Labor

Defying popular stereotype, CEOs and labor representatives sat on a panel and largely agreed on major issues confronting industry and working people.

It happened Monday, Nov. 30 as CNBC taped “Meeting of the Minds: Rebuilding America” in a hall at Carnegie Mellon University before an audience of nearly 600 students, businessmen, steelworkers and other trade unionists.

For the broadcast Dec. 2 at 8 p.m., host Maria Bartiromo said the Steel City of Pittsburgh was chosen because:

“It was here that America’s soul was forged.”

Last night, I learned that the government website charged with reporting fraud and abuse is its very own worst offender.  Recovery.gov, the Administration’s website that is designed to report waste of misnamed stimulus funds, has produced a fake report.

Upon visiting the site, you see that $6 million was used to create six jobs in South Carolina’s fake 16th Congressional District.  It also shows that $3 million couldn’t even produce a single job in South Carolina’s fake 43rd district.  Somehow, $1.8 million was spent for 1.4 jobs in the fake 00 district.  This would be funny, but the money belongs to taxpayers, not the government.

I know we have been asking this Administration to show us the jobs, but this isn’t what we had in mind. 

In addition to correcting the errors on the website, I sincerely hope that this Administration will also listen to Republican ideas to jump start America’s economy by creating real jobs for hardworking American families. 

A business group is honoring Roger Agnelli, the CEO of Vale, one of the largest mining companies in the world, which, coincidentally, is in the midst of its longest ever labor dispute. The award is for exceptional accomplishments in corporate social responsibility.

The Business Council for International Understanding will give Agnelli the Dwight D. Eisenhower Global Citizenship Award, feting him for his corporate behavior five months after he provoked the strike by more than 3,000 miners, mill workers and smelters in my hometown of Sudbury and neighboring Port Colborne, Canada.

The strikers now include 450 Vale nickel and copper workers from Voisey’s Bay, also represented by my union, the United Steelworkers (USW). 

As Ranking Member and former Chair of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, one of my top priorities has always been to champion and promote the interests of our nation’s female entrepreneurs.  In fact, women-owned small businesses are the fastest growing segment of our economy, and these firms – now more than ever – will play a critical role in strengthening our economy.  As such, it is vital that the Federal government – one of the largest buyers of products and services in the world, purchasing over $500 billion annually – maximizes the participation of small businesses, including women-owned small businesses, in the Federal contracting process.

Regrettably, this is not occurring.  Fifteen years ago, Congress passed a five percent government-wide contracting goal for women-owned small businesses to ensure that they played a key role in the Federal contracting arena.  To date, that goal has never been met.  Indeed, the latest statistics showing the Federal contracting dollars awarded to small business through the Recovery Act tell an all too familiar story.  Every program except one – women-owned small firms – is exceeding its goaling requirement.  While service-disabled veteran-owned, HUBZone, and small disadvantaged businesses all have tools in place to help contracting officers award contracts to their businesses, women-owned firms do not.

The House of Representatives recently passed H.R. 3548, the Unemployment Compensation Extension Act. Enjoying broad bipartisan support, H.R. 3548 will provide up to 13 additional weeks of unemployment benefits to workers in high unemployment states who are about to run out of benefits. This extension will help at least 300,000 people in 27 states, DC and Puerto Rico who will exhaust all of their unemployment benefits by the end of September and over 1 million people in these states who will run out of unemployment by the end of December. With California reaching record unemployment, 12.2 percent, this bill is coming at a much needed time. I know there are many people in the 15th District that desperately need these benefits to make ends meet. The extension will ensure that these people will be able to continue providing for their families, while they navigate this difficult job market.

According to Moody’s Economy, extending these benefits is one of the most cost-effective and fast-acting ways to stimulate the economy because the money is spent quickly. Every $1 spent on unemployment benefits generates $1.63 in new economic demand. The extension also targets those states with particularly high unemployment (with a three-month average total unemployment rate (TUR) of 8.5 percent, or a 13-week insured unemployment rate (IUR) above 6 percent), where it is more difficult for people to find new jobs.

