| WE GOT IT! |
 Local 429 Contractors Secure the Music City Convention Center Project
Local 429 members have reason to celebrate. Our signatory partners at Conti Electric in a joint effort with our newest signatory contractors, Marine Electric and Universal Electronics Inc, have been awarded the most desirable construction project in Middle Tennessee, the Music City Center. The $685 million dollar Convention Center will be the largest project in the downtown area in several years. Electrical contractors have had their eyes set on the Music City Center for the last 24 months. In February of 2010 members of Metro City Council approved the funding for the 1.2 million square ft building and began the bid process.
A large profile project of this magnitude will have everyone in the construction industries attention. Now IBEW members will have the ability to show this city, and the rest of the Middle Tennessee area, that we can complete any project in front of us and have the skills to install it right, the first time. This construction project will speak volumes of what our membership is truly capable of, including the showcase of state of the art green technologies, like the planned green roof and a solar panel installation the size of a football field. The Music City Center will set a standard in large-scale green building.
The Music City Center is planned as an architectural masterwork, capturing Nashville's style and complementing the city's unique character. It will be a world-class convention center and it will educate convention goers from all over the world about green buildings who will take those ideas home with them. This project is the soon to be standard of new construction in Nashville with plans to receive the highest LEED certification available in construction.
Conti Electric has estimated 325,000 man hours will be needed to complete the Music City Center in the 36 month time frame being handed down from the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency (MDHA). In contrast, Local 429’s signatory partners turned in just under 580,000 man hours across our entire jurisdiction for the entire year of 2009. Estimates also show a peek of around 200 electricians needed, and an average of 100 to 150 electricians throughout the majority of the project. Marine Electric has already provided a few men to the project and will be looking to put Journeyman and Apprentice calls in as early as next week.
Local 429 would like to thank everyone that has made this opportunity a reality for our members and congratulate Conti Electric, Marine Electric, and UEI on their ongoing success, and thank them for being such gracious partners throughout this entire process.
Check out the video on Local 429's youtube channel to see the efforts of union members in action at: http://www.youtube.com/user/ibewlocal429
| | Jobless Rate Worsens to 9.6% in August, Congress Needs to Act | 
The U.S. jobless rate worsened to 9.6 percent in August from 9.5 percent in July, with 54,000 jobs lost, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data out today. The private sector created only 67,000 jobs in August, far below the 150,000 jobs a month needed to keep up with the population and extremely far below the hundreds of thousands of new jobs needed each month to return to pre-recession employment levels. Government employment fell by 121,000, largely reflecting the loss of 114,000 temporary workers hired for U.S. Census 2010.
The number of people who are underemployed, which includes those who are too discouraged to look for work or are working part-time out of economic necessity, worsened to 16.7 percent from 16.5 percent in July. More than 26 million U.S. workers are without jobs or full-time work. The long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) declined by 323,000 over the month to 6.2 million. In August, 42.0 percent of unemployed persons had been jobless for 27 weeks or more.
Jobs increased in health care (28,000), mining (8,000), and construction (19,000). Manufacturing employment declined by 27,000 in August.
Maybe when Congress gets back in town, lawmakers—especially those Republicans who repeatedly have blocked extending unemployment insurance and funding for jobs programs—can finally figure it out: The private sector is not creating jobs.
Discussing the “Be nice to us or we’ll quit investing,” threats by Big Business to Congress and the White House if they pass regulations to rein in corporate greed, Yves Smith writes:
Guess what? As we’ve indicated, big businesses were net disinvesting even during the corporate-friendly Bush Administration.
And it’s getting worse. Big Business isn’t creating jobs and yet corporate mouthpieces have the gall to attack unemployed workers. In one such screed this week, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed slamming unemployment insurance. As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote in rebuttal:
A majority of the jobless typically have moved from job to job before they failed to find a new one, or have held a number of part-time jobs.
So it’s hard to make the case that many of the unemployed have chosen to remain jobless and collect unemployment benefits rather than work.
And then there’s the not-so-small fact that there are more than five workers for every one job in this country.
As Reich writes, extending unemployment insurance is a basic action of a civil society. In addition, lawmakers need to move federal funding to create more jobs.
Mark Weisbrot at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), is among many economists calling for more immediate federal aid to address the nation’s jobs crisis.
