workers between the ages of 16 and 24 is more than double the national average. In 2010, young workers averaged 18.4 percent unemployment, compared with 9.6 percent overall.

The news is worst for young blacks and Hispanics, who are  suffering disproportionately. The unemployment rate for black high school graduates under age 25 and not enrolled in school was 31.8 percent last year and stands at 22.8 percent for Hispanic high school graduates and 20.3 percent for white high school graduates. The unemployment rate for young black college graduates was 19 percent compared with 13.8 percent for young Hispanic graduates and 8.4 percent for young white graduates.

Younger high school graduates also are not keeping pace with their older peers.  Their 22.5 percent unemployment rate in 2010 is more than double the 10.3 percent rate among high school graduates age 25 and older.

The authors of the study, economists Heidi Shierholz and Kathryn Anne Edwards, say there is a persistent high unemployment rate among graduates who have entered the job market since late 2008. There is now a backlog of unemployed or underemployed graduates from the past two years that leaves the current graduating class at a significant disadvantage.

Shierholz says the federal government should step in with relief.

The best thing we can do is to generate a faster a recovery in the overall labor market that will move the dial for [graduates] and unemployed workers in general. There is a clear lever we can push to make that happen but decisions are being made [by Congress] based on items outside of economics.

Imagine one day you woke up and there were no sanitation workers to pick up the pile of stuff in your trash. No letter carriers or postal workers to move your mail. No teachers in the classrooms, no firefighters to stop your neighbor’s house—or yours—from burning to the ground.

Such is the scenario being created by many Republican lawmakers in the states who are destroying collective bargaining rights for public employees and decimating our ability to attain good middle-class jobs.

Sam Gilberg, an 18-year-old songwriter with a band, One Track Mind, thinks about the plight of workers and has created a video depicting this bleak scenario, with the hope that it will stir people to action. Watch it.