In an Oct. 1 editorial, the Los Angeles Times echoes the sentiment that the United Steelworkers union has been expressing for years – corporate supporters of paramilitaries in Colombia who murder trade unionists must be held criminally accountable. 

Specifically, the Los Angeles Times is applauding the order of a Colombian judge that top officials of the Alabama-based mining corporation, Drummond, be investigated as the intellectual authors of the brutal slayings of three union leaders in 2001. Read more...

Norma Rae and Teddy Kennedy are dead.

Well, the woman on whom the 1979 Academy Award winning movie Norma Rae was based – Crystal Lee Sutton – died Sept. 12. Sen. Kennedy died just weeks earlier on Aug. 25.

Brain cancer felled both iconic labor heroes.

It was a hell of a start to the AFL-CIO’s 26th Constitutional Convention in Pittsburgh this weekend. 

Caroline Kennedy stood in for her uncle Monday, telling the delegates she’d promised to speak on his behalf. She asked the delegates to devote themselves to the labor struggles to which Sen. Kennedy had dedicated his life, one of which was the Employee Free Choice Act.

Barack Obama proved Friday he’s got grit. He enforced trade laws.

These are special trade safeguard rules, called “Section 421,” that the Chinese had agreed to obey to gain entrance to the World Trade Organization (WTO). They are, however, laws that had gone unenforced by the U.S. in the past.

President Obama used these safeguard rules to imposed tariffs on tires manufactured in China and imported into the U.S., following a recommendation by the International Trade Commission, an independent, bi-partisan group. The action made Obama the first president to execute sanctions under “Section 421.” Read more...

No more than a thimbleful of hydrofluoric acid killed 37-year-old Alcoa technician John L. Dorton in fewer than seven hours from the moment he inhaled the mist at the plant where he worked in Port Comfort, Texas.

It’s that deadly.

Its transportation to factories and its use there imperils workers and nearby residents. Environmental, safety and advocacy groups for years have demanded that manufacturers substitute safer chemicals or processes whenever possible.

As far back as 2003, U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) issued a report called “Needless Risk,” detailing how oil refineries using hydrofluoric acid unjustifiably jeopardize workers and surrounding communities, especially in a time of potential terrorist attacks. 

Only about 50 of the nation’s 148 petroleum refineries boost octane with hydrofluoric acid. The others use sulfuric acid or a different process. Sulfuric acid is hazardous as well, but a tanker spill is more easily cleaned and doesn’t form a potentially lethal, hovering cloud that defies dispersal. In addition, exposure to sulfuric acid manifests instantly as a burn on the skin. So does hydrofluoric acid in high concentrations. But hydrofluoric acid is insidious. A dilute hydrofluoric acid doesn’t immediately burn. Blistering may be delayed by 8 to 24 hours. In the meantime, hydrofluoric acid penetrates the skin, destroying soft tissue and decalcifying bone. If inhaled, it devastates lung and esophagus tissue. After any exposure, chemical maker DuPont recommends treatment occur “within seconds.” Read more...

When the leaders of the G-20 nations arrive in Pittsburgh, I want them to know I am fomenting revolution. Industrial revolution. Specifically, a 21st-century burgeoning of green manufacturing in the United States.

Americans going green — manufacturing windmills and solar cells — would benefit the whole world’s economy and environment. Restoring manufacturing would rebuild the U.S. economy. And a strong United States is essential because countries in the old world, such as Germany, and those in the developing world, such as China, depend on Americans to buy their exports.

For years, during every G-20 meeting, workers took to the streets to protest free trade, and they’ll resurface along Liberty Avenue on Sept. 24 and 25 as American workers demand fair trade. But at each successive gathering of the G-20, the United States has produced fewer and fewer goods to exchange.