Editor's Note: Happy Thanksgiving from the Media Consortium! This week, we aren't stopping The Audit, The Pulse, The Diaspora, or The Mulch, but we are taking a bit of a break. Expect shorter blog posts, and The Diaspora and The Mulch will be posted on Wednesday afternoon, instead of their usual Thursday and Friday postings. We'll return to our normal schedule next week.
by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Wednesday is the heaviest travel day of the year in the United States, as millions of Americans head home to celebrate Thanksgiving. Some of you are probably reading this dispatch on PDAs as you wait in an interminable line at airport security. Here's some food for thought.
At Grist, food writer Michael Pollan officially declares himself a Rules Guy. Don't worry, that doesn't mean he won't accept a Friday dinner invitation offered after noon on Wednesday. Pollan thinks that our healthy eating skills are passed down to us as part of food culture. In this era of drive-through windows and meal replacement bars, a lot of the old wisdom is falling by the wayside and Americans are finding themselves adrift in a sea of calories. On the eve of Thanksgiving, Pollan provides some helpful guidelines for avoiding the food coma:
[M]any ethnic traditions have their own memorable expressions for what amounts to the same recommendation. Many cultures, for examples, have grappled with the problem of food abundance and come up with different ways of proposing we stop eating before we're completely full: the Japanese say "hara hachi bu" ("Eat until you are 4/5 full"); Germans advise eaters to "tie off the sack before it's full." And the prophet Mohammed recommended that a full belly should contain one-third food, one-third drink, and one-third air. My own Russian-Jewish grandfather used to say at the end of every meal, "I always like to leave the table a little bit hungry."
But wait, there's more!
Unions representing airline pilots and flight attendants are advising their members to avoid the the TSA's new backscatter x-ray scans because of concerns about the long-term health effects of x-ray radiation. Crew members who refused scans have been subjected to new "enhanced" pat-down searches. This week, the TSA granted an exception to pilots, but not to flight attendants. As I reported for Working In These Times, all crew members go through the same FBI background check and fingerprinting process. "Don't touch my junk!" has become a rallying cry for passengers, particularly white men, who are not accustomed to being asked to give up any part of their body's autonomy for the greater good. Is it a coincidence that 95% of pilots are men and three-quarters of flight attendants are women? [Update: The TSA has relented. The agency announced Tuesday that flight attendants will now get the same exemption as pilots.
Adam Serwer argues in The American Prospect that it's easy to demand tough security measures when the presumed targets are faceless Muslims in a distant country. When air travelers are asked to compromise their own privacy in the name of security, the tradeoff suddenly seems very different.
Employee health insurance deductibles are skyrocketing at Whole Foods and CEO John Mackey is trying to blame the increase on health care reform. "This is very important for everyone to understand: 100% of the increases in deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums in 2011 compared to 2010 are due to new federal mandates and regulations," Mackey wrote in a corporate memo. In fact, as Josh Harkinson reports in Mother Jones, Mackey's memo is pure, organic BS. The provisions in the Affordable Care Act that might increase costs won't go into effect until 2014, so it's hard to figure out how federal policies could be responsible. Health insurance costs were rising by about 5% per year, year after year, before the Affordable Care Act passed. The truth is that health insurance is getting more expensive because health care is getting more expensive. As Harkinson points out, one of the reasons that health care is getting more expensive is because corporations like Whole Foods are pushing more of their employees into part-time work to avoid covering them. Of course, when those workers get sick, someone has to pick up the cost of their care. So those who have insurance, including some of Whole Foods' own employees, have to pay more to make up the difference.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
On Dec. 15, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will host a live online conversation on the nation's jobs crisis--and you can take part.
Starting today, you can submit questions and vote on other ones submitted to the AFL-CIO's "Open for Questions About the Jobs Crisis." Trumka will answer the top-rated questions in the live online video discussion at 4 p.m. EST on Tues., Dec. 15.
• Sign in here to participate if you have a Google account.
• If you don't have a Google account, create one here.
Trumka will engage with union members and working family activists around the country and share solutions for restoring good jobs and revitalizing the nation's economy.
Tune in here at 4 p.m. EST on Dec. 15 and get involved by submitting or voting on questions.
The second in a series on the AFL-CIO's job creation proposals.
As part of the AFL-CIO's five-point plan for job creation, we're making concrete proposals to address the nation's immediate jobs crisis while keeping an eye on creating a sustainable economy in the future.
Investment in rebuilding the nation's infrastructure can put millions of people to work now and improve our country for the long term. The United States has some $2.2 trillion in unmet infrastructure needs. That's a lot of work that needs to be done, at a time when 26 million people are unemployed or underemployed.
Part 1 in a series on the AFL-CIO's plan to address the jobs crisis.
To tackle our nation's ongoing jobs crisis, the AFL-CIO has put forth a five-point plan to put people back to work and restore our economy. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka presented this five-part plan at the White House Jobs Summit last week.
The first step in this plan is to extend a lifeline to the people who have been hit the hardest by the jobs crisis.
"If a majority of workers want a union, they should get a union. It's that simple. We need to stand up to the business lobby and pass the Employee Free Choice Act. That's why I've been fighting for it in the Senate and that's why I'll make it the law of the land when I'm president of the United States." --Barack Obama
Nobody is making it the law of the land. Nobody is fighting for it. The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) has drifted down to the bottom of the AFL-CIO's website, buried beneath good economic proposals which, however, do nothing to build a labor movement. EFCA is not to be found anywhere on the front page of Change to Win's website at all. The media's not smearing EFCA with U.S. Chamber of Commerce lies anymore. Congress and the White House are silent. Any escalation of pressure on senators from union members has never materialized, the polite letter-writing campaigns having drifted away rather than ramping up into pickets or sit-ins.
Trumka will be part of a noted panel in "Spotlight on the Jobs Crisis" at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
With unemployment at its highest rate in more than 20 years, Trumka says America needs bold, quick action to put people back to work, in addition to longer term, structural fixes for our economy. The AFL-CIO initiative he announces will include calls to extend help for the unemployed, rebuild the nation's infrastructure, provide aid to struggling states and communities, create federally funded community-based jobs and increase lending to small and medium-sized businesses to spur job creation.
Wells Fargo is a roadblock to economic recovery. That's what members of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE) are claiming, as they literally blocked a busy Rock Island, Illinois intersection late last week to protest Wells Fargo's decision to cut off credit to the Quad City Die Casting factory.
100 Quad City factory employees risk losing their jobs if Wells Fargo doesn't extend tens of thousands of dollars in credit to continue day-to-day operating costs. So why won't Wells Fargo use some of its $25 billion in bailout funds to keep this factory afloat, particularly when the Illinois-Iowa Quad Cities region is losing $6.1 million in wages and tax revenue annually? According to UE organizer Leah Fried, "[Wells Fargo] want[s] to get out from under the TARP money because they want to get out from the scrutiny. They're hoarding." Wells Fargo has even gone so far as to prevent the company from paying the wages and benefits owed to its employees, which prompted UE to file charges with the National Labor Relations Board last week.
Across the country, we're seeing more and more protests this one. As journalist/labor activist Mike Elk recently noted, these public demonstrations are highly effective ways of bringing national attention to the bailed out banks that are cutting off credit and have done pathetically little to jump-start our ailing economy. We saw this last December, when laid-off UE workers held sit-ins at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago because Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase wouldn't fork over credit for the company to pay severance.
The national tragedy reflected in the most recent unemployment figures is a story that goes far beyond the official, horrifying statistics.
Unemployment hit 8.1% of the labor force in February, 2009, with an additional 651,000 persons unemployed. We now have 12.5 million unemployed, another 8.6 million underemployed and at least 2.1 million "marginally attached to the labor force". Among those "marginally attached" were 731,000 "discouraged workers" who, due to a lack of available jobs, did not look for work and therefore are not even counted as unemployed.
Not including any of the millions of other Americans who are categorized as not in the labor force at all, the number of our fellow citizens now unemployed or underemployed is now at least 23.2 million Americans.
That's nearly 4 million more people than the entire population of New York State; nearly 9 million more than the population of all six New England states combined.
What grassroots organization speaks for these tens of millions of citizens?
Right now, America needs A Union of the Unemployed.
In the latest issue of Rolling Stone, Nobel Prize-winning Princeton economist Paul Krugman has written an open letter to President Obama detailing the steps needed to end our economic crisis and turn the country around.
Krugman's prescription includes quick and large-scale actions to save jobs, rebuild infrastructure and protect those whose health care, housing and retirement have been put at risk-but it also includes longer-term strategies to make sure America is "a more just and secure society." High on Krugman's list? In addition to health care reform and an economic recovery package, he stresses restoring workers' freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life by passing the Employee Free Choice Act.
...you can do a lot to enhance workers' rights. One is to start laying the groundwork to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it much harder for employers to intimidate workers who want to join a union; the legislation will enable America to take a huge step toward recapturing the middle-class society we've lost.
While everyone was focusing on the fate of the bailout plan this week, the federal government's debt passed the $10 trillion mark with hardly anyone noticing. Of course, the bailout plan insures that this debt will climb even higher as there is specific language in the bailout plan authorizing the federal government to raise the debt limit and borrow up to $840 billion to fund the bailout.
In my years as an activist member with SEIU United Healthcare Workers - West I have been a part of many struggles for working people. But in the last months we have been in a different kind of fight. We have stood up to the arrogance of Andy Stern, Anna Burger and other SEIU International officers who, in an attempt to flex their muscles and stifle dissent, have chastened many rank-and-file members and our local, United Healthcare Workers - West with the threat of trusteeship. But I will say now, organized union members will never be intimidated by anyone, International Union officers included. We will stand up to anyone.
I saw this stifling of members' voices at the SEIU Convention in Puerto Rico from the moment we entered the convention center, when our delegation was harassed and followed. I saw this as the Convention voted to move me and other workers out of my union and into corrupt Local 6434, ignoring our right to decide where we belong. The hundreds in Puerto Rico voted to move us 65,000 from California. But we were not intimidated then.
