Tag Archives: income inequality

Former AFL-CIO Organizer And Director Of Job With Justice Becomes Exec Director Of USAction

  By New Hampshire Labor News | May 22, 2013 - 5:00 pm | , ,
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Labor has been on the forefront of economic inequality since workers first decided to bargain collectively.   That connection between labor and economic equality is showing as USAction announced their new executive director.

USAction, a leading national community organizing network with affiliates in 21 states and nearly 350,000 members nationwide, announced today that Fred Azcarate, a rising star in the labor and progressive movement, will take over as the organization’s new Executive Director. Azcarate, the former Executive Director of Jobs with Justice and President of the US Student Association, is currently the head of the AFL-CIO’s jobs campaign asdirector of America Wants to Work. Last year, Azcarate was named one of “50 Young Progressive Activists Who Are Changing America” cited in the Huffington Post. The hire represents a significant alignment between the community organizing and labor networks.

“Fred brings an unparalleled understanding of and commitment to community organizing and feels to his core the issues that we fight for,” said Khalid Pitts, President of USAction and Director of Strategic Campaigns at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). “Fred will be a tremendous springboard to bring USAction into the future and to build on the important work Jeff Blum started. We’re extremely excited to have him leading our team, and building an even stronger bond between the labor and organizing movements.”

USAction was founded in 1999 with a goal to engage national partners and state affiliates in progressive campaigns that enrich people’s lives. Over the years, USAction has fought to protect Social Security and Medicare from privatization efforts, organized the second-largest nonpartisan voting registration effort in history, fought for affordable, quality healthcare, and campaigned to make the rich pay their fair share of taxes while providing jobless benefits for the unemployed.  Currently, USAction and its 21 state affiliates employ a staff of 240 in 40 offices, has approximately 342,000 members, and a combined listserv capacity of 1.2 million supporters. Azcarate replaces outgoing and founding Executive Director Jeff Blum.

“I am so excited to build on the phenomenal work that USAction affiliates and national partners are doing every day, whether it’s to increase access to health care, right-size the Pentagon so we can invest in America’s real priorities, or create smart immigration reform policies,” said Azcarate.  “We’re at a critical moment, and I’m thrilled to help lead the fight for an economy of opportunity and justice, to rebuild the middle class and ensure that all have access to it. There’s a saying I like- ‘If you want to walk fast, walk alone. If you want to walk far, walk together.’ Together we will walk with our partners across the progressive movement to build an economy that works for everyone.”

“As corporate interests step up their attacks on working people and the middle class struggles to get ahead, the fight for jobs and economic prosperity needs all the allies it can get,” said Richard Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO. “I can think of no better ally than USAction with Fred Azcarate at the helm. I’ve been working side by side with Fred for the last six years to give working people a voice on the job, and a future with economic security. His passion will be key to bringing the labor and community organizing networks together to wage campaigns that create good jobs, health care, and a secure retirement.”

Azcarate has been at the AFL-CIO since 2007, when he was hired to run the AFL-CIO’s Voice@Work campaign, including the campaign to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. From 1992 until 2007, Azcarate was the Executive Director for Jobs with Justice, growing the organization from 3 staff to an organization with 60 staff and representing more than 40 coalitions. Prior to that, Azcarate served as President of the US Student Association.

“When labor unions and community organizers come together to fight for the 99 percent, everyone benefits,” said Mary Kay Henry, SEIU’s International President. “By strengthening our partnership, we can create an economy that addresses inequities and works better for all of us.”

“I’ve had the great privilege of working with both Fred and USAction for a number of years,” said Larry Cohen, President, Communications Workers of America. “USAction has played a critical role in bringing together the progressive movement, and Fred is a great leader, who has led a growing movement for democracy and economic justice. Together, they’re going to do great things for all of us.”

Said Center for Community Change Executive Director, Deepak Bhargava, “Last month, USAction and Center for Community Change created an historic partnership between our two organizations, with the idea being that progressivism demands movements and coalitions whose efforts are greater than the sum of their parts. That’s exactly why Fred Azcarate is the perfect person to lead USAction and our movement.”

