This entry by AFSCME President Gerald McEntee was originally posted on The Huffington Post.

Our broken health care system hurts everyone. Health insurance premiums are going up three times faster than pay, with many working families shouldering a growing share of those costs. They are paying more and getting less — while being forced to fight with insurance companies to get the care they need and get their bills paid.

During the presidential campaign, President-elect Barack Obama spoke powerfully about the crisis. During his second debate with John McCain, he made it personal: “In a country as wealthy as ours, for us to have people who are going bankrupt because they can’t pay their medical bills — for my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay for her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.”

America needs to guarantee quality, affordable health care for all. Americans recognize that real reform must include a public plan as an option for families looking for health care that meets their needs, so that they are not at the mercy of insurance companies. A new report, released by the Institute for America’s Future and the University of California Berkeley School of Law’s Center on Health, Economic & Family Security, demonstrates that a public insurance option is vital to guaranteeing quality, affordable health care to all. The study finds that a public health insurance plan that competes directly with private insurers is essential to controlling health care costs, potentially saving the nation $1 trillion over ten years and improving the quality of care.

Per the study: Medicare, a public plan that most Americans appreciate, “already shows unique quality advantages over private insurance when it comes to reliable patient access to affordable care.” Because of Medicare, seniors are “half as likely as non-elderly Americans with employment-based insurance to report common access problems, such as skipping a medical test, treatment, or follow up, and failing to see a doctor when sick.”

Jacob Hacker, PhD, the report’s author, provides vital new information that shows how a public plan can maintain lower costs while providing broad, guaranteed and quality coverage. “Premiums with a public plan cost about three-quarters the amount private insurers charge for the same set of benefits,” says Hacker. “It’s an essential element to any national health care reform proposal.”

Hacker documents the good track record of public plans at reining in costs, while preserving access to care. In addition, public plans have pioneered key quality and payment innovations that have often set the standard for private plans. Just as important, he points out, public plans set a standard against which private plans must compete to drive value and can be a source of stability for people.

Public plans spend less on overhead and administration, less than 3 percent compared to 15 percent for private insurers. Innovative, effective solutions for our health care problems are driven by public health insurance. Private health care plans without public competition haven’t kept costs down, or provided accountability or broadened access. Instead, as this new study documents, “private insurers have passed on costs while increasing profitability.”

So it should come as no surprise that America’s insurance companies are launching an all out effort to stop a public option from being included in health care reform. They know that having to compete with a public option will reveal private plans to be overpriced, inefficient and exploitive.

Americans want a government that creates opportunity and prosperity, supports and protects our families, and strengthens our communities. If there is anything we’ve learned from our experiences with the private health insurance market, it is that private insurers put profits before people. That is why we need to work together in the coming months and insist on a public health insurance option as part of any health care reform legislation enacted in Congress. We will have to fight the insurance industry to succeed. If we fail, we won’t have the kind of change that America voted for in November.

A series of new fact sheets from the Center for American Progress Action Fund argues that unions are good for state economies – and that more unionized workers would be even better.

From the report:

Unions paved the way to the middle class for millions of workers and pioneered benefits such as paid health care and pensions along the way. Even today, union workers earn significantly more on average than their non-union counterparts and union employers are more likely to provide benefits. And non-union workers – particularly in highly unionized industries – receive financial benefits from employers who increase wages to match what unions would win in order to avoid unionization.

If belonging to a union is good for workers, the opposite is also true: as unionization rates decline, workers are less likely to receive good wages and benefits. One way to level the playing field is to pass the Employee Free Choice Act and help improve the economic standing and workplace conditions for millions of American workers.

The factsheets look at how unions help workers in five key states: California, Louisiana, Maine, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Read more and download the factsheets at the CAPAF website.

Rep. Hilda Solis has been selected as Secretary of Labor

AFSCME International President Gerald W. McEntee expressed strong support for the selection of Congresswoman Hilda L. Solis as U.S. Secretary of Labor, calling the pick “great news for working families who have been hit so hard by the economic catastrophe of the Bush years.”

Solis, a member of Congress since 2001, is a strong supporter of the Employee Free Choice Act.

In a statement released earlier today, President McEntee praised her strong record as a leader and advocate for working families:

“Congresswoman Solis has long been a champion for America’s working men and women. She has fought for workers’ rights and for workplace safety, and she’s been a leader in helping to support the innovative green jobs that are going to help make our country energy independent. Congresswoman Solis understands that America’s economy needs to work for everybody, not just the captains of industry. She’s a terrific choice and we look forward to working with her and the team she assembles at the Department of Labor.”

This entry by AFSCME President Gerald McEntee was originally posted on The Huffington Post.

This morning, more than 20 leading progressive organizations and unions, including AFSCME, announced the creation of the Campaign for Jobs and Economic Recovery Now, a major campaign to pass President-elect Obama’s jobs and economic recovery package.

The President-elect’s dramatic, bold and innovative program is a clear sign that the change he promised in his campaign has arrived. In contrast to a Bush administration that told struggling families “you’re on your own” for the last eight years, the Obama-Biden administration is saying “we’re in this together.” We’re going to need to work together to get out of this mess. It won’t be easy, but it can be done. We fought to win the November election, and we’re going to fight to pass this emergency legislation and put America back to work.

President-elect Obama understands that we need to fast-track improvements in our roads, bridges, schools and other infrastructure. He knows that public investments create jobs and help the economy in the long-run. He also recognizes that there needs for accountability, which is why his people are working closely with the nation’s governors and mayors to identify projects that are called “shovel-ready,” and are based on national priorities and not political considerations.

I’m very pleased that the jobs and economic recovery plan includes additional federal resources for the vital health care and family services that states and localities provide for their citizens. We’re talking about law enforcement, education, health care and other vital services. These programs are particularly important during difficult economