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In early January, President Bush laid out his economic agenda, but many commentators pointed out that its benefits would accrue largely to the very wealthy. "Demagoguery about 'class warfare' may play well in the boardrooms of corporate campaign contributors, but they do nothing for America's working families. It is time for the President and the majority in Congress to get real about the problems facing the nation and the solutions that working families want," said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. With a two-year job loss of more than 1.5 million, "American workers desperately need a meaningful economic spur that will ... help those hardest hit by the downturn. But instead of addressing these urgent needs now, the Bush Administration has offered up an unaffordable $670 billion trickle-down tax cut for the wealthy that will not help workers or the economy."
Although labor movements in Europe are forcefully opposing war against Iraq, a deeply divided AFL-CIO is unlikely to take sides on the war, writes David Moberg in In These Times. The AFL-CIO's only public statement was John Sweeney's letter to Congress expressing concerns about Bush's Iraq policy in October 2002, which stopped short of opposing the war.
Despite Sweeney's stance, many within the AFL-CIO are voicing opposition to a war. High-ranking labor leaders, such as Gloria Johnson, president of the Coalition of Labor Union Women and a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council, and the presidents of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union and UNITE, the union of apparel and textile workers, have expressed skepticism about the shift from terrorism to Iraq. Opposition to an Iraqi war has also won backing from AFSCME, a public service employees' union, the United Electrical Workers, the Communications Workers of America and many others. While the official line remains neutral, few are prepared to endorse this war. "You cannot have a conversation with anyone inside the labor movement who thinks we should have a war," says Bob Muehlenkamp, former director of organizing for the Teamsters. His concerns led to a gathering of more than a hundred trade union leaders and activists, resulting in a new organization, "U.S. Labor Against the War." Later, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor endorsed a resolution that stands "firmly against the Bush Administrations' drive to war and calls for a re-ordering of our national priorities which must include allocation of resources to provide jobs, education, health care ... and social justice." In These Times 12/6/02 | Los Angeles Times 12/11/02
The White House continues to favor pro-management groups on its workplace safety and ergonomics policy panels. On December 3, the administration announced a new National Advisory Committee on Ergonomics that, for the first time in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) history, has more management than union representatives. This action follows OSHA's recent formation of several "alliances" with industry groups to study workplace safety and ergonomics. Not one of these so-called alliances includes workers or their unions. In fact, the business-backed groups on both the ergonomics advisory committee and in the alliances worked for over a decade against the landmark federal ergonomics standard established by the Clinton administration, and supported its repeal by Bush weeks after his election. Since that time, the White House and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao have advocated voluntary measures instead. AFL-CIO Press Release 12/6/02 | AFL-CIO Press Release 12/19/02
A long simmering insider trading scandal in the AFL-CIO has begun to attract public attention. Allegations against union insurance provider ULLICO contend that several board members took advantage of special stock deals, producing individual profits of more than $200,000. In the case of the company's director, profits reached as high as $7 million. ULLICO is a union-owned insurance and financial services company, founded by the American Federation of Labor in 1925 as the Union Labor Life Insurance Company to provide affordable health and life insurance to union members. ULLICO directors are accused of buying and selling company stock at sizeable profits from December 1999 to September 2001. Ironically the windfall in question grew out of ULLICO's purchase of $7.6 million in Global Crossing stock that netted the company an after-tax profit of $330 million. Sweeney and two other labor leaders resigned from the company's board in early December, outraged over a decision by ULLICO CEO Robert Georgine to keep secret the findings of an internal inquiry. Sweeney, who did not participate in the stock trades, has criticized them and was one of the first to urge that an outside counsel be named, according to Greenhouse. To put the ULLICO insider trading brouhaha in perspective, Gary Winnick, former chairman of the now bankrupt telecommunications giant Global Crossing, has admitted to pocketing nearly $124 million, a far larger sum than anything alleged in the ULLICO case. New York Times 12/3/02 | Washington Post 12/2/02 | Washington Post 11/27/02
Director Robert Zemeckis, known for pushing the boundaries of technology in filmmaking, is about to do it again, but this time Hollywood unions are concerned about being cut out of the process. In his upcoming movie The Polar Express, digital cameras will shoot all of the scenes in front of a blank screen, with computers filling in the sets later. The actors will be covered with motion-capture sensors so that their performances can be digitally stored and used as a guide to create the actual moving images. Hollywood labor unions worry that an all-digital production may eventually force many of their members out of jobs. Unlike digitally animated movies like Final Fantasy and Shrek, which relied heavily on similar technology to create fictitious characters, the team behind Polar Express is striving to create life-like images of well-known actors.
The IATSE has signed its first basic contract with the Music Video Production Association. The deal allows the IA to negotiate wages and provide pension and health benefits to music video crews. The IA's organizing efforts reached a turning point last summer in Los Angeles by demanding that the producer of a video for rapper LL Cool J sign a union contract. The IA then persuaded members of that crew to walk off the set when the producer refused. That move led to negotiations, which began in October. An estimated 25,000 people work on music video production, and much of that activity is concentrated in Los Angeles.
A court settlement has been reached in a long-running suit alleging that AFTRA's health and retirement funds under-compensated a group of 1960s recording artists. The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists -- which operates as a separate entity from AFTRA Funds, the target of the suit -- announced an historic $8.4 million settlement in late November. The action, originally filed by singer Sam Moore of the recording duo "Sam & Dave" in 1993 and joined by fourteen other artists, alleged that AFTRA Funds failed to collect proper pension and health contributions from record companies over a 35-year period. In March 2002, trustees for AFTRA Funds, which has nearly $2 billion in assets, proposed a settlement to resolve the case for 20,000 artists with similar complaints, most of whom would have received only a couple of hundred dollars each under the agreement. The 15 named plaintiffs would have received about $100,000 each, but the settlement would have deprived every recording artist of the right to recover additional benefits. That sparked an outcry from the artist community, leading dozens of current music stars to oppose it. AFTRA took the extraordinary step of filing a court brief in May opposing portions of it as well, saying the proposed settlement was inadequate in compensating artists other than the plaintiffs. Under the new settlement, the 15 plaintiffs will each receive $25,000, but unlike previous offers, they retain the right to file claims and challenge benefit determinations in court. AFTRA, which has 80,000 members nationwide, is the collective bargaining representative for recording artists as well as actors, broadcasters and other professionals in the media and entertainment industries. Variety 12/2/02 | Variety 12/4/02 | Recording Artists Coalition |
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