Azcarate comes from a labor family– his mother, a nurse, belonged to SEIU1199 in New York. He graduated from SUNY-Binghamton with a Bachelor’s degree in economics. Today, Azcarate lives in Takoma Park, MD with his wife and two young sons.

The AFL-CIO Introduces New Website Highlighting CEO’s Outlandish Pay Inequalities

  By New Hampshire Labor News | April 16, 2013 - 7:57 am | , ,
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CEO Pay 354 times the average worker (AFLCIO)

U.S. CEOs Paid 354 Times the Average Rank-and-File Worker—Largest Pay Gap in the World

New CEO pay numbers for S&P 500 released in 2013 Executive PayWatch

Searchable CEO-to-worker pay online database exposes growing wealth inequality and need for a fair tax system.
www.paywatch.org

CEO Pay 354 times the average worker (AFLCIO)
Coinciding with events by working families across the country on Tax Day, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka unveiled the 2013 Executive PayWatch, revealing that U.S. CEOs of the largest companies made 354 times the average rank-and-file worker—by far the widest pay gap in the world. Last year, CEOs received on average $12.3 million while the average rank-and-file worker took home around $34,645. This new data confirms CEO-to-worker pay disparities have increased dramatically over the past several decades. Thirty years ago, CEOs were paid 42 times that of rank-and-file workers in the U.S.

The newly designed Executive PayWatch is the most comprehensive searchable online database that tracks excessive CEO pay at S&P 500 companies and offers visitors the unique ability to compare their own pay to the pay of top executives.

In addition to the new data on CEO pay, President Trumka outlined how PayWatch now exposes some of the ways that CEO-backed groups such as the Business Roundtable and Fix the Debt are drumming up a deficit scare to conceal their efforts to get more tax cuts for corporations, while hacking at Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits for working people.

“American chief executives continued to do very well for themselves last year, while workers struggle to make ends meet,” said Trumka. “We are calling out the hypocrisy of rich CEOs who have the gall to ask for corporate tax cuts to be paid for by squeezing the retirement security of working America. The American public deserves to know the truth about their self-serving agenda.”

Closing the corporate tax loophole that allows U.S. multinational companies to avoid taxation on overseas profits would raise $42 billion in new revenue in 2013 alone. But CEO groups like the Campaign to Fix the Debt want to overhaul the tax system so that corporate profits kept overseas are permanently exempt from U.S. taxes.

Trumka also pointed to new features on PayWatch, including the AFL-CIO’s Mutual Fund Votes Survey, which examines votes cast by the largest mutual fund families to constrain CEO pay. This new letter grading system will help investors and the public compare how specific mutual fund families voted on executive compensation issues.

Finally, for the first time an interactive map allows users to compare and contrast CEO pay ratios of top executive all over the world.

“Not only is U.S. CEO pay out-of whack with historical norms, it is off the chart globally. For example, in Switzerland, where voters recently imposed new limits on executive pay, the CEO-to-worker pay gap is 148 times.  In the United Kingdom, the CEO-to-worker pay gap is one-quarter as large as ours. And in Japan, the gap is even smaller.” said Trumka.

How do we get an economy that works for the 99%?

  By Liz Iacobucci | March 6, 2013 - 1:20 pm | , ,
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Day 20 Occupy Wall Street October 5 2011 Shankbone 3It’s official: Wall Street has recovered from the recession. Yesterday,

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose to its highest level ever, erasing losses from the financial crisis after a four-year rally fueled by the fastest profit growth since the 1990s and monetary stimulus from the Federal Reserve. About $10 trillion has been restored to U.S. equities as retailers, banks and manufacturers led the recovery from the worst bear market since the 1930s.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, America’s middle class is still losing ground.

In the wake of the Great Recession, millions of middle-class people are being pinched by stagnating incomes and the increased cost of living. America’s median household income has dropped by more than $4,000 since 2000…

The unemployment rate has been getting better – but for most American families, life is still getting worse.

One of the most disturbing trends of the recession is still very far from being reversed. America’s middle-class jobs have been decimated since 2007, replaced largely by low-wage jobs.

