AFL-CIO

The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) have tentatively agreed on a three-year contract covering prime-time television shows.

The tentative deal announced today includes wage increases, payments for work used on the Internet and other "new media," increased employer contributions to the union's health and retirement plans and other contract improvements.

AFTRA President Roberta Reardon says the pact achieves:

Union members gathered in Denver to highlight key issues in the 2008 election and ask Sen. John McCain to pay attention to the issues that affect working families and veterans. McCain was in the Mile High City yesterday for a fundraiser, and as they have at McCain campaign stops across the country, union members turned out to meet him.

Some 38 percent of AFL-CIO members are veterans, so veterans’ benefits like health care and education are important issues for union members. (If you’re a veteran or from a military family, take our survey and let us know.) The federal government employees’ union, AFGE, has launched a campaign to convince McCain to change course and support fully funded public services for veterans, as well as a new G.I. Bill to expand college access for returning veterans. Mike Coulter, a Vietnam-era veteran and union member, served the people of the United States as an air traffic controller and federal employee for 25 years.

It’s important for union members to stand up for veterans' issues. Last week, Sen. McCain spoke out against the increase in VA funding, and that is unfortunate.

Sen. John McCain headed to his home state for a fundraiser yesterday, alongside a guest who he’s stood with for many years: President Bush.

McCain’s campaign treasury reaped the benefits of Bush’s taxpayer-funded trip to Phoenix, but McCain tried to avoid the appearance of running as a third term to the least popular U.S. president on record.

McCain was willing to appear alongside Bush for all of 47 seconds, even though he’s been willing to vote with him 100 percent of the time in 2008. Maybe he’s trying to prove he’s not the “McSame” as we’ve had the past seven years—but his voting record isn’t encouraging.

Shareholders scored victories in corporate boardrooms across the nation this spring, gaining the right to vote on universal health care proposals spearheaded by the AFL-CIO, as Daniel Pedrotty from the AFL-CIO Office of Investment explains.

Because of an initiative led by the AFL-CIO and a broad coalition of investors, shareholders have won the right to vote on universal health reform proposals at several corporate annual board meetings this spring.

Cliff Schecter, blogger, author and activist, has closely followed the career of John McCain—and finds it bears little resemblance to the media's image of the senator from Arizona. Schecter has just published a tough, well-researched profile of the likely Republican presidential nominee in his new book, The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don’t Trust Him and Why Independents Shouldn’t.

Schecter will join us this Friday, May 30, in the Gompers Room here at the AFL-CIO, to discuss issues like McCain's support of more tax cuts for the wealthy, his relentless backing of the Iraq war, his flip-flopping from opposing torture to voting to allow water boarding and more. We'll have copies of The Real McCain available and we plan to post video clips and a podcast from the event in case you're out of town or can't make it. Schecter will be joined by blogger Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, and a complimentary beer and wine event follows.

New legislation would toughen penalties and crack down on employers who take away workers' benefits and rights by misclassifying them as "independent contractors" instead of regular employees.

When workers are misclassified as independent contractors, they pay higher taxes and lose important rights, such as workers’ compensation coverage, minimum wage and overtime protections, family and medical leave and the right to organize and collectively bargain.

Last week, the U.S. Senate passed a groundbreaking update to the G.I. Bill, which would cover the cost of college education for all returning veterans.

By ensuring our nation's veterans have access to education, this bill would honor their service and give them the opportunity to have good jobs and economic security.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) didn’t show up to vote, but, this weekend, he left no doubt as to how he felt about the bill.

McCain chose to put an attack on the new G.I. Bill at the center of his Memorial Day speech, claiming it would hurt retention. (According to a Time magazine analysis, the bill would help recruitment as much as it would reduce retention. The U.S. Department of Defense reports that our military met its recruitment and retention goals in April.)

Rush-hour drivers navigating a major rotary (that's "traffic circle" for those of us outside the New England crowd) in Falmouth, Mass., were laying on their horns and waving last week. But not in anger. They were showing their support for the two dozen union members rallying at the rotary—and out of traffic—for health care reform.

The union members and leaders carried signs reading "Healthcare: It costs too much! It covers too little! It excludes too many! And it's getting worse!" and "It's Time to Turn Around America."

Tough negotiations still are under way between Hollywood studios and television and radio artists, and more news from the "Bargaining Digest Weekly." The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 900 subscribers. Union leaders can register for this service through our website, Bargaining@Work.

NEGOTIATIONS

AFTRA, Hollywood Studios: The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) announced in an e-mail to its membership that challenging issues remained, as the negotiations with Hollywood studios continue on a contract covering some prime-time TV shows. "We are confronting a number of challenging issues, and a resolution may not be quick or easy," AFTRA President Roberta Riordan said. Central issues include a push by studios to gain full control of clips containing the images of actors for use on the Internet.

Our good friends over at FACE Talk, one of the best organizing-focused blogs, have a new home—a face-lift, so to speak. They are now part of the AFT's Faculty and College Excellence (FACE) website, which itself has received a new look.

With a roster of regular bloggers from campuses around the country, FACE Talk brings first-hand accounts and comments about the latest organizing campaigns, bargaining, administration outrages, legislative action and more from the world of higher education.

