Kera Peterson: To build back better, pass the PRO Act

February 4, 2021 by

Kera Peterson is president of the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO.

Millions of working people and their families are hurting in America right now. We’ve seen it firsthand at the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, as our nonprofit Labor Studies and Resource Center has begun coordinating free food-distribution events with local unions. At four events so far, union volunteers have distributed thousands of packages of fresh food to families in need. During events at the Labor Center, the line of vehicles often spilled out of our parking lot and into West 7th Street.

These were families bearing the brunt of multiple crises facing our country right now: the COVID-19 pandemic, an economic collapse, chronic income inequality and systemic racism. While working Americans worry about eviction notices, job losses and exhausting their paid time off, U.S. billionaires are amassing even more wealth – over $1 trillion, combined, during the pandemic so far.

From Day 1 our federal government’s pandemic response has been bungled. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned on a promise that we, as one nation, will build back even better than before.

At a time when working people are holding our country together, we have to do better than building back an economy where the rules are still rigged against us. The new administration understands that. The American people, who voted decisively and in record numbers to reject the politics of darkness and division, understand that too.

So what does building back better look like? It starts with direct and significant economic relief for workers and small businesses on Main Street, not Wall Street. Our local governments need aid too, as revenue shortfalls caused by the pandemic could force many to make steep cuts to services more essential than ever right now, like public health and public safety. And job losses resulting from cuts to public services would only deepen our economic crisis.

Building back better also means restoring fairness to our economy. It means leveling the playing field and giving working people more power to join together and bargain better wages, benefits and working conditions. Congress can do that by sending the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act to President-elect Biden’s desk in the coming months.

The most significant labor legislation in 80 years, the PRO Act would address several weaknesses in our federal labor laws, giving workers more bargaining power on the job. It would put teeth into rules prohibiting employers from retaliating against workers who try to form a union. It would require employers to disclose payments they make to union-busting law firms and consultants brought in to stifle workers’ voices. It would speed up the organizing-election process and establish a mechanism for workers and employers to arrive at a first contract quickly after an organizing drive.

House Democrats passed the PRO Act last February, but it never stood a chance in Mitch McConnell’s Senate. Today, members of Congress introduced the PRO Act again, and President Biden, who has said he wants his to be “the most significant pro-labor, pro-worker administration” ever, has pledged support for the measure. It’s encouraging to see that two congresswomen from our area, Reps. Betty McCollum and Angie Craig, are co-sponsors of the bill.

But the ideals behind the PRO Act – collective bargaining, a voice on the job, the belief that all work has dignity – are not Democratic or Republican. They are American ideals. It’s time for our leaders to put politics aside, to think big and to act boldly. Click here to tell your representatives to make the PRO Act a reality.

Our labor movement stands ready to build back better, together.

– Kera Peterson is president of the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO.

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McCollum focused on keeping workers, families safe during crisis

May 6, 2020 by

The global pandemic has elected officials spending less time shaking hands and more time taking calls – so much time, in fact, that Congresswoman Betty McCollum recently treated herself to a pair of Apple AirPods. 

“I am on the phone from about 8:30 in the morning to about 6:30 at night, then on and off a little bit on the weekends,” she laughed. “It’s not the most efficient way for us to legislate, but we’re figuring out how to do it.” 

After being endorsed by the Minnesota AFL-CIO last month, the 10-term DFLer from the state’s 4th Congressional District carved out 30 minutes of phone time for this interview with The Union Advocate, featured in our May 2020 edition.

The interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, took place before April 24, when Congress passed a $484 billion relief package with funds for small business loans, hospitals and testing. 

UA: Federal lawmakers have so far passed three sweeping measures to address the public health and economic crises caused by COVID-19. Where have you directed your focus during this process? 

BM: My focus first and foremost has been on working people and their families, and on making sure we have health care facilities that are open and able to run. That meant having the personal protection for frontline workers in our hospitals, as well as in our community clinics. 

