How Low Can Part-Timers’ Hours Go?

by Harold Meyerson

Harold Meyerson

Say you’re an employer with an employee who works 30 hours a week. If you have 50 employees or more come next year, you’ll be required either to provide her with health-care coverage, which the Affordable Care Act will by then mandate for all employees who work at least 30 hours a week, or you’ll have to pay a $2,000 penalty for failing to cover her.

Or, you could just cut her weekly hours to 29. That way, you won’t have to pay a dime, in either insurance costs or penalties.

This thought, not surprisingly, has crossed the minds of quite a number of employers. Right now, the average number of hours an employee in a retail establishment works each week is 31.4. And a whole lot of Americans work in retail—just slightly over 15 million, according to the latest employment report, out Friday, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Not all of them work hours that hover just over 30, of course, but the UC Berkeley Labor Center has calculated that 10.6 percent of workers in retail establishments that employ 100 or more individuals put in between 30 and 36 hours each week. As retail establishments that employ between 50 and 100 workers may well employ a higher percentage of part-timers than their larger counterparts, that figure of 10.6 percent is likely to rise when those additional employees are factored in.

Paid Sick Leave Pays for Itself: So Why Is NYC’s Mayoral Hopeful Blocking It?

By Sarah Jaffe

Christine Quinn was once the great feminist hope to lead the nation’s leading city. But her opposition to paid sick leave hurts women most.

Rosa* lost her mother just a few weeks ago.

Her elderly parents lived at home in New York. A home health-care aide helped Rosa’s father with the burden of caring for her mother, who had Parkinson’s disease and had suffered a major stroke just over two years ago.

“We didn’t want to keep her in a nursing home, for financial reasons, for germs. They basically told us to take her home,” Rosa told RH Reality Check.

The home health-care aide didn’t have paid sick days, so she came to work sick one day, and Rosa’s parents both wound up with the flu. Her 88-year-old father recovered; her mother did not.

Obama’s 2013 State of the Union Address: Tragedy Has Many Faces

 by Dr. Jack Rasmus

Jack Rasmus

On February 12, 2013, President Obama delivered his State of the Union address. He concluded with an emotional appeal for gun control, repeating a call for Congress to at least put the matter of gun control to a vote after referencing the Newtown, Ct., tragic massacre of 26 children and other recent acts of gun violence in the US. It was an emotional high point of his address, and a very moving moment.

But there was another reference in his speech that also addressed life and death matters, potentially impacting not 26 but hundreds of thousands of those other of America’s most vulnerable—our senior population.

Earlier in his address, Obama declared “the biggest cause of the nation’s long term debt” was “medical for the aged”, in other words, Medicare. Saying this, Obama repeated his remarks of January 1, 2013, when he publicly declared on TV, while supporting the agreement in Congress to raise token taxes on the wealthiest 1%, that Medicare was the biggest contributing source to the deficit and debt.

Court Ruling on Labor Board Harms Workers

By RoseAnn DeMoro
NNU Executive Director

When the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington ruled Friday to overturn President Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, it handed a huge gift to Wall Street, big corporations and the politicians they control.

In health care, the implications are especially insidious. It is a clear assault on the ability of nurses to act collectively to improve safety standards and public protections for patients.

When the labor board is not dominated by corporate-oriented appointees, as it has been most of the past four decades, the game plan of the antiunion crowd is to bar the board from operating, either by refusing to confirm appointees, de-funding it or destabilizing it. That was what prompted these recess appointments, made by President Obama only after the Senate minority blocked confirmation of his nominees needed to restore a quorum on the board to enable it to function.

Jerome Brown Reviews Two Reviews of Jane McAlevey’s Rising Expectations

by Jerome Brown

                                                                                         

Talking Union previously featured Sarah Jaffe’s interview with Jane McAlevey. Joe Burns’ review of McAlevey’s book can be found here. Steve Early’s review of McAlevey’s book can be found here. McAlevey’s response to Early can be found here. We encourage further discussion.–TU

I am submitting this as a review of Joe Burns’ review of Rising Expectations and of Steve Early’s critique of McAlevey which in many ways is parroted by Burns.

