Category Archives: labor

Economy, labor, unemployment, Youth and students

Snapshots of Ourselves, the Working Class

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Who are the 23 Million ‘Underemployed’ Workers?

By Heidi Shierholz
Beaver County Blue via EPI.org

Nov 28, 2012 – The number 23 million is often loosely used in public debate to mean the number of people “looking for work.”

But who does this number count and not count? First, it includes 12.3 million people who meet the official definition of unemployment: jobless workers who are actively seeking work.

Second, it includes the 8.3 million workers who are working part time but who want and are available for full-time work (“involuntary” part-timers).

Third, it includes the 2.5 million people who want a job and are available to work, but have given up actively seeking work (“marginally attached” workers). These three groups together—23.1 million strong—make up the group commonly referred to as the “underemployed.”

Who is not counted in that 23 million? Workers who are underemployed in a “skills or experience” sense (e.g., a mechanical engineer working as a barista). Unfortunately, there is no official measure that counts people who are underemployed in this way.

The figure below shows how the number of “underemployed” workers has evolved since 2000. The number of underemployed workers increased over the weak business cycle of 2000–2007 from 10.0 million in the fourth quarter of 2000 to 13.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2007. It then shot up in the Great Recession to a peak of 26.9 million in Oct. 2009 before modestly improving to its current level.

2012 Election, Civil Liberties, GOP, labor, Racism, Right Wing

April 4 Vigil Vows to Fight GOP Efforts to Deny Voting Rights

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HB 934 Exposed as ‘Modern-Day Poll Tax

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

Some 80 labor and civil rights activists, together with a few elected officials, gathered at dusk at the Beaver County Courthouse April 4 for a candlelight vigil. The somber but militant event commemorated the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and protested the current efforts of rightwing PA Republicans to block citizens from voting in 2012.

mlkrally 008 “They’re declaring war on us,” said Lynwood Alford, a member of the Beaver-Lawrence Central Labor Council and leader of the Minority Coalition. ‘Taking away our voting rights is taking away the little power we have in the fight for survival.”

Alford repeated the refrain several times as he introduced new speakers. The vigil was sponsored by the Beaver-Lawrence Central Labor Council, SEIU Local 668, the USW, and the Beaver County NAACP. The 12 CD Progressive Democrats of America also endorsed the vigil, and turned out a good-sized contingent.

The target of everyone’s anger was the passage into law of HB 934 last month, the so-called ‘Voter ID Law’.

Continue reading April 4 Vigil Vows to Fight GOP Efforts to Deny Voting Rights →

Economy, labor, Poverty, unemployment

The New Blue Collar

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Temporary Work, Lasting Poverty

And The American Warehouse

By Dave Jamieson
Progressive America Rising via HuffPost

JOLIET, Ill., and FONTANA, Calif. — Like nearly everyone else in Joliet without good job prospects, Uylonda Dickerson eventually found herself at the warehouses looking for work.

"I just needed a job," the 38-year-old single mother says.

Dickerson came to the right place. Over the past decade and a half, Joliet and its Will County environs southwest of Chicago have grown into one of the world’s largest inland ports, a major hub for dry goods destined for retail stores throughout the Midwest and beyond. With all the new distribution centers have come thousands of jobs at "logistics" companies — firms that specialize in moving goods for retailers and manufacturers. Many of these jobs are filled by Joliet’s African Americans, like Dickerson, and immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America.

But many bottom-rung workers like Dickerson don’t work for the big corporations whose products are in the warehouses, or even the logistics companies that run them. They go to work for labor agencies that supply workers like Dickerson. Last year, she found work as a temp through one of the myriad staffing agencies that serve big-box retailers and their contractors. Thanks largely to the warehousing boom, Will County has developed one of the highest concentrations of temp agencies in the Midwest.

Dickerson, grateful to have even a temp job, was taken on as a "lumper" — someone who schleps boxes to and from trailers all day long. As unglamorous as her duties were, Dickerson became an essential cog in one of the most sophisticated machines in modern commerce — the Walmart supply chain. Walmart, the world’s largest private-sector employer, had contracted a company called Schneider Logistics to operate the warehouse. And Schneider, in turn, had its own contracts with staffing companies that supplied workers.

Continue reading The New Blue Collar →

Immigrant Rights, labor, unemployment, Wall Street, Youth and students

Every Picture Tells a Story: Labor Solidarity and OWS

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Unions and Immigrants Join Occupy Movements

By David Bacon
Progressive America Rising via Truthout | Photo Essay

Dec 6, 2011 – Oakland, California – When Occupy Seattle called its tent camp "Planton Seattle," camp organizers were laying a local claim to a set of tactics used for decades by social movements in Mexico, Central America and the Philippines. And when immigrant janitors marched down to the detention center in San Diego and called their effort Occupy ICE (the initials of the Immigration and Custom Enforcement agency responsible for mass deportations),people from countries with that planton encampment tradition were connecting it to the Occupy movement here.

Photo Above:Southern California janitors block the streets to protest the firing of immigrant workers. (Photo: David Bacon)

This shared culture and history offer new possibilities to the Occupy movement for survival and growth at a time when the federal law enforcement establishment, in cooperation with local police departments and municipal governments, has uprooted many tent encampments. Different Occupy groups from Wall Street to San Francisco have begun to explore their relationship with immigrant social movements in the US, and to look more closely at the actions of the 1 percent beyond our borders that produces much of the pressure for migration.

Reacting to the recent evictions, the Coalition for the Political Rights of Mexicans Abroad recently sent a support letter to Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and the other camps under attack. "We greet your movement," it declared, "because your struggle against the suppression of human rights and against social and economic injustice has been a fundamental part of our struggle, that of the Mexican people who cross borders, and the millions of Mexican migrants who live in the United States."

The banners at Occupy Seattle. (Photo: David Bacon)

Many of those migrants living in the US know the tradition of the planton and how it’s used at home. And they know that the 1 percent, whose power is being challenged on Wall Street, also designed the policies that are the very reason why immigrants are living in the US to begin with. Mike Garcia, president of United Service Workers West/SEIU, the union that organized Occupy ICE, described immigrant janitors as "displaced workers of the new global economic order, an order led by the West and the United States in particular."

Continue reading Every Picture Tells a Story: Labor Solidarity and OWS →

Banks, labor, Steelworkers, unemployment, Wall Street, Youth and students

Banksters: You Made the Mess? Pay Up!

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Crash Tax: Wall Street Reparations

By Leo W Gerard
International President, United Steel Workers
Beaver County Blue via HuffPost

Nov 14, 2011 – Wall Street waged war on the American economy and middle class with its reckless gambling.

It wasn’t Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac that crashed the economy. It wasn’t the federal government. It wasn’t hapless homeowners who were sold mortgages they couldn’t afford. It was Wall Street financiers that aggressively sought and bought mortgages to package and sell as derivatives, which the banks could wager on.

Americans bailed out Wall Street, handing it a Marshall Plan for reconstruction after its bad bets blew up the world economy. Now, three years later, happy days are here again for the Wall Street banksters. They’re hauling in big profits and paying outrageous bonuses. But the American middle class continues to suffer high unemployment, record foreclosures and rising poverty.

So it’s time for Wall Street to pay reparations. It’s time for a crash tax, a tiny sales tax on Wall Street transactions, the revenues from which would pay for Main Street restoration. It’s time for the 1 percent to repay the 99 percent, for Wall Street to share in the sacrifices necessitated by its rogue behavior.

Continue reading Banksters: You Made the Mess? Pay Up! →

Economy, GOP, labor, unemployment, Wall Street

USW’s Leo Gerard Takes Apart GOP Diversionary Tactics on Jobs

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The GOP’s New Job Scam: The 99% Seek

A Just Economy, Not Just An Economy

By Leo Gerard
Beaver County Blue via Alternet.org

Republicans jammed together a mess of old, failed and vague schemes and called it a jobs bill. Sen. John McCain conceded the reason for the rehash: “Part of it is in response to the president saying we don’t have a proposal.”

They still don’t. This despite the fact that they promised voters during their campaign to take control of the U.S. House one year ago that they’d create jobs. That they’d focus on jobs. That nothing was more important to them than jobs.

Now, what they’ve offered instead of actual jobs is a polyglot of GOP talking points. It’s certainly no vision to move the country forward. It’s a plot to set the country back – to repeal the health care law that will soon help provide coverage for the nearly 50 million Americans without insurance, to rescind the Wall Street reform law designed to prevent another financial sector-caused meltdown, and to thwart regulations, like those that stopped distribution of listeria-infected cantaloupe that killed 25.

GOP Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio called the Republican polyglot a “pro-growth proposal to create the environment for jobs.” It is, in fact, a pro-business proposal to permit corporations to destroy the environment for humans.

It is another GOP ploy to appease, accommodate and absolve corporations. It is another GOP ruse to firmly establish in America an economy designed for, dedicated to and directed by corporations rather than a just economy controlled by and beneficial to the 99 percent.

Continue reading USW’s Leo Gerard Takes Apart GOP Diversionary Tactics on Jobs →

Banks, labor, unemployment, Wall Street, Youth and students

One, two, three, four … WE DECLARE A CLASS WAR!’

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Occupy Pittsburgh Protesters

Assail All Manner of Enemies

By Sadie Gurman and Jonathan D. Silver
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Oct 16, 2011 – A disparate group of Occupy Pittsburgh protesters in tents and sleeping bags settled into Mellon Green on Saturday night after a day in which about 2,000 protesters peacefully crisscrossed Downtown and far fewer readied to stay put for as long as they could.

