Today's AFL-CIO Press Clips
POLITICS
Walsh Heads Already Active Labor Department
EHS Today
By David Sparkman
March 29, 2021
“Millions of workers still do not have the strong COVID-19 protections they need to be safe at work,” declared Rebecca Reindel, AFL-CIO safety and health director. “Marty Walsh’s strong leadership will be needed to urgently issue a strong, comprehensive OSHA COVID-19 emergency temporary standard to set workplace safety rules, accompanied by strong enforcement to ensure workers are protected.”
‘It Rescued Our Entire Plan Overnight.’ How Joe Biden Will Help Rockers Retire
Rolling Stone
By David Browne
March 29, 2021
President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan will benefit, among other things, state and local governments, small businesses, people living in poverty and, it turns out, professional musicians hoping to retire at some point in their lives. Since musicians often work for many bosses, they fall under the purview of multi-employer pension plans – a pet cause of Ohio senator Sherrod Brown, who has been pushing to fix those type of pension plans for years. After years of introducing what was first called the Butch Lewis Act (named after an Ohio teamster), Brown worked to get his pension-salvaging plan into the American Rescue Plan.
CORONAVIRUS
What’s Behind the Hispanic Vaccination Gap?
The New York Times
By Amy Schoenfeld Walker, Lauren Leatherby and Yuriria Avila
March 29, 2021
Hispanic people across the United States continue to be especially underrepresented among those vaccinated for Covid-19, according to a New York Times analysis of state-reported race and ethnicity information. The Hispanic share of the vaccinated population is less than the Hispanic general population in all states with large Hispanic communities.
New vaccination site will be dedicated to essential union workers
Chicago Sun-Times
By Manny Ramos
March 29, 2021
Chicago Federation of Labor President Bob Reiter said this will be the nation’s first vaccination site run by the labor movement for union workers. It will focus on inoculating those affected disproportionately by the pandemic. The group has 300 affiliated unions and a combined half-million working members.
Chicago Tribune
By Gregory Pratt
March 29, 2021
“Since Chicago first received COVID-19 vaccines, our highest priority has been to vaccinate our most vulnerable residents and essential workers as quickly as possible,” Lightfoot said in a statement. “Unions are trusted messengers and dedicated advocates for thousands of Chicago’s essential workers, and this collaboration will ensure that workers with the highest need will have access to the vaccine as we enter Phase 1c.”
TRADE
New Trade Representative Says U.S. Isn’t Ready to Lift China Tariffs
The Wall Street Journal
By Bob Davis and Yuka Hayashi
March 28, 2021
AFL-CIO chief economist William Spriggs said he is looking for fundamental reorientation of trade away from a corporate model marked by “inside deals between highly connected people who paid for a seat at the table.”
AMAZON
Why the Amazon unionization vote could take a week - or longer - to resolve
The Washington Post
By Jay Greene
March 29, 2021
More than 5,800 workers at the e-commerce giant’s Bessemer, Ala., warehouse are choosing whether to be represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. The union drive has mushroomed into one of the most important labor battles in recent history, even drawing the attention of President Biden, who tweeted a video late last month saying workers should be able to make their decision in union elections without pressure from the company. But it won’t be decided quickly. The first step is to count the votes, and there are several opportunities in that process for both Amazon and the union to contest results. They could challenge whether a ballot was properly signed, whether it’s real or even if the worker who cast it is legitimate.
Lawmakers, Chicago unions support Amazon workers’ union vote in Alabama
Chicago Sun-Times
By Zac Clingenpeel
March 26, 2021
“Union Yes! Union Yes!” Chicago labor leaders and union members chanted Friday outside Amazon’s Chicago office. The demonstrators, who were joined by the U.S. Reps. Jan Schakowsky and Jesús “Chuy” Garcia, gathered to voice support for an ongoing union vote among workers at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. The crowd also urged senators to pass the PRO Act, union legislation that would override right-to-work laws across the country. Schakowsky and Garcia voted in favor of the act when it passed in the House on March 9.
EXPLAINER: What to know about the Amazon union vote
7 News
By Associated Press
March 29, 2021
Nearly 6,000 Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama, are deciding whether they want to form a union, the biggest labor push in the online shopping giant’s history. The stakes are high for Amazon. The organizing in Bessemer could set off a chain reaction across its operations nationwide, with more workers rising up and demanding better working conditions. Meanwhile, labor advocates hope what’s happening in Bessemer could inspire workers beyond Amazon to form a union. But organizers face an uphill battle. Amazon, the second-largest private employer in the country, has a history of crushing unionizing efforts at its warehouses and its Whole Foods grocery stores.
What's at stake in Amazon's Bessemer, Alabama, union vote: 5 questions answered
Yahoo! News
By Raymond Hogler
March 28, 2021
In March 2021, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union asked the National Labor Relations Board to hold an election at the Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer. Some 6,000 workers are eligible to vote by secret ballot about whether they want the union to represent them in their dealings with Amazon.
Historic Amazon Union Vote Count Begins This Week For Alabama Warehouse
NPR
By Alina Selyukh
March 29, 2021
The vote count for one of the most consequential union elections in recent history begins this week. The results could lead to Amazon's first unionized warehouse in America. Voting officially ends Monday for some 5,800 Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Ala., who have been casting ballots by mail on whether to unionize. It's the first union election in years at Amazon, the country's second-largest private employer with 800,000 workers.
A union at Amazon? Why workers in Alabama hold the key.
The Christian Science Monitor
By Story Hinckley
March 29, 2021
Yet after Amazon opened a warehouse here one year ago, with the promise of almost 6,000 jobs starting at $15.30 an hour, more than double Alabama’s minimum wage, what seemed like an answered prayer also soon became the venue of a nationally watched fight over unionization. Why here? Amazon has more than 100 other warehouses, most of them larger, both in square footage and employee size, and almost all of them have been in place longer than Bessemer’s BHM1 site.
LABOR AND ECONOMY
How Will Ongoing Climate Change Efforts Impact US Jobs?
Go Banking Rates
By Gabrielle Olya
March 29, 2021
And while it may be difficult, Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the United States, is optimistic that it’s possible to protect workers while also protecting the environment. “People want to make everybody believe it’s an either/or — that you have to [fix] climate change and [have] no jobs, or you can have good jobs and no climate change [solution],” he told NPR. “That’s just not true. There’s a path to navigate where you can fix climate change and get good jobs.”
JOINING TOGETHER
Business Insider
By Jasmine Snyder
March 29, 2021
For around two years, my colleagues and I had been advocating together for better benefits — like healthcare and childcare — and reasonable sales goals. We weren't asking for the moon, we were asking for basic respect and fair treatment as we supported the military members and veterans who bank with PenFed. We felt that unless we did this organizing, there would be no reason for PenFed CEO James Schenck to improve working conditions and make real changes to how he ran his business.
IN THE STATES
New Hampshire Republicans Are Using Covid to Ram Through Right-to-Work Legislation
In These Times
By C.M. Lewis
March 29, 2021
In New Hampshire, a unified right-wing government is on a collision course with organized labor. And, aided by poor pandemic safety protocols (deterring Democratic officials from the State House), the GOP has its best chance in a generation to remake the Granite State. Right-wing interest groups like the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity have long pushed for conservative reforms such as so-called education savings accounts, which critics say will divert public funds toward private and religious education. But their true prize — and the greatest source of consternation for unions like the American Federation of Teachers — is a Senate bill known as SB 61.
Faith Leaders Call Right-to-Work Proposal Immoral (Opinion)
In Depth NH
By Arnie Alpert
March 29, 2021
At last week’s six-hour hearing on a bill to weaken the power of organized labor, lessons on theology were mixed in with statements on labor law, economics, and the role of unions. “Catholic social teaching beginning with Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical, Rerum Novarum, in 1891, called for the protection of the weak and the poor,” explained Ed Foley, a retired sheet metal worker who led the NH Building Construction Trades Council. Since then, Foley told the House Labor Committee, “there has been over 130 years of unbroken tradition within the Catholic Church supporting the rights of workers to organize unions as essential for economic justice and the dignity of the human person in the workplace.”
WORKPLACE SAFETY AND HEALTH
How OSHA Fails to Protect Migrant Food Processing Workers
The American Prospect
By Prem Thakker
March 29, 2021
But given how many migrants work in unsafe settings, it’s unsurprising that workers may refuse to sign complaints against bosses. “Migrant workers who are fearful of retaliation from their employers aren’t going to be making reports and filing complaints. They might not necessarily even want to acknowledge that they had COVID,” says MaryBe McMillan, president of the North Carolina AFL-CIO. That’s why inspections need to be routine and comprehensive, and not dependent on workers risking their jobs.