I am writing as someone who was directly involved in the unusually effective changes led by Jane McAlevey in Local 1107, SEIU Las Vegas and as someone who watched with real sadness the subsequent undermining and failure of that Local. I am the retired president of 1199 New England, a union with a proud history of militant rank and file activity and high standards in the public and private sector. The growth of Local 1199 in Connecticut from 900 members when I assumed staff leadership in 1973 to 23,000 members when I retired required the dedicated efforts of many leaders and members. McAlevey identifies me as one of her mentors in the labor movement and I am happy to wear that description.

I disagree with some of the examples of SEIU skullduggery recited by McAlevey–most particularly her description and demonization of Sal Roselli and UHW under Sal’s leadership. But on most of the facts supporting her narrative, McAlevey is right on target. Yes, SEIU made private deals with national hospital chains, deals that gave away worker rights to strike and even rally. And these deals were never explained to or ratified by the members. Yes SEIU undermined and then disrupted member activism,threatening Jane and the Local with trusteeship if it dared engage in job actions against these employers. And yes, the SEIU and the AFL-CIO failed in Florida during the 2000 presidential election and failed in any number of other crises because they did not motivate, support or really believe in militant membership activity.

But Joe Burns-and Steve Early-think that somehow it is important to engage in ad hominem (I do not know the Latin for attacks on women) attacks on McAlevey rather than understanding and appreciating the unusual value added by her style of leadership.McAlevey went to Vegas to try to invigorate a moribund union in a very important growing market. She, and her staff and rank and file leaders were immensely successful in doing that. In an open shop state they took the dues paying membership from 25% to over 75% in hospitals with thousands of employees. They organized numerous new units and reorganized all of the existing units. They led successful strikes and job actions,demonstrations and political campaigns. They elected hundreds of new stewards and began an intensive training program. They won a rank and file vote to increase the dues by a substantial amount to finance these programs and they were well on their way to consolidating and improving on these victories when they were undermined and derailed by SEIU collusion with bosses and an internal election campaign pitting holdover old guard leadership from the public sector against new,mainly Registered nurse leadership from the private sector. The final chapter of the McAlevey’s work in Vegas brings no credit to her or to her opponents and the decline of the Local since then is a tragedy. But I challenge anyone to show another model of such growth and resuscitation in such a challenging open shop environment. To my knowledge such an example does not exist.

Burns and Early continually paint McAlevey as an elite stranger acting as a missionary to the working class with no real trust or belief in workers intelligence, initiative or courage. I observed her in Stamford, Connecticut where she led a program that organized more than a thousand workers and developed deep and lasting ties with community leaders. Then I saw her lead a truth squad that chased Governor John Rowland all over Connecticut when we had 5000 nursing home workers on strike and Rowland spent $30 million dollars of public money to finance scabs to try to bust our union. Then I traveled to Vegas on numerous occasions to consult with McAlevey and coach her in bargaining. I met those rank and file members. I saw their enthusiasm and drive. I saw how McAlevey and her staff treated them with profound respect. This was not top down. It was bottom up at its best. Maybe Early and Burns can’t get past the fact that McAlevey was sent to Vegas during the term of Andy Stern and therefore, in keeping with Early’s mostly correct narrative of the Stern presidency, this has to be a top down deal. The facts in this case just do not fit that narrative and if Burns and Early had approached it with an open mind they would have figured that out for themselves.

McAlevey’s book has its flaws,as most memoirs do. I have heard some critics say that the book is “all about Jane” as if a memoir should be all about someone else. I think the book is a provocative window on the labor movement and is worth a good read and a good discussion. What it does not deserve is small minded personal attacks that are not in any way grounded in reality.

Jerome Brown served as President of 1199 New England from 1979 to November 2005. He also served as Secretary Treasurer of the National Union and then as a Vice President and Executive Board member of SEIU. He was deeply involved in reform movements within SEIU and lost his Vice Presidency as a result.  As a leader in the National Union of Healthcare Workers 1199 and in SEIU Brown helped build strong healthcare unions in Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Seattle, Ohio and other places around the country.

New Public Option Bill Lowers Families’ Health Costs and the Deficit

by Mike Hall

Health care experts have long said that a public health insurance option not only would provide lower-cost health insurance for those who choose it but would also force private insurers to lower their premiums. A public option was a key element of the 2009 House-passed version of health care reform, but it did not make it to the final bill.

Now, as lawmakers focus on deficit reduction, with many Republicans calling for cuts in health care benefits and shifting even more costs to working families, the creation of a public option as a deficit-reducing tool—along with its other benefits—is back on the table.

On Tuesday, Reps. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), along with 43 co-sponsors, introduced H.R. 26, the Public Option Deficit Reduction Act.  This bill would offer consumers the choice of a publicly run health insurance plan, an option they say would save more than $100 billion over 10 years.

Union Members Recommit to Winning Improved and Expanded Medicare for All

National Labor Strategy Conference Sees “Single Payer” Solution as Best Way to Control Costs and Improve Quality of Care

Karen Lewis, President Chicago Teachers Union

Chicago, IL – More than two hundred union leaders and activists gathered in Chicago January 11-13 for the Labor Campaign for Single Payer Health Care’s fourth national conference to strategize about next steps for labor in the movement to win universal health care. With government officials from both major parties contemplating cuts in Medicare as part of a “grand bargain,” delegates resolved to stand up to any cuts in this cornerstone social insurance program.

Conferees were welcomed and inspired by Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, who shared lessons of her union’s recent successful strike. Lewis drew important parallels between the struggles for quality public education and quality universal health care.

Getting Into Bed With Big Soda: How Labor Helped Win A Vote For Obesity

by Steve Early

Steve Early

RICHMOND, CA.–As one-half of a dedicated (if contrarian) union household, I received multiple copies of the California Labor Federation’s official voting guide before trooping to the polls on November 6. “Take a Stand for Working Families,” this CLF brochure commanded. “Your union conducted the research, now you decide…” Eager to know what helpful “research” the CWA-Newspaper Guild (my union) or the UAW-affiliated National Writers Union (my wife’s preferred labor organization) might have conducted to assist electoral decision-making in our new home state, I proceeded to read further.

Most of the CLF piece explained, quite persuasively, why trade unionists should “Vote Yes” on Propositions 30 and 39 to fund schools, public safety, and other government programs and “Vote No” on Proposition 32, a measure restricting labor participation in politics.

But this “special union message” didn’t stop there. In the customized “local voter guide” on the back cover, there was a cryptic and, for us, quite troubling recommendation. As Richmond residents and good trade unionists, we were urged to oppose “Measure N,” described only as a “business license fee.”

Paid Leave Supporters Charge Subversion of Democracy in Florida Ruling

By Josh Eidelson

Disney came out against Orange County’s proposed paid sick leave law, furthering the unending torment of Sneezy. (Sam Howzit, Flickr, Creative Commons)

Advocates cried foul last week after a judge’s ruling effectively prevented a paid sick leave measure from reaching the November ballot in Orange County, Florida. The ruling, issued after an emergency hearing Tuesday night, ends the latest round of legal wrangling over whether the county’s commissioners could delay on putting the petition-backed proposal up for a vote. It comes amid increasing conservative pushback against the spread of such measures across the United States.

Vicki Shabo, director of work and family programs at the National Partnership for Women and Families (NPWF), called the result “perhaps the purest example I can think of, particularly in recent history, where special interest money and special interest access was used to usurp the purest form of citizen direct democracy that there is.” Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs, and the business group Central Florida Partnership, did not respond to requests for comment.

Getting Healthy at Work: Who Do You Trust?

by Carl Finamore

Carl Finamore

Around 150 million Americans drag themselves out of bed each day and show up for work. You get your first cup of coffee, chit-chat a bit, punch in, and settle in for a long day on the job.

But don’t get too settled, because you might be asked to answer a few questions about your family medical history, your sexual orientation, and your use of tobacco, drugs, and alcohol. You also might be asked to take a blood test, have your cholesterol and blood pressure recorded, and get your body mass index checked.

Only a few years ago, such probing, pricking, and pinching would only occur in the privacy of a doctor’s office, but now these procedures are becoming more commonly prescribed in over half of American workplaces. And such “wellness” programs are growing rapidly.

Striking Chicago teachers are facing demands for such a program, which could tack on $600 a year in costs for individuals who don’t follow the dictates of the “wellness plan.” Their union has not agreed to the plan, which would require that workers participate in weight loss, nutrition, exercise, smoking cessation, and disease management programs, or face higher premium costs.

“We’re seeing a big move in this direction driven by employers’ concern about rising health costs and their sense that employee behavior has a lot to do with high costs,” writes Kevin Volpp, professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.