And then we needed to make sure that we have testing, which the president has failed miserably at. In order to open up our economy, in order to lift some of these stay-at-home orders, we have to have tests. People need to be able to be diagnosed quickly and effectively … so that we can work on the next phase, which is coming up with treatment and coming up with a vaccine.  

So my focus has been on what we need to do to keep our families safe… 

UA: We’re still hearing alarming accounts from health care and other frontline workers about lack of PPE and medical equipment. Is there more Congress should do, or is it now a supply-chain issue that falls more on the executive branch and states? 

BM: This is a supply-chain issue that I have been concerned about since we had our last epidemic, with H1N1 and SARS. When I was in the Minnesota statehouse, I had the opportunity to work with (former state epidemiologist) Dr. Michael Osterholm. He has been a mentor to me on this. When we were going through the anthrax situation in Washington, D.C., I learned we don’t keep enough of a stockpile or manufacture enough of the things we need… Masks, gowns, syringes, the cotton swabs they need to do the tests – there are so many things we don’t manufacture in this country. When trade shuts down because of war, trade shuts down because of disruption or trade shuts down because of pandemic, we as a country make ourselves vulnerable.  

It’s something a lot of us in Congress have been talking about for years. Then the crisis goes away, and everybody doesn’t want to deal with it. We have to deal with it this time. I hope we’ve learned our lesson. 

UA: Congress has allocated a lot of money to make sure workers remain employed during the crisis, with access to paid leave if they need it. Are you confident that’s happening as the bills are being implemented? And is there proper oversight to ensure corporations benefiting from the stimulus are using that money to pay their workers? 

BM: Two great points that you bring up… With the CARES Act, we knew there were going to be a lot of people who would not be able to go to work. You look at the restaurants right now, they had to close down because of all the contact. We put in place unemployment insurance, and the State of Minnesota … had money in hand to get the money out the door even faster. Sure there’s been hiccups with that, but I feel confident a lot of these issues will get smoothed out and money will get out to families… 

But you also asked about oversight. And for the president of the United States to say (Congress) didn’t need any oversight, with the way he’s been firing people who have been in place for years to work with Congress on oversight of taxpayers’ dollars? Just because he doesn’t agree with them, he’s firing them. That’s wrong. Democrats in the House are going to do our very, very best to make sure these funds are spent the way they were meant to be: to save lives, to keep families from suffering more than they already have and to get our economy back up and running. 

UA: The Postal Service says it’s likely to run out of cash by September. Cities and other local governments are looking at historic shortfalls. Is there a chance Congress would act to address some of these things in a second stimulus? 

BM: I’m on the Appropriations Committee, and we were working with our authorizers on a major infrastructure bill, which, on and off, the president has been interested in working with us on. We could get people back to work, we could get people off the bench, building roads, bridges, broadband, energy efficiency in our schools. But we found out Mitch McConnell was not interested in doing that. 

We still know that our hospitals need money, and we need money for vaccine work. And we know social distancing works; we need to figure out a way to get the economy moving safely. So while these businesses lay in wait for that moment when it’s safe for workers to go back, we have to keep those small community businesses – the hair salons, the restaurants, the plumbing and electric companies – able to keep their employees on hold in a way that provides them some stability and security. 

UA: I know you’ve been a strong supporter of our postal unions here in St. Paul. What does Congress need to do to keep the post office open? 

BM: Well there are bills out there the postal unions have been talking about for years, we just need to pass them. Just think, in a presidential election year, as we’re slowly starting to recover from a pandemic, if we don’t have letter carriers out there delivering ballots. We know what the weather can be like here in November, to ask people to social distance and stand in line outside to vote like they did in Wisconsin? That would just be wrong. 

UA: You will once again be the labor-endorsed candidate on the ballot in the 4th district this year. Has the COVID-19 crisis heightened the stakes of our choice this November, not just locally, but nationally? 

BM:  I think it really has. When I saw what was happening in China in January, it took my breath away. That’s a communist government. We don’t hear about those things as fast as if it had happened in Canada or Australia. So when we hear about it, you know it’s been going on a long time. COVID-19 is an invisible enemy – that’s that only thing the president has said that I’ll agree with him on. His job was to work with world leaders, to work with the WHO to collect the information, to start gearing up and buy ventilators and PPE, to get what we need to keep America safe – and he just failed to do it.  

