Today's AFL-CIO Press Clips
POLITICS
UAW suit against Trump and Musk breaks new ground
People’s World
By Mark Gruenberg
Aug. 14, 2024
Trump’s praise of Musk’s illegal firings didn’t surprise the AFL-CIO. “Scab recognizes scab,” it tweeted. “Greedy bosses aren’t just laughing at workers in smoke-filled backrooms anymore,” federation President Liz Shuler elaborated in a statement. “They’re broadcasting it for the world to hear. “It’s no surprise coming from Trump and Elon Musk—two notorious union-busters who boast a combined record of crossing picket lines, underpaying workers, flouting health and safety laws, and retaliating against workers for demanding the rights and fair pay we deserve.” Shuler noted Musk is suing the NLRB “rather than being held accountable for charges he illegally fired workers.” Musk’s suit, filed in federal court in deep-red rural Texas, says the NLRB is unconstitutional, so it can’t penalize Musk. “This special breed of arrogant and weird billionaire CEOs just want an America where they can get even richer at workers’ expense,” Shuler added. Trump “doesn’t care about us and has no intention of fighting for us. Trump only cares about his Project 2025 agenda that favors his ultra-wealthy buddies like Musk while stomping on fundamental freedoms of everyone else.”
Poll: Harris and Walz build huge lead among likely California voters
Los Angeles Times
By James Rainey
Aug. 14, 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris’ entry into the presidential race has galvanized traditional Democratic voting groups and those not aligned with a political party, helping extend the Democrats’ already large advantage over former President Trump in California, a new poll shows.
Harris Is Set to Lay Out an Economic Message Light on Detail
The New York Times
By Jim Tankersley and Andrew Duehren
Aug. 14, 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris’s sudden ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket has generated a host of questions about her economic agenda, including how much she will stick to the details of President Biden’s positions, tweak them, or chart entirely new ones. When she begins to roll out her policy vision this week, Ms. Harris is likely to answer only some of those questions. During an economy-focused speech on Friday in Raleigh, N.C., Ms. Harris will outline a sort of reboot of the administration’s economic agenda, according to four people familiar with Ms. Harris’s plans. She will lay out an approach relatively light on details, they said. It will shift emphasis from Mr. Biden’s focus on job creation and made-in-America manufacturing, and toward efforts to rein in the cost of living. But it will rarely break from Mr. Biden on substance.
Walz rebrands progressive wins as household realities
Politico
By Juan Perez Jr.
Aug. 14, 2024
“We did things to improve people’s lives in a real, fundamental way,” Walz said Tuesday during a speech to members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees labor union. “We guaranteed free breakfast and lunch to every single child in Minnesota. That helped a whole lot of school employees, AFSCME members, keep their students engaged and keep them in the classroom learning.”
Harris-Walz ticket earns rave reviews from Kentucky union leaders
Forward Kentucky
By Berry Craig
Aug. 14, 2024
Joe Biden is the most pro-union president since Franklin D. Roosevelt. But nationally organized labor continues to rally behind Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. The AFL-CIO immediately switched its endorsement from Biden to Vice President Harris, whom the president endorsed as his successor. Many individual unions have done likewise. We decided to sample labor sentiment in Kentucky. Thus far, Bluegrass State trade unionists, too, are standing in solidarity with the Harris-Walz team. “Excited” is a word we often heard in talking with 15 of our union brothers and sisters across the state. While many of them were pulling for Harris to name Gov. Andy Beshear to her ticket, all said they were pleased with Walz.
Trump gutted federal employee unions. They believe he'd do it again
NPR
By Andrea Hsu
Aug. 15, 2024
Labor unions are among Kamala Harris’ most fervent backers in her run for president, and federal employee unions especially so. Not only do they love her unabashed support for labor, they also fear what her opponent Donald Trump might do if he’s elected president again. It’s not hyperbole to say that since becoming vice president, Harris has played a key role in bringing federal employee unions back from the brink.
Harris Will Back Federal Ban on Price Gouging, Campaign Says
The New York Times
By Jim Tankersley
Aug. 24, 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris will call for a federal ban on corporate price gouging on groceries in a speech laying out her economic agenda on Friday, campaign officials said late Wednesday, in an effort to blame big companies for persistently high costs of American consumer staples. The plan includes large overlaps with efforts that the Biden administration has pursued for several years to target corporate consolidation and price gouging, including attempts to stoke more competition in the meat industry and the Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit this year that seeks to block the merger of two large grocery retailers, Kroger and Albertsons.
UAW president: ‘Trump doesn’t care about working-class people’
The Hill
By Nick Robertson
Aug. 14, 2024
United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain hit former President Trump on labor policy Tuesday, claiming Trump “doesn’t care about working-class people.” “Donald Trump’s all talk, and he’s a master at BS,” Fain told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. “The bottom line is this, Donald Trump doesn’t care about working-class people, and he showed it when he was president.”