Republicans have successfully promoted the idea that we already tried a stimulus and it didn’t help. There are few, if any, economists who would agree. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that between 1.4 and 3.3 million more people were employed by mid-2010, because of the stimulus.
The American public knows how such job creation can be funded: A clear majority of those polled favors federal spending to create jobs, and letting the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is calling on Congress to “take up and pass legislation that will create jobs and rebuild America, starting with the Surface Transportation bill, Clean Water Authorization, clean energy infrastructure spending, and expansion of nuclear power loan guarantees.”
We will not allow Republicans, who continue to say no to jobs, say no to unemployment benefits and want to privatize and cut Social Security, to derail our efforts to fight for a middle class economy. The future that we leave for our children depends on our success in beating back these barriers.
Today’s jobs data, combined with a new study showing that four of the five fastest growing occupations between 2006 and 2009 pay below the median wage ($15.95 an hour in May 2009) and a report that an appalling one in six Americans now is enrolled in an anti-poverty program, it’s long past time for Congress to act.
The last word goes to Reich:
A record number of Americans is unemployed for a record length of time. This is a national tragedy.
| | Labor Day 2010: Workers’ Rights Here and Around the Globe | 
Corporations that lead the way in creating fair working environments prosper—but too many employers and governments around the world are abusing workers’ rights, according to the findings of several reports released in time for Labor Day. You can check out all the reports on our Labor Day 2010 webpage here.
•“Labor Day List: Partnerships that Work,” by American Rights at Work, profiles eight companies that promote positive labor-management relationships in the clean energy industry. The companies and union employees featured in the report are leading the way toward a sustainable economy in which businesses thrive, the planet prospers and workers share in the success they help create.
•A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report reveals that many European companies which publicly embrace workers’ rights and follow global labor standards at home sometimes undermine workers’ rights in their U.S. operations. The 130-page report, “A Strange Case: Violations of Workers’ Freedom of Association in the United States by European Multinational Corporations,” details how some European multinational firms have carried out aggressive campaigns to keep workers in the United States from organizing and bargaining, violating international standards and, often, U.S. labor laws.
•The HRW report has a long section on T-Mobile USA as one company that operates on this double standard. In the report “Lowering the Bar or Setting the Standard? Deutsche Telekom’s U.S. Labor Practices,” released in December 2009 by American Rights at Work, John Logan, a professor at San Francisco State University, found that T-Mobile is conducting a vicious anti-union campaign to prevent workers from joining the Communications Workers of America. This summer, T-Mobile USA workers visited Germany to tell shareholders at the company’s parent, Deutsche Telekom (DT), how the company denies its U.S. employees the freedom to join a union. Yet in many countries around the world, DT follows internationally recognized labor and human rights, including the freedom of association and the freedom to form a union. But not in the United States.
•A Freedom House report found that the rights of working people and trade unions are under serious duress throughout much of the world, and authoritarian regimes are using increasingly sophisticated methods of control. ”The Global State of Workers’ Rights: Free Labor in a Hostile World” found that one-third of the global population lives in societies in which workers’ rights suffer a significant degree of repression.
| | House Passes Jobs Bill for States, Obama Set to Sign |
After months of Republican obstruction in the Senate, vital aid to states facing massive budget shortfalls and layoffs of hundreds of thousands of teachers, public employees, police officers and firefighters is on its way to the White House for President Obama’s signature. The bill just passed the House by 247-161 a few minutes ago. A pathetic number of Republican representatives–two, count ‘em, two–voted to support working families. Says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:
Simply put, this vote keeps us on the path to economic recovery….Republicans who continue to fight for tax cuts for the super rich did everything in their power to defeat funding for teachers and firefighters, adding to the laundry list of anti-jobs votes they’ve taken.
BTW, it’s fully paid for in part by closing costly corporate tax loopholes that allow corporations to ship American jobs overseas. Works for us. Too bad so many Republicans think it’s a bad idea.
| | Jobs, Jobs, Jobs Made in America | 
For months, we in the union movment have been calling for Congress to do more—much more—to create jobs. Now, the long-term jobless rate for workers is the worst since the 1930s Depression—some 45 percent of unemployed workers have been without jobs for more than six months—and calls for federal action on jobs are coming from across the nation. Check out New York Times columnist Bob Herbert here and here who blasts congressional inaction, as does his employer, here. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich puts it bluntly: We have a jobs emergency.