His comments speak for themselves. It’s just like the flu, or it will all be gone this spring. None of them were based on science; they were all based on wishful thinking. When the health and safety of the people that look to you for leadership is on the line, that’s not the time for wishful thinking. That’s the time for hard thinking. And he failed us miserably. 

UA:  The labor endorsement came despite positions you’ve taken on mining in northern Minnesota that are at odds with some Building Trades unions. What do you say to tradespeople who want an opportunity to work those jobs? 

BM:  First off, I’m not opposed to mining in northern Minnesota, the way it’s often stated generally. I’m a member of the Steel Caucus. I’m on the Defense Committee. I know how important it is to our national security that we have the ability to make it in America. And I’ve carried a lot of language in the interior bill so that steel for taxpayer-funded projects, we make it in America. 

In the early days of taconite mining we learned that it caused some great harm to our waterways, and we’ve been cleaning that up since then. We’ve learned how to be respectful of our environment and not damaging our water quality anymore when taconite mining. The sulfide-ore copper mining in northern Minnesota is a different type of mining than taconite. The waste product kills everything in the water. There is no second chance, no do-over. 

The Superior National Forest has 20 percent of the fresh water in our U.S. Forestry system. All the water adjacent to the Great Lakes on the Minnesota side is in the Boundary Waters area. We are known for fresh water. We are known for clean water. You need fresh, clean water in order to survive… We have a moral responsibility to protect clean, fresh drinking water for our children and future generations. 

I think jobs are important. I think jobs in northern Minnesota are extraordinarily important. The only thing I asked is … prove it to me scientifically that we can do this safely. And 20 months into a 24-month study, the Trump administration stopped the study. They will not show me one piece of paper from it, not one scrap. I’ve repeatedly asked for it. It was paid for with taxpayer money. And before the study was completed, they started removing the moratorium on the leases. I think a reasonable person could say, why did you stop the study? It should bring great concerns to all of us, including my brothers and sisters in northern Minnesota, why we can’t see the study. What don’t they want us to know?  

UA: Finally, how has COVID-19 impacted your office’s work? 

BM: We are here to serve you. Our office is open for business, and we are really anxious to help people navigate their way through COVID-19. 

Filed Under: Labor Voices, Union Events Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Union members rally in Minneapolis to end shutdown

January 10, 2019 by

Workers call on lawmakers to reopen the federal government – and put people back to work – during a rally near the VA Medical Center in Minneapolis.

 

Tomorrow, tens of thousands of federal employees won’t get their regularly scheduled paychecks. Today, their union family rallied in Minneapolis – and cities across the U.S. – to say that’s not OK.

Dozens of union members and retirees joined a demonstration along Hiawatha Avenue, just blocks from the Veterans Administration Medical Center. They called on President Trump and members of Congress to end the federal government shutdown and put federal employees back to work.

Gregg James, vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said lawmakers should “do their jobs and get the federal government back open – and not use us as pawns in their political game.”

An estimated 5,470 federal employees in Minnesota are affected by the shutdown.

Some are furloughed from their jobs. Transportation Security Administration agents, food safety inspectors, guards at four federal prison and other employees are working without pay.

Several workers from the VA Medical Center joined the rally over their lunch break. They aren’t directly impacted by the shutdown, as funding for their agency is in place through the end of the fiscal year. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t angry.

“I’m thinking about my brothers and sisters who are out there working for free and that are furloughed,” said Bryant Thomas, a St. Paul resident who works in sterile processing at the hospital. “There are 800,000, and I’m out here for them.”

AFGE, which represents some 670,000 federal workers nationwide, organized the rally, but members of several other unions – the Machinists, Education Minnesota, AFSCME Council 5, OPEIU and others – stood in solidarity with federal workers.

Brad Lehto, secretary-treasurer of the state’s largest labor federation, the Minnesota AFL-CIO, pinned blame for the shutdown on President Trump, who on Sunday told reporters he could “relate” to the struggles of federal workers going without pay.

“Donald Trump just thinks you can ask your father for money,” Lehto said. “It doesn’t work that way for everyone.”

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Retirees push lawmakers to stay vigilant for lame-duck attack on pension rights

December 5, 2016 by
Sen. Al Franken and U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan got an earful from retirees after a forum on threats to retirement security in St. Paul Dec. 5.

Sen. Al Franken and U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan got an earful from retirees after a forum on threats to retirement security in St. Paul Dec. 3.

 

Two years ago, Congress opened the door for troubled pension funds to cut retirees’ benefits, after Rep. John Kline slipped the provision into a must-pass bill keeping the federal government open.

Now, with Congress poised to pass a similar stopgap bill, Kline is back with another “pension reform” bill, and it’s just as bad as the 2014 measure – maybe even worse. But this time around, the element of surprise won’t be on Kline’s side.

A forum Saturday morning on Kline’s proposal drew a standing-room-only crowd of more than 200 retirees to the Macalester College chapel in St. Paul. It was the first in a series of public events to keep pension reform off the lame-duck agenda.

Retirees packed the chapel at Macalester College to learn more about potential legislation weakening defined-benefit pensions.

Retirees packed the chapel at Macalester College to learn more about potential legislation weakening defined-benefit pensions.

“We will be listened to,” retired truck driver Bob McNattin, a leader of Save Our Pensions-MN, told the assembled retirees. “They cannot treat us this way.”

[McNattin’s group will take its message directly to Kline this Saturday with a 10 a.m. demonstration outside the congressman’s Burnsville office, at 350 W. Burnsville Pkwy.]

While the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 dealt a blow to the rights of retirees in critically underfunded multiemployer plans, Kline’s latest proposal, known in Washington as the “composite bill,” has a much broader reach.

It would allow healthy pension plans to split in two, with a “legacy plan” following the defined-benefit model and a “composite plan” that, pension attorney Ann Curry Thompson told forum-goers, more closely resembles a 401(k). The composite plan would base retirees’ benefits on the performance of its investments and, critically, receive no backing from the federal Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation.

Allowing employers and pension administrators to divert money from defined-benefit plans and into composite plans would almost certainly increase the number of federally insured funds facing critical shortfalls – and make more retirees vulnerable to benefit cuts made legal by Kline’s 2014 reform bill, Curry Thompson warned.

Bill Moore, president of the Minnesota State Retiree Council, AFL-CIO, said the prevailing attitude in Congress regarding pension reform – that the only solution is to cut benefits earned by working people – is dangerously skewed in employers’ favor.

“A pension is not a legacy,” Moore said. “It is not a gift from our employers… It’s deferred compensation.” Despite retirees’ advancing age, Moore added, “one thing we don’t forget is the hours and days and number of years that we put in to earn our pensions.”

U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan checked a fact with pension attorney Ann Curry Thompson while addressing retirees Dec. 3.

U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan checked a fact with pension attorney Ann Curry Thompson while addressing retirees Dec. 3.

At least three members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation haven’t forgotten either. U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan and Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken – all DFLers – spoke at the forum Saturday in opposition to Kline’s composite bill.

“Promises made should be kept,” Klobuchar said.

Lawmakers also pledged to remain vigilant for any attempt to sneak the composite bill through the lame-duck Congress.

A day before the forum, Franken sent a letter to leaders of both parties in the House and Senate urging that any pension legislation “be carefully considered and debated openly and honestly, not enacted at the last minute with little debate, few hearings and no opportunity to offer amendments.”

Franken also offered a potential tool for the Pensions Benefit Guarantee Corporation to help struggling pensions, like the Teamsters’ Central States Pension Fund, meet their obligations: closing a tax loophole on carried interest – a provision of the tax code exploited only by “the top one-tenth of the 1 percent,” Franken said.

Regardless of how it happens, Curry Thompson said, Congress can’t afford to let pension funds leave retirees high and dry. The economic fallout of pension failure makes retirees “too big to fail.”