The events were one of several regional offshoots of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which began in New York City and has inspired protests in Philadelphia, Denver, Seattle and other cities. Those involved decry what they describe as a number of social, political and economic ills spawned by corporate greed and governmental corruption.

"When you spend four years in the military and you come back and you see the way things are being run, you get pretty angry about it," said Joshua Heidecker, 28, of Erie, a U.S. Marine who said the majority of veterans he knows are fed up with corporate influences in government. He was with several other young veterans in partial uniform.

In the afternoon, the demonstrators set up camp on Mellon Green, a stretch of grass at Grant Street and Sixth Avenue that’s owned by BNY Mellon. The Green turned to mud within a few minutes of their arrival just after 4 p.m. They gathered around a loudspeaker, where a man faced the towering BNY Mellon building and announced, "We are not below you, as we are today. We are above you. We are the 99 percent!"

He looked back at the cheering crowd.

"Thank you for occupying Pittsburgh! Do not give up the fight!"

Some of the protests in other cities have ended in mass arrests, but in Pittsburgh, police reported no major incidents, property damage or arrests by day’s end.

Continue reading One, two, three, four … WE DECLARE A CLASS WAR!’ →

Democrats, labor, PDA, single-payer, unemployment

John Conyers: A Champion of Jobs, Justice and Peace

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Photo: Dwan Walker of ‘One Aliquippa’ with Rep. Conyers at award dinner

Rep. John Conyers Honored at Labor’s

Human Rights Dinner in Beaver County

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

Over 400 labor and human rights leaders and activists gathered at The Fez in Beaver County’s Hopewell Township Oct. 8 to honor John Conyers, the Congressman from Detroit Michigan, now serving his 23rd term as a long-time champion of labor, civil rights and civil liberties.

Sponsored by the Beaver-Lawrence Central Labor Council, the annual human rights banquet drew local labor unions, the NAACP and African American churches, and activist groups such as the 4th CD Progressive Democrats of America. The elected officials present included County Commissioners Joe Spanik and Tony Amadio, row officers Carol Fiorucci and Nancy Werme, as well as Dwan Walker and his ‘One Aliquippa’ organization. Walker’s recent primary victory has position him to be the town’s next mayor. The event was also honored by the attendance of several youth ambassadors from Aliquippa’s Council of Men and Fathers.

conyers-pda-table1 "There’s a high level of energy here," said Tina Shannon, PDA’s president and a member of the dinner’s organizing team. "Many of us have already worked together for years on Medicare for All, and in the recent ‘One Nation’ mobilization in Washington, DC. We’ve built a strong unity by working together, and it’s reflected in the turnout here tonight. It’ll continue as we fight for jobs"

Conyers was an excellent choice for the labor council’s award. Not only is he known worldwide for his leadership in the House Judiciary Committee as a staunch defender of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, he is also responsible for introducing some of the most progressive Bills in Congress.  HR 676 ‘Improved and Expanded Medicare for All’ has been widely promoted here in Beaver County by Unions and Progressive Democrats, including the first Citizen’s Hearing on the Bill conducted in Aliquippa featuring Dennis Kucinich as convener. The Beaver County Commissioners and the Beaver/Lawrence Labor Council have both passed resolutions endorsing the Bill. Conyers has also recently drafted another groundbreaking bill, HR 870 Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act, to be funded by a financial transaction tax on Wall Street speculators.

Continue reading John Conyers: A Champion of Jobs, Justice and Peace →

Blue Dogs, GOP, labor, unemployment

Talking to Local Unions on Jobs, President Presses Hard on GOP and Blue Dogs

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President Obama Visits Pittsburgh

to Push His ‘Jobs for America’ Bill

By Timothy McNulty
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Oct. 11, 2011 – President Barack Obama blitzed the city to stump for his jobs plan today, delivering a 20-minute speech at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers hall on the South Side and then leaving town by 3:20 p.m.

Before his speech the president also met for more than an hour with a job-creating council of nationwide business, labor and academic leaders as they try to wrestle with the nation’s chronic unemployment problems.

Little in the president’s address on his $447 billion jobs plan was new: he touted its calls for tax cuts and construction spending and questioned Republicans for not supporting it. He said he did not know why the GOP was in opposition “other than the fact I proposed it.”

But Democrats have not been rushing to support the effort either, even in the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate, which is set to take its first votes on the plan tonight, a month after the president forwarded it. Mr. Obama has been barnstorming the country to try to whip up popular support for his plan and left the city for a similar event tonight in Orlando, Fla., before traveling next to Detroit.

Continue reading Talking to Local Unions on Jobs, President Presses Hard on GOP and Blue Dogs →