As Herbert says in his devasting portrait of a Congress out of touch with the suffering of America’s workers:
We’re not heading toward the danger zone. We’re there. The U.S. will not remain a stable society if this great employment crisis is not addressed head-on—and soon. You cannot allow joblessness on this scale to fester. It’s wrong, and the blowback will be as destructive and intolerable as it is inevitable.
* Massive state cutbacks on jobs and services may not mean much to the wealthy but they sure do for the rest of us. As Washington Monthly points out:
When bus systems are shut down, wealthier folks with cars are fine, but low-income workers who need a way to get to work are out of luck. When street lights are turned off and police officers furloughed, families in gated communities and private security are probably feeling a lot better off than everyone else.
* President Obama reiterated his call to “Make it in America” yesterday. In a speech at the University of Texas at Austin, Obama said:
We need an economy that puts Americans back to work, an economy that’s built around three simple words—Made in America. Because we are not playing for second place. We are the United States of America, and like the Texas Longhorns, you play for first—we play for first. (h/t to the Alliance for American Manufacturers.)
Too bad most Republicans in Congress don’t want to keep jobs in the United States. They opposed closing tax loopholes that encourage corporations to outsource U.S. jobs. Three cheers to the Dems in the House and Senate who got the measure passed anyway
| | Obama Says ‘Made in America’ at Heart of U.S. Recovery | 
President Obama today told the AFL-CIO Executive Council, “We are going to keep fighting for an economy that works for everybody, not just a privileged few.” He also said that with the help of working families and their unions,
We are going to rebuild our economy stronger than before, and at the heart of it will be three simple words: made in America.
Speaking on his 49th birthday at the Washington (D.C) Convention Center, the president told the council that this fall’s election is a choice between
polices that encourage job creation here in America or encourage jobs to go elsewhere…The choice is whether we want to go forward or we want to go backwards to the same policies that got us into this mess in the first place.
President Obama spoke today at the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting. Seated (from left): AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker.
He spoke about the need to invest in clean technology, like solar panels, wind turbines, nuclear plants, clean coal and new car batteries.
Instead of giving tax breaks to corporations that want to ship jobs overseas, we want to give tax breaks to companies that are investing right here in the United States of America.
Obama said that after nearly a decade of failed economic policies that “drove America’s economy into a ditch….We’re on the right track.”
Instead of losing millions of jobs, we have created jobs for six straight months in the private sector. Instead of an economy that is contracting, we’ve got an economy that is expanding. So the last thing we would want to do is go back to what we were doing before.
Responding to a question from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Obama said “We are going to keep fighting for the Employee Free Choice Act.” Recalling Franklin D. Roosevelt’s comment that if he were a factory worker, he’d join a union, Obama said:.
Well, I tell you what. I think that’s true for workers generally. I think if I was a coal miner, I’d want a union representing me to make sure that I was safe and you did not have some of the tragedies that we’ve been seeing in the coal industry. If I was a teacher, I’d want a union to make sure that the teachers’ perspective was represented as we think about shaping an education system for our future.
| | Trumka: ‘We’re Going to Rebuild America With Jobs’ | 
In the political showdown between Wall Street and Main Street, California is a key battleground. With the third highest jobless rate in the country and a towering budget deficit, California needs leaders who can create and save jobs, not just spout ”more of the same corporate bull,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told a crowd of thousands at a mass jobs rally in Los Angeles today.
“How are we going to rebuild America? With jobs! Who’s going to rebuild America? Working people with jobs!”
The choice for voters is clear in California, said Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation. The Republican candidates for governor and U.S. senator, respectively, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, are mirror images of each other.
Both are failed CEOs. Both slashed thousands of jobs to make themselves richer. And both have a dangerous agenda that will douse any hope for economic recovery. They want to slash jobs. Eliminate pensions. Scale back overtime pay and meal breaks for workers. They’re part of the greed is good crowd. I think it’s pretty clear that’s the wrong direction.
It is crazy that Wall Street would destroy our economy and rob us of millions of jobs, Trumka said, and the Republican response is: “Great! How about more of the same?”
We’re done with that kind of deal for America.
Delegates to the Letter Carriers (NALC) convention, meeting in nearby Anaheim, joined the rally along with union members from the building trades, public employees and other trades to send a strong message: “Paychecks Pay the Bills.”
Participants carried signs highlighting the need for jobs as the top answer to the economic crisis and to push for the 30/10 Initiative to build 30 year’s worth of mass transit in the next 10 years.
They also called for the U.S. Postal Service to continue six-day mail delivery and keep thousands of postal jobs and for more money for public safety, schools, mass transit and health care.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D), NALC President Fredric Rolando, Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and community and labor leaders also spoke at the rally in front of city hall.
| | Laborers Returning to AFL-CIO |
The Laborers (LIUNA) announced yesterday it is re-affiliating with the AFL-CIO effective Oct. 1, following the unanimous approval of the union’s General Executive Board.
In a statement, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said:
More than ever, now is the moment for a unified labor movement. And as we rebuild and strengthen the labor movement, we will work together to create good jobs, restore a middle-class economy and elect leaders who stand with working people. Together, brick by brick, we will build an economy that works for everyone.
LIUNA President Terence O’Sullivan said in his statement:
Despite the historic success of the 2008 federal elections, too much is not getting done on Capitol Hill. A united union movement can better focus Congress—and particularly the U.S. Senate—on helping to lead our nation, rather than being locked in inaction.
Read Trumka’s full statement here and O’Sullivan’s statement here.
LIUNA disaffiliated from the AFL-CIO in June 2006. At that time, the union expressed hope for an eventual reunification, continued to organize much of its political efforts through the AFL-CIO and has been engaged in ongoing discussions with the AFL-CIO for some time.
| | GOP Candidate Wamp Says Jobless Benefits Keep Tennesseans From Seeking Work. |
Saying he believes extended jobless pay is a disincentive for people to find jobs, Republican Zach Wamp told small-business executives today that “we want people out there scraping and clawing and looking for work and not just sitting back waiting.”
Wamp also charged that he believes a state income tax will be “on the table” for consideration next year if his rival for the GOP nomination for governor, Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam, is elected governor.
The Chattanooga congressman’s remarks were made in a teleconference call conducted by the National Federation of Independent Business for its members to hear from and question the candidates for governor. Reporters were allowed to listen in.
Wamp, Haslam and Democrat Mike McWherter pretty much offered their standard fare. Haslam was on the hour-long call only to deliver opening remarks and left his campaign’s policy director, Will Cromer, to respond to questions.
Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, a Republican candidate, tried repeatedly to call in as scheduled but both NFIB and Ramsey’s campaign said technical glitches kept him off the conference.
An NFIB member asked the candidates what they would do to combat fraud and abuse in Tennessee’s unemployment insurance programs.
Wamp, speaking off the floor of the U.S. House in Washington where he had gone for key congressional votes today, said small business, the NFIB and he as governor “must resist… any more mandates to small business to help the unemployed -- that we have continued to extend on a federal level, I think, unemployment compensation so long that there’s disincentives for people to actually re-enter the workforce or go out and look for a job.
“And this is creating a culture of dependence which we do not need. We want people out there scraping and clawing and looking for work and not just sitting back waiting. And so we’ve got to not allow any more mandates.”
Those remarks brought an immediate response from Mary Mancini, executive director of Tennessee Citizen Action, a public-interest and consumer-watchdog organization.
“If Mr. Wamp sincerely believes that the people of Tennessee are ‘sitting back waiting’ instead of looking for work then he clearly doesn't know the people of Tennessee…. Unemployment is 10 percent statewide and close to 20 percent in some counties. That's not because Tennesseans do not want to work. It's because there are no jobs available,” Mancini said.
Tennessee AFL-CIO Labor Council President Jerry Lee also reacted with dismay at Wamp's remarks about the jobless.
We’ve got people out there scraping and clawing and looking for jobs already and there are six applicants for every job. If it wasn’t for these extensions on unemployment, we’d have people not just losing their homes, their families and cars, their families would be going without food and they wouldn’t have gas to go to a job if they found one. The culture was created on Wall Street. Working people didn’t create this situation.
It's okay with these conservatives to extend the tax breaks for the wealthy and for weeks and weeks it was not okay to extend unemployment. I don’t know where the double standard comes from. The (jobless benefits) extension is federal dollars, it's not putting the burden on NFIB folks.
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