UHW member Ella Raiford, protesting the Convention's vote to force members out of UHW.
In response, we came out in force. At our mass demonstration in Manhattan Beach, where we organized 6000 members to protest another sham hearing, I personally went up to Anna Burger and confronted her, telling her that we will not be swayed and demanded that Stern and Burger meet with our membership. We aren't furniture, we can't be moved around on their whims. We weren't surprised when she said no to a meeting. We stood strong in front of them, never scared.
My UHW brothers and sisters protesting the International's plans to divide us in July.
We continued on to Madison, Wisconsin, where a group of us were determined to meet with SEIU International. We continued in our demands for a meeting with Andy Stern, and to our surprise he agreed to meet us for a brief talk. But he said very little to us, claiming that he couldn't say anything without his lawyers. Instead of our elected officers working for us, Andy and Anna wanted the lawyers to do their job, so they could wash their hands when we pressed them with questions. When faced with dozens of informed, angry union members, maybe our International union officers were intimidated by us!
We confronted Andy Stern; me right after our meeting with him.
And most recently, I and fifty other UHW members occupied the SEIU International office in Alameda to demand answers from out-of-touch union officials who support taking away our voice. We shouldn't be afraid to confront them -- they work for us!
Us confronting International officials at the SEIU Office in Oakland.
This is a movement of union members who have one goal: to keep our democratically run union, UHW, where we make decisions. I and others in our union have confronted our bosses and won, through the power of organized union members. We are not afraid to take on any fight, even against SEIU International officials.
JuanAntonio Molina
Proud UHW Member
In-Home Healthcare Provider
San Francisco, CA
I'm an RN on staff at SEIU and would like to provide an update to 4SEIU's May 8 post, "It's Time: Honor RNs' Call for an End to Raiding, Renewed Focus on Unity".
CNA is devoting massive resources to divide nurses at a critical time when workers need each other and patients need them most. In addition to the Vegas raid attempt, the CNA is actively trying to decertify SEIU nurses throughout California and elsewhere in the country. In March, the CNA waged an aggressive "vote no" campaign in Ohio, forcing the cancellation of union elections for 8,300 nurses and hospital workers in nine hospitals. In recent years the CNA also has raided other unions or intervened in other unions' organizing drives in Hawaii, Illinois, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, and other states.
In the wake of CNA's actions that were described here, CNA failed to organize 844 registered nurses at St. Agnes Medical center in Fresno, California.
According to a report by the Fresno Bee, CNA is accusing the hospital of harrassing and intimidating nurses--an all-too common occurrence those of us in the labor movement have come to know. (See: http://www.fresnobee.com/busin...
That's why SEIU has been mobilizing nurses and other healthcare employees to challenge their employers to agree to a free and fair organizing process.
CNA, on the other hand, has chosen to fight other unions.
From www.shameoncna.com: Since 2001, fully 76% of the CNA's union membership growth (30,396 members) has come from "raids" of other unions (2,453), affiliation agreements (6,600), and interventions in SEIU's fair organizing agreements with CHW and Tenet (14,085). After SEIU mounted extensive multi-year campaigns to win these agreements, the CNA subsequently became a party to them by challenging them as "back-room deals" until they received similar agreements.
There's enough working against us--like employers who utilize our weak labor laws to violate workers' rights--to have in-fighting among labor organizations.
Toward that end, SEIU is renewing our call for a mutual no-raid/no-interference agreement with CNA and other nurse organizations. And, at the urging of AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, we've committed to a formal mediation process with CNA.
For the 85% of RNs in this country who are without a union voice, this can't happen soon enough.
As an RN of 29 years and a CNA/NNOC RN who witnessed the dramatic vote for change by St. Rose Las Vegas RNs, who voted by 53% for CNA/NNOC, I am proud to post this diary today.
In the last few years, America's RNs have formed-at last-a National Nurses' Movement, with the creation of the first national union of RNs. So far we are 80,000 RNs banding together for guaranteed healthcare, nursing practice, and a progressive labor movement, and that number grows daily. As patient advocates we believe that this is the only path towards making sure that every one of our patients get the care they deserve.
You may know CNA/NNOC for its political profile, but it is the nurse organizing that has allowed us to make a difference for RNs across the country. Here's a quick update on the incredible progress we're making just this week:
Hi, my name is Lisa Tomasian and I am a Radiology Technologist at Kaiser Hospital in Santa Clara, California, and a 17-year member of United Healthcare Workers. I¹ve seen the discussion here and on other blogs about the dispute going on within SEIU, and it seems a lot of the jargon and talk about internal union mechanisms is obscuring the day-to-day reality of what this dispute is really about. So I¹m hopeful that sharing my perspective and experience will help bring this discussion back to a useful place.
The headline says it all as it was a very busy and sometimes hectic week. I started out the week Sunday and Monday in Harrisburg where I was attending the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania spring conference. I really wish I could have been in State College to see Senator Barack Obama's historic visit to Penn State but, I had already scheduled to attend the CCAP conference several weeks ago. I've heard from people who attended and they were all still buzzing late in the week from the rally.
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