Right now, our Cool Tools section—the AFL-CIO’s pick of recent books, DVDs and more—features books that examine the way the extreme right has taken and held power in American politics.

This edition of Cool Tools features one of the most impressive and illuminating books that’s ever been written about American politics in the 1960s and 1970s: Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. Rick Perlstein, a sharp historian, examines these turbulent years in America through the lens of the rise of Richard Nixon, from his defeats in the early 1960s, to his landslide 1972 victory, to his disgrace and fall in the Watergate scandal.

Nixonland traces the breaking of the American social contract and asks how it was all possible. America went from the triumphant passage of Medicare and the Voting Rights Act to a divided nation in which the social contract was re-written to leave workers on their own.

The United Steelworkers (USW) has launched a new website to shine the spotlight on the business practices of Grupo México, a Mexican conglomerate that owns numerous businesses in the Western Hemisphere.

The Record Speaks for Itself hosts links to resources to educate the public about Grupo México's treatment of its workers at home and abroad, and its sorry record on the environment.

Grupo México, a mining and railroad company, is the world’s third-largest copper producer. It has ties to ASARCO Inc., an Arizona-based metals company that employs USW members in Arizona and Texas. USW members in Arizona struck Grupo México-owned copper mines for four months in 2005 over the company’s refusal to bargain in good faith.

Florida farm workers who harvest tomatoes for the Burger King system will see improved wages and working conditions following an historic agreement announced yesterday between the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and the fast food giant.

The agreement follows a more than year-long drive that mobilized union members, students, religious and community activists and lawmakers in marches, rallies, congressional hearings and petition drives demanding justice for the workers.

Some 400 union leaders, educators, environmentalists, economists, policymakers and others are set to gather June 11-13 in Los Angeles to explore ways to fight climate change, move to a green economy and promote economic security.

You still have time to register for the Adapting to Change conference, sponsored by the California Labor Federation's Workforce and Economic Development (WED) program and its Building Workforce Partnerships initiative.

While passing the extension of unemployment assistance by a veto-proof margin yesterday, the Senate also overwhelmingly approved a new bill to help veterans pay for college.

The Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act is an expansion of the historic G.I. Bill, which helped a generation of veterans attend college and work their way into the middle class. The original G.I. Bill, enacted in June 1944, helped millions of veterans returning from World War II (and later from other wars) get needed education or job training and enabled broad prosperity.

But its benefits have been watered down and now covers only a portion of the rising cost of education for today’s returning veterans. Service members returning from Iraq or Afghanistan are finding they can’t cover the cost of attending a college or university. The new bill will modernize the benefits so today's veterans returning to civilian life can enjoy the same access to education as post-World War II veterans did.

UAW workers at five American Axle & Manufacturing plants in Michigan and New York voted to ratify a new four-year labor agreement reached last week, ending a strike that began Feb. 26.

The union reports that 78 percent of the workers voted in favor of ratification and 22 percent voted against it.

Says UAW President Ron Gettelfinger:

Our members have had to make some tough decisions for themselves and their families and have done so with careful deliberation.

America's workers are being squeezed by declining wages, rising health care costs, evaporating pensions, job insecurity and globalization, according to Steven Greenhouse, one of the few full-time labor reporters in the country. In a new Point of View column on the AFL-CIO website, Greenhouse, who covers workplace issues for The New York Times, talks about his new book, The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker.

I asked Greenhouse why he titled his book The Big Squeeze. Here's what he had to say:

In many ways corporate America is clamping down on its workers. Wages have been cut over the past few years. We’ve seen health benefits get worse. Middle class Americans have health insurance while the typical worker has to pay twice as much for health insurance as was the case seven years ago.

This is a cross-post from the Firedoglake blog.

AFL-CIO blog writer James Parks talked with Colombian trade unionists who traveled here last week to urge Congress not to pass the U.S.-Colombian Free Trade Agreement. As James relates below, Colombian trade unionists do not want Congress to reward that nation with a trade deal in a climate of fear and death that they and their union compatriots face daily.

On April 23, 2008, Jorge Gamboa was in Yarima accompanying a group of African Palm workers who were on strike to demand respect for their basic labor rights and to seek negotiations with their employer. Two individuals targeted Gamboa, one of them holding a revolver. Gamboa was fortunately able to disarm the individual before any shots were fired. The striking workers then apprehended the two assailants and turned them over to the police.

The more than 200,000 workers a month who run out of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits before finding new jobs may get a helping hand. Today, the U.S. Senate, by a surprising 75-22 veto-proof vote, approved a measure to extend UI benefits for the long-term jobless.

The vote was on an amendment to a supplemental spending bill to fund the war in Iraq. President Bush has repeatedly said he would veto the bill if it includes a UI extension.

Said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney before the vote:

Extending unemployment benefits is the right thing and the responsible thing to do, and now is the time. Working families are footing the bill for the war. The least Congress can do is give them the help they need in these tough times.

Faced with a "filibuster-by-amendment" from a group of anti-worker Republicans, Senate Democratic leaders have delayed a final vote on legislation that would protect the collective bargaining rights of tens of thousands of firefighters, police officers, emergency medical technicians and other public safety officers.

More than 20 states do not fully protect the bargaining rights of firefighters and other first responders. Two states—Virginia and North Carolina—prohibit public safety employees from collectively bargaining.