“As politically unpopular as it is, what is really needed is a … public solution,” Curry Thompson said, noting that pensioners spend money, pay taxes and contribute to economic growth. “I’ll call it what it is. You need a bailout.”

Filed Under: Organizing, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Teamsters retirees warn of lame-duck push for legislation gutting pension benefits

December 2, 2016 by
Jeff Brooks (R) and Bob McNattin, both retired members of Teamsters Local 120, have been raising awareness among area unions and labor federations about a looming attack on defined-benefit pensions.

Jeff Brooks (R) and Bob McNattin, both retired members of Teamsters Local 120, have been raising awareness about a looming congressional attack on defined-benefit pensions.

They fended off drastic cuts to their pension benefits earlier this year, but Teamsters retirees aren’t resting on their laurels.

Instead, they are organizing to stop a new bill gaining momentum in Congress that would weaken, rather than strengthen, the funding of defined-benefit pension plans. It’s known in Washington as the “composite bill,” and retirees like Bob McNattin fear it will sneak through Congress during the lame-duck session.

“The composite bill is, I think, intended to be the pathway to get employers out from under any pension obligations to their employees whatsoever,” he said.

A retired truck driver and former member of Teamsters Local 120, McNattin is an officer in the organization Save Our Pensions-MN. The group formed in response to the Central States Pension Fund’s plan to slash benefits by as much as 65 percent for tens of thousands of Teamsters retirees.

The Treasury Department rejected Central States’ proposal in May, but the fund, which is backed by the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, remains in financial trouble.

Now, Save Our Pensions-MN is lobbying Congress to find a permanent fix that will secure the pension’s financial viability – and it’s not the composite bill, retirees say.

According to the non-partisan Pension Rights Center, the composite bill “would allow relatively healthy multiemployer plans with secure and adequate benefits to transition to two inferior plans: a ‘legacy plan’ that allows employers to make smaller yearly contributions than the original plan and a new ‘composite plan’ that makes no binding promises to workers and retirees.”

McNattin called it a “cynical bill” that reflects the prevailing attitude in Congress regarding pension reform – that the “only solution is to cut the benefits of people who have already retired.”

Union Advocate“It’s a betrayal of trust,” he said.

Save Our Pensions and other retiree groups don’t have a lot of time to muster opposition to the composite bill, which, according to the Pension Rights Center, could be following the same path as the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014, which allowed Central States to demand steep cuts from current retirees.

The MPRA never received a stand-alone vote, but was attached as an amendment to must-pass, year-end legislation keeping the government open.

“These bills would never pass on their merits because they’re so flawed,” McNattin said.

To call attention to the composite bill and discuss other threats to retirement security, Save Our Pensions-MN will hold a forum at the Weyerhaeuser Memorial Chapel at Macalester College Dec. 3. It’s free and open to the public.

“Whether it’s pensions or Social Security, it’s all on the chopping block now,” McNattin said. “But I’m confident we will be OK, as long as we unite.”

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: , , , , ,

Ellison to U of M researchers: Use collective action to reverse dwindling federal support

November 13, 2015 by
U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison meets with researchers at the U of M - Twin Cities.

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison meets with researchers at the U of M – Twin Cities.

 

Frontline researchers alerted U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison to the impacts of dwindling federal and institutional support for their work in a meeting at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities yesterday.

Ellison, a DFLer whose 5th District includes the Twin Cities campus, pledged to continue supporting research funding in Congress, and he praised U of M faculty, who are in the process of organizing a union, for taking collective action to raise awareness of the issue.

Rep. Keith Ellison pledges to share with his colleagues in the state's congressional delegation an open letter from U of M researchers.

Rep. Keith Ellison pledges to share with his colleagues in the state’s congressional delegation an open letter from U of M researchers.

“Your perspective is unique,” Ellison told faculty. “Your process is hands-on. And you’ve got to be able to handle that process in a way that is meaningful for people making policy decisions.”

Ellison met with academics on the same day they released results of a recent survey of U of M researchers, “The State of Research Funding and Support at the University of Minnesota.” Distributed over the summer, the survey drew 342 responses, which revealed several common threads.

• As federal support for research decreases, U of M researchers are spending more time chasing funding, and their research suffers as a result.

Overall spending on university-based research across federal agencies fell $21 billion, or 13 percent, from 2005 to 2015. The share of the federal budget dedicated to research, at 12 percent in 1965, is less than 4 percent today.

Jerry Cohen, a professor of horticultural science, pointed to a national survey that found academic researchers spend, on average, 43 percent of their day navigating the bureaucracy of federal grant funding.

“We are throwing good ideas away,” Cohen said. “It challenges our ability as a nation to remain a premier scientific-research country on the planet.”

• Lack of federal funding and institutional support is driving talented researchers out of the academic field.

“I personally know of faculty who have left academia because of the giant pressure put on them to find funding,” post-doctoral associate Geoffrey Rojas said.

• The U of M is failing to provide adequate support for researchers competing for federal funds, and the U is not being transparent when it comes to administrative costs taken out of research grants.

Just 40 percent of survey respondents said they feel the university “adequately supports and values their research,” the same amount that feel they are given “adequate time in the workweek” to meet the demands of their positions.

Meanwhile, just 1 in 7 researchers at the U feel their employer is being transparent about how it uses “overhead rates” taken out of federal grants to cover facility and administrative costs, according to the survey.

“One of the reasons we’re organizing a union is precisely because of these issues,” geography professor Bruce Braun said. A union, he added, would give U of M faculty a better voice in shared governance at the U, and it would empower researchers to “advocate for the kind of federal funding we need at the university and that the public deserves.”

Tenure-line and contingent faculty at the Twin Cities campus are organizing with MN Academics United, an affiliate of Service Employees International Union Local 284.

Filed Under: Organizing, Union Events Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Public finally gets a look at TPP – and it isn’t pretty

November 5, 2015 by

web.tpp-aboveLabor, environmental and other fair-trade activists are getting their first look at the Tran-Pacific Partnership, released to the public overnight. Their initial reaction?

It’s worse than expected.

“It’s absolutely not a progressive trade deal,” Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition director Kaela Berg said after an early analysis of the text.

“It’s clear that TPP will perpetuate offshoring of our jobs and stagnation of our wages. There aren’t strong, enforceable labor and environmental standards, which have been a constant worry since NAFTA.”

[Tell your members of Congress to oppose the TPP! Click here to take action.]

The public release of the TPP, a 12-nation trade agreement covering about 40 percent of the global economy, starts the clock on a 90-day review period, after which Congress may approve or reject – but not amend – the pact.

Berg said the Fair Trade Coalition, which unites family-farm, environmental and labor groups, would use the review period to educate the public about what’s at stake in the TPP – and to lobby Minnesota’s Congressional delegation to vote “no.”

All seven DFLers in Congress voted against so-called “fast track” authorization, which positioned TPP for a simple up-or-down vote, over the summer, and Berg was cautiously optimistic they would vote to reject TPP as well. Republican Reps. Tom Emmer and Erik Paulsen are “poster boys for corporate free-trade,” she added, and likely to vote “yes.”

“All the officials are going to want to look at the text and see what’s in there,” Berg said.

Many union officials were busy doing the same today, leading to a chorus of warnings about the TPP’s impact on jobs, wages, public health and more.

“This much is clear,” said Rick Ryan of the Minnesota State Council of Machinists after a first read through the TPP. “The rich get richer as we race to the bottom.”

Citizens Trade Campaign, a fair-trade advocacy group, said the TPP would force U.S. workers to compete with workers abroad who, in some member countries, earn less than $1 per hour. It also would ban laws that encourage government agencies to buy American-made or locally made products.

“TPP will do nothing to promote manufacturing jobs here in the U.S.” Bob Ryan, a Minnesota-based representative of the United Steelworkers, said. “In fact, it will promote more job loss through outsourcing to low wage countries.”

Nurses warned of a provision in the TPP that protects multinational pharmaceutical companies by delaying the introduction of generic drugs into the market, making health care more expensive and life-saving medicines harder to access. In fact, the TPP would roll back some of the protections for access to medicine included in trade agreements negotiated during the George W. Bush administration.

National Nurses United President RoseAnn DeMoro likened the provisions to “gifts to the billionaire drug companies,” and called the TPP “a cruel and disgraceful threat to the lives of millions of people.”

The TPP also threatens U.S. sovereignty, critics said. It would grant corporations new powers to challenge U.S. laws, regulations and court decisions in an extrajudicial tribunal known as the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) court.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, the highest-ranking labor leader in the U.S., pledged unions would “join with our allies to defeat the TPP.”

“From what we have already seen, it is clear that the threats of this expansive new agreement outweigh its benefits – for good jobs, for democracy, for affordable medicines, for consumer safety, and for the environment,” Trumka said.

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Not So Fast: Unions ramp up pressure on Congress to stop fast track

April 21, 2015 by
Fair trade activists handed out fliers outside Target Field Saturday.

Fair trade activists handed out fliers outside Target Field Saturday.

More than a year after sending proponents of fast track back to the drawing board, Congress is poised to consider a modified version of the trade measure this spring.

But unions and their allies in the fair-trade movement say the “new” fast track bill amounts to little more than lipstick on a pig. Like previous versions, they warn, it would put too much power in the hands of the president, his trade ambassadors and their corporate “advisors.”

“We have realized it’s almost exactly the same,” Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition Director Kaela Berg said. “There’s really nothing new.”

Introduced last week as the “Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015,” fast track is an essential step in the Obama administration’s push to enter the U.S. into new NAFTA-style free trade agreements like the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership.

In granting the president fast track authority, Congress relinquishes its constitutional authority to review and amend trade pacts, forcing members into an up-or-down vote on complex agreements like the TPP, which has 29 chapters and 1,000 pages of provisions. It’s a perilous method for setting trade policy, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said, especially given the secrecy surrounding TPP negotiations.

“Trade deals have wide-ranging impacts and shouldn’t be negotiated behind closed doors and then rubber-stamped,” Trumka said. “The current Trans-Pacific Partnership deal under discussion would cover 40 percent of the world’s GDP. A deal this big should be debated in a full and open manner like every other piece of legislation.”

[Click here to urge your representatives in Congress to oppose fast track for the TPP.]

Mindful that no trade deal – regardless of how devastating it was for U.S. jobs, family farmers or the environment – has ever been turned down by Congress under fast track rules, labor is intensifying its efforts to defeat the measure and stave off the TPP.

In March the AFL-CIO announced it would freeze all contributions to federal lawmakers’ Political Action Committees and, instead, direct those resources to the battle over trade policy. Since then, union members and fair-trade activists across the country have dialed up the pressure on undecided members of Congress with rallies, phone banks and other outreach initiatives.

web.FastTrack-kieranLocally, the campaign has focused on Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a labor-endorsed DFLer who has not yet publicly opposed the new fast track bill, according to Berg. Other members of the DFL delegation, including Sen. Al Franken, are believed to be on board, she added.

“We’ve been in Sen. Klobuchar’s office,” Berg said. “We’ve delivered oversized postcards with signatures from her constituents asking her to oppose fast track. We’ve sent letters to her Washington office.

“She knows where we stand. We just really want to hold her accountable.”

The Fair Trade Coalition, founded by labor, family-farm, faith and non-profit groups that opposed NAFTA nearly 25 years ago, took to the streets Saturday afternoon in Minneapolis. Volunteers handed out fliers to fans making their way into the Twins game, asking for calls to Klobuchar’s office.

Julie Fergus, one of about 20 volunteers, said she opposes fast track because previous free trade agreements have “given more power to the big businesses and taken power away from regular people here and in other countries.”

“I think a lot of people have no idea what fast track is, and maybe they don’t really want to know,” Fergus added. “People don’t realize some of the stuff they’re putting in these agreements, but if we can slow it down, people might realize how dangerous some of this is.”

Mike Zagaros, president of Minneapolis-based Branch 9 of the National Association of Letter Carriers, said the bottom line is fast track “is obviously not for us.”

“Something as big as the TPP should be talked about in front of God and everybody,” he said. “Fast track prevents that.”

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AFL-CIO halts PAC contributions, gears up for battle to stop fast track

March 11, 2015 by

AFLCIOUpping the ante in its campaign to stop trade agreements that give corporations more power over the global economy, the AFL-CIO announced today it would freeze all contributions to federal lawmakers’ Political Action Committees and focus, instead, on a ground battle against fast track for the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The nation’s largest labor federation announced the freeze, which also applies to its affiliate unions, in a news release today:

The AFL-CIO … and its affiliated unions are freezing all Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions to federal candidates until further notice in order to conserve resources for the historic legislative battle around fast track (trade promotion authority) and the debate over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

The Council established the defeat of Fast Track as a top federation priority and passed a statement outlining its commitment to fight any trade agreement that fails to prioritize the needs of working families and advance shared prosperity in the global economy.

The AFL-CIO and its affiliates spent $617,771 on PAC contributions in the 2014 election cycle, according to OpenSecrets.org, the Center for Responsive Politics’ website. Most of the federation’s contributions went to Democrats.

The battle over fast track, which would force members to take an up-or-down vote on 1trade agreements without offering amendments, puts the AFL-CIO in the unusual position of opposing the Obama administration.

Looking for common ground with Republicans who took over Congress this year, the White House has moved fast track and the TPP to the top of its agenda. The AFL-CIO’s PAC announcement puts Democratic members of Congress on notice that labor is unwilling to compromise when it comes to supporting a new vision for trade.

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Franken blasts GOP effort to undermine union election reforms

March 4, 2015 by

video via The Uptake

U.S. Sen. Al Franken took a stand Tuesday against a Republican-led effort to block reforms poised to streamline and modernize the process for determining union representation in most workplaces.

In a speech on the Senate floor, the Minnesota DFLer defended new rules approved by the National Labor Relations Board last year. The changes, set to take effect April 14, include allowing petitions for union elections to be filed online, consolidating the post-election appeals process and requiring equal access to voter contact lists for management and the union.

“Workers need this rule to ensure a fair, effective process, free of excessive delays,” Franken said.

But a resolution, passed by the Republican-controlled Senate on a party-line vote, would use the Congressional Review Act to thwart NLRB reform. If both the House and Senate pass a resolution disapproving of the rule, it would go to the president, who could then overturn the rule or veto the resolution.

Even if the president exercises his veto to uphold the rule, business groups are already challenging it in court.

That’s no surprise, Franken said, as employers long have been exploiting the old system, using stall tactics and endless appeals to prevent workers from exercising their rights.

“Too often, loopholes are being exploited to prevent workers the freedom to decide if they want to form a union,” he said. “Today, 35 percent of the time that workers file a petition for a union election, they never even get to have an election.”

The floor speech was not Franken’s first act of support for workers’ right to a better organizing process. In January, he and 15 other senators signed onto a letter urging the NLRB to “stand strong against efforts to undermine” the reforms.

“Workers deserve to have a union representation election process that is free of stalling tactics and intimidation,” the senators wrote to NLRB Chairman Mark Pearce. “We believe this rule will restore balance and certainty to the union election process and strongly encourage you to vigorously defend this rule in the face of such challenges.”

UPDATE 03/20/15: The House also passed the resolution, meaning the fate of the rule changes – for now – is up to President Obama. In a statement released yesterday, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called on the president to exercise his veto power:

Today’s vote by House Republicans against the NLRB’s common-sense modernization of its election rules is a direct attack on workers and their right to be heard in the workplace.

Working men and women want an agenda from their Congressional leaders that raises wages and grows our middle class. Instead, they have gotten Republican policies that roll back progress and silence workers while protecting their biggest donors.

President Obama is right in his commitment to vetoing this harmful legislation, and Congressional Republicans should focus their efforts on lifting workers up instead of shutting them out.

Filed Under: Organizing, Politics Tagged With: , , , ,
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