How Donald Trump Undermined the Health and Safety of American Workers
Daily Kos
By Lawrence S. Wittner
Aug. 14, 2024
During his four years as President of the United States, Donald Trump was remarkably active and often successful in sabotaging the health and safety of the nation’s workers. Trump, as the AFL-CIO noted, targeted Medicare and Medicaid for $1 trillion in funding cuts, eroded the Affordable Care Act (thereby increasing the number of Americans lacking health insurance coverage by 7 million), and “made workplaces more dangerous by rolling back critical federal safety regulations.” Trump’s administration not only refused to publicly disclose fatality and injury data reported to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), but slashed the number of federal workplace safety inspectors and inspections to the lowest level in that agency’s 48-year history. According to one estimate, with these depleted numbers, it would take 165 years to inspect every worksite in the United States.
U.S. to Announce Prices for First Drugs Picked for Medicare Negotiations
The New York Times
By Noah Weiland and Rebecca Robbins
Aug. 15, 2024
The Biden administration is set to announce on Thursday the results of landmark price negotiations between Medicare and the pharmaceutical companies over the prices of 10 costly or common medications taken by millions of older Americans. Had the new prices been in effect last year, Medicare would have saved $6 billion, administration officials said in a Wednesday news briefing previewing the announcement. The prices of the drugs, which include widely used blood thinners and arthritis medications, are to be released later Thursday morning, and will take effect in 2026. They represent the first time that the federal government has directly negotiated with drugmakers on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries, and will reshape the federal government’s role in a program that covers tens of millions of older and disabled Americans.
PAYWATCH/CEO PAY
CEO-worker pay gap has narrowed to 268:1, but that won't last
Reuters
By Ross Kerber
Aug. 14, 2024
"We expect that CEO-to-worker pay ratios will increase if CEOs continue to prioritize corporate profits and their own compensation over the workers who make those profits possible, as years of Executive Paywatch data have shown," said Brandon Rees, the AFL-CIO official who oversees the reports. The federation says it represents 12.5 million workers.
LABOR AND TECHNOLOGY
SAG-AFTRA Strikes Groundbreaking AI Digital Voice Replica Pact With Startup Firm Narrativ
Variety
By Cynthia Littleton
Aug. 14, 2024
SAG-AFTRA has struck a deal with AI startup Narrativ for audio voice replicas in digital advertising that the union asserts sets “a new standard” for ethical use of the technology and also makes it easy for performers to give consent and get paid. The New York-based Narrativ operates an online marketplace that offers tools to advertisers to create audio spots using AI tools. The firm’s new agreement with SAG-AFTRA promises to give the union’s 160,000 members the opportunity to add themselves to a database that connects voice talent to advertisers. The individual members will have the ability to negotiate fees for the use of their voice on a project by project basis, so long as the fee isn’t lower than SAG-AFTRA’s minimum per its most recent commercials contract with advertisers.
SAG-AFTRA Deal Paves Way for Actors to License Voice Replicas to AI Advertising Marketplace
The Hollywood Reporter
By Katie Kilkenny
Aug. 14, 2024
Hollywood actors’ union SAG-AFTRA has inked a deal with artificial intelligence ads marketplace Narrativ, offering union members the ability to license their digital voice likeness through the platform. Under the new pact, union performers who wish to offer their digital audio replicas on Narrativ can set their own wage rates, as long as they meet or exceed the union’s commercials minimum rate. Performers signal what kind of ads they want their voices to appear in and can greenlight or deny offers for those commercials that come their way. For every use of a performer’s voice in an ad, the actor must consent to that use.
TRANSPORTATION
Atlanta workers can help Delta fly high again (Opinion)
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By Brian Byrant
Aug. 13, 2024
Employees say they need to join a union so they can fix Delta’s staffing crisis. They know that if Delta offers decent wages and benefits, the company will have no problem attracting and retaining high-quality, experienced staff. More staff will mean lower wait times, and passenger satisfaction will soar again.
SkyWest Airlines facing federal lawsuit over alleged ‘fake company union’
The Guardian
By Michael Sainato
Aug. 14, 2024
SkyWest Airlines, the largest regional airline in North America, is facing legal action over an alleged “fake” company union that the airline operates and the allegedly retaliatory firings of flight attendants who were engaged in union organizing efforts. A lawsuit was filed by the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) in October 2023. The US Department of Labor also filed a lawsuit last month against the company over the “company union”, alleging SkyWest Inflight Association (SIA) did not perform its legal duties as a representative agency and barred two employees from running in an election for leadership positions due to their support for an independent union at the airline.
ORGANIZING
Nurses and staff at Oregon’s smallest rural hospital unionize in Morrow County
OPB
By Antonio Sierra
Aug. 14, 2024
The Oregon Nurses Association announced Aug. 6 that the nurses and technical support staff at Pioneer Memorial Hospital in Heppner, about 40 miles south of Boardman, are forming a union. A union organizer said workers are optimistic that they can secure improvements to their working conditions after a state board certified the union. But they’ve already received some pushback from the Morrow County Health District, the public agency that operates the Eastern Oregon hospital.
NEGOTIATIONS & STRIKES
A Nurses’ Union Flexed Its Power. One Hospital Is Pushing Back.
The New York Times
By Joseph Goldstein
Aug. 14, 2024
Some nurses who worked during Covid’s deadly first wave in March 2020 describe it as a terrifying but also galvanizing experience. Together they confronted mass death and an unknown pathogen, sometimes donning garbage bags when the protective gear ran out. One result was an invigorated nurses’ union, which has won a series of victories for its members at hospitals across the New York City region over the past several years. Today nurses have better wages and improved working conditions. They even receive cash payouts when hospitals leave units understaffed, a benefit they won by striking last year. But the city’s largest private hospital system is taking aim at some of those changes. It started in 2023, right after nurses at Columbia University Medical Center, the largest hospital in the NewYork-Presbyterian system, reached an agreement on a contract that included pay raises and improved workplace conditions. Just weeks later, Columbia nearly doubled what some retired nurses paid for health insurance, according to the nurses’ union. The union managed to have the new insurance rate voided through arbitration, but it has said it believes the price increase was payback for the contract.
AI is changing video games — and striking performers want their due
NPR
By Mandalit del Barco
Aug. 14, 2024
But earlier this month, Booker picketed outside Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, Calif., along with hundreds of other video game performers and members of the union SAG-AFTRA. They plan to picket again outside Disney Character Voices in Burbank on Thursday. After 18 months of contract negotiations, they began their work stoppage in late July against video game companies such as Disney, WB Games, Microsoft’s Activision, and Electronic Arts. Members of the union have paused voice acting, stunts, and other work they do for video games.
Alaska Airlines flight attendants reject new contract, union says there's ‘more work to do'
NBC Connecticut
By Leslie Josephs
Aug. 14, 2024
Alaska Airlines flight attendants rejected a new labor deal that would have come with immediate raises averaging more than 24%, their union said Wednesday, setting both sides up for more talks as a merger with Hawaiian Airlines looms. The union and the company had reached a tentative "record" agreement in June, which included boarding pay, as well as back pay, on top of average pay increases of about 32% over the three-year deal, according to the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA.
Unionized Bird Workers with Audubon Society Prepare for Potential Strike
KQED
By Lakshmi Sarah
Aug. 14, 2024
Dressed in red T-shirts and waving signs reading “Birds of a feather stick together,” “Owl in for a fair contract” and “Withholding benefits is looney,” about 20 supporters and unionized workers for the National Audubon Society in the Bay Area flocked to a picket line in Oakland. In front of the Oakland Audubon office across from Snow Park near Lake Merritt — the first designated wildlife refuge in North America — they chanted slogans: “What’s disgusting? Union-busting!” The practice picket over the weekend was preparation for a nationwide day of action this Saturday that will include pickets across the country and a coordinated Zoom call. It came days after the roughly 260 workers represented by the Bird Union-CWA Local 1180, who have been at the bargaining table for their first contract for over two years, voted to authorize a strike.
PSA flight attendants to vote on potential strike
WHIO
By WHIO Staff
Aug. 14, 2024
Flight attendants for a Dayton-based airline will vote on a potential strike later this month. The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA) represents flight attendants at PSA Airlines and they said will authorize a vote to strike, according to a union spokesperson.
SAG-AFTRA set to hold second picket tomorrow
Games Industry
By Vikki Blake
Aug. 14, 2024
The Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) is set to hold its second picket tomorrow. The picket will take place from 9am until noon on Thursday August 15 at Disney Character Voices in Burbank, California, USA. SAG-AFTRA will be represented by members of the Interactive Media Agreement Negotiating (IMA) Committee alongside other SAG-AFTRA members, labour allies, and video game fans." "SAG-AFTRA is striking this contract so that members working in interactive media (video games) can continue earning a living doing the job they love," the organisation said. "Our members' work and likenesses are being exploited by artificial intelligence, and video game companies have refused to offer a fair deal that addresses this existential threat."
CIVIL, HUMAN, & WOMEN’S RIGHTS
Congress didn’t recognize a race riot. Biden will make the site a monument.
The Washington Post
By Maxine Joselow
Aug. 14, 2024
In 1908, a White mob incited a race riot in Springfield, Ill., leaving several people dead, hundreds injured and dozens of Black-owned businesses and homes burned and destroyed. On Friday, President Joe Biden will designate a national monument to commemorate the violent event, the White House confirmed to The Washington Post on Wednesday.
LABOR AND COMMUNITY
Labor Tribune
By David A. Cook
Aug. 14, 2024
This time of year, particularly during campaign season, I find myself thinking a lot about the idea of service to others. There’s a lot of reasons it’s on my mind. Next month, we’ll hold our regular fundraiser benefitting Faces of our Children, a nationwide non-profit that works to diagnose, treat and cure sickle cell anemia. Later this year, we’ll hold our annual fundraiser benefitting the UFCW Charitable Foundation, which donates money and resources across the country for a variety of causes. I think about service every time a new batch of stewards is trained at our union hall, knowing that good shop stewards do what they do for the good of their coworkers and their union. I think about service when I watch ads for politicians on TV. Like most of you, I often find myself wondering which of these people has some fundamental belief in public service, and which of these people is merely seeking power and wealth.