In other words, wages are still falling. From the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank:

Many middle-class workers have lost their jobs and, if they have been able to secure new employment at all, find themselves earning far lower wages post-recession… on average over the next 25 years, these workers will earn 11% less [than they would have, if they hadn’t lost their jobs during the recession].

Back in Washington, DC, what are the politicians doing?

  1. House Republicans believe they’re “on the side of the angels” on defense spending. They are coalescing around a budget deal that would allow the Pentagon more flexibility to move money around (for instance, using savings that resulted from troop withdrawals to restore funding to military contractors).
  2. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan is working on next year’s budget. Should be interesting to read. The last time he proposed a budget, a whopping 62% of the budget cuts came from programs that help low-income people.
  3. And Ryan still plans to privatize Medicare. His only question: what should the cut-off age be? Should current Medicare benefits be guaranteed for people 55-and-older? 56-and-older? Even older than that? [The League of Women Voters analyzed Ryan’s proposal and calculated that the voucher system would pay only 32% of the cost of covered procedures, leaving patients to pay the other 68% of the cost. Read Time Magazine’s piece on medical costs here.]

Obviously, last November’s election didn’t change the dynamics in Washington.

What is it going to take, to do that?

65 Years Later: Time to Start Healing the Divide

  By Liz Iacobucci | November 21, 2012 - 11:55 am | , , ,
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Photo from Kheel Center, Cornell University via Flikr/Creative Commons

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy

It has been nine years since Sen. Ted Kennedy first filed the Employee Free Choice Act.

He filed the bill on Friday, November 21, 2003 – almost exactly 40 years after the death of President John F. Kennedy.

A coincidence?  Not likely.  Here’s the back story:

The Employee Free Choice Act would restore union organizing rights that had been effectively stripped by the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act.  John F. Kennedy was a member of the Congress that passed Taft-Hartley.

“The first thing I did in Congress was to become the junior Democrat on the labor committee. At the time we were considering the Taft-Hartley Bill. I was against it, and one day in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I debated the bill with a junior Republican on that committee who was for it . . . his name was Richard Nixon.” [from a 1960 recording of President Kennedy reflecting on his career]

Both Kennedy and Nixon believed that Nixon won that debate.  Weeks later, Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, overriding a veto by President Harry Truman.

President Truman was eerily accurate in his predictions of what the Taft-Hartley Act would do.

Photo from Kheel Center, Cornell University via Flikr/Creative Commons

Photo from Kheel Center, Cornell University via Flikr/Creative Commons

From his radio address to the country:

“The Taft-Hartley bill is a shocking piece of legislation.  It is unfair to the working people of this country. It clearly abuses the right, which millions of our citizens now enjoy, to join together and bargain with their employers for fair wages and fair working conditions. …”

“I fear that this type of legislation would cause the people of our country to divide into opposing groups. If conflict is created, as this bill would create it—if the seeds of discord are sown, as this bill would sow them—our unity will suffer and our strength will be impaired.”

From his veto message to Congress:

“When one penetrates the complex, interwoven provisions of this omnibus bill, and understands the real meaning of its various parts, the result is startling. … the National Labor Relations Act would be converted from an instrument with the major purpose of protecting the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively into a maze of pitfalls and complex procedures. … The bill would deprive workers of vital protection which they now have under the law…. This bill is perhaps the most serious economic and social legislation of the past decade. Its effects–for good or ill–would be felt for decades to come.”

Fast-forward through those decades, and read the testimony of former National Relations Labor Board Hearing Officer Nancy Schiffer:

“At some point in my career… I could no longer tell workers that the [National Labor Relations] Act protects their right to form a union. … Over the years, the law has been perverted.  It now acts as a sword which is used by employers to frustrate employee freedom of choice and deny them their right to collective bargaining. When workers want to form a union to bargain with their employer, the NLRB election process, which was originally established as their means to this end, now provides a virtually insurmountable series of practical, procedural, and legal obstacles.”

Read this report by researchers at the University of Illinois-Chicago:

“Each year in the United States, more than 23,000 workers are fired or penalized for union activity. Aided by a weak labor law system that fails to protect workers’ rights, employers manipulate the current process of establishing union representation in a manner that undemocratically gives them the power to significantly influence the outcome of union representation elections. … Union membership in the United States is not declining because workers no longer want or need unions. Instead, falling union density is directly related to employers’ near universal and systematic use of legal and illegal tactics to stymie workers’ union organizing.”

Read the report by Cornell University Professor Kate Bronfenbrenner:

“Our findings suggest that the aspirations for representation are being thwarted by a coercive and punitive climate for organizing that goes unrestrained due to a fundamentally flawed regulatory regime … many of the employer tactics that create a punitive and coercive atmosphere are, in fact, legal. Unless serious labor law reform with real penalties is enacted, only a fraction of the workers who seek representation under the National Labor Relations Act will be successful. If recent trends continue, then there will no longer be a functioning legal mechanism to effectively protect the right of private-sector workers to organize and collectively bargain.”

Now, go back and consider President Truman’s most serious prediction from 65 years ago: that the Taft-Hartley Act “would cause the people of our country to divide into opposing groups. If conflict is created, as this bill would create it—if the seeds of discord are sown, as this bill would sow them—our unity will suffer and our strength will be impaired.”

President John F. Kennedy 

Think about this past election.  Isn’t our country divided enough?  Isn’t it time to reverse the process started by the Taft-Hartley Act?

It’s been nine years since Sen. Kennedy first filed the Employee Free Choice Act.

A year from now, we will mark a half-century since President John F. Kennedy died.

 

Isn’t it time to yank the roots of discord, start ending the conflict, and heal the division that was created by the Taft-Hartley Act?

 

 

Paul Ryan’s “Road Map”, If Followed, Sends Workers Off a Cliff.

  By Wayne Alterisio | August 13, 2012 - 6:27 am | ,
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Our new Vice Presidential pick is the Chairman of the House Budget Committee. This Ayn Rand devotee who would give more tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans, including an elimination of all taxes on corporate profits, capital gains, and dividends in his budget, was quoted once saying “We don’t want to turn this safety net into a hammock that ends up lulling people in their lives into dependency and complacency”. That was after just having voted against extending unemployment benefits to the long term unemployed. He then turned around and voted for extending benefits when it was coupled with extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy adding seven billion dollars to the deficit.

As he said in his response to the President’s State of the Union address “spending cuts have to come first”. This is precisely the mindset that is devastating our economy. Ryan seems oblivious to the fact that weak consumer buying power brought on by long term unemployment and falling wages is devastating our economy making the recession worse. Now let’s get into the weeds of the “Ryan Road Map”.

The road map, touted as a cure for what ails America, advocates partial privatization of Social Security and turns Medicare and Medicaid into voucher programs with limited benefits. It would also eliminate The Affordable Care Act or “Obomney Care” as some likes to call it. UAW member Diane Hrovaiten, who was among 3,800 workers who lost their jobs when the Delphi auto-parts plant in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, relocated work to Mexico, is not fond of Ryan’s plan. “Ryan’s ‘Road map’ protects the fortunes of the rich,” she says, “but for the rest of us, it’s an eight-lane expressway to destruction.”

Ryan has a long voting record going as far back as 1999 when he voted to repeal the Glass-Steagall Bill thereby removing limits on the risk commercial banks could take. As if that wasn’t enough he voted for the Commodity Futures Modernization Act which blocked regulation of derivatives. He voted against new regulations on the banking industry in 2007. He voted against monitoring TARP funds, and voted against modifying bankruptcy rules to avoid foreclosure. He has been a good friend to Wall Street.
Ryan has seduced the mainstream media into praising him for his intellectual audacity and has labeled him as “the thinker” in Congress. The Washington Post labeled him as the GOP’s leading intellectual.

I am now in the throes of coming up with a new sign for my first anniversary trek to Occupy Wall Street this coming September 17th. The last one was yawned at by CNN because its theme was a chart depicting the ravages of income equality. I think my new one will depict A Romney/Ryan Presidency stomping us workers into the ground then shoveling us off a cliff if they are elected. See you on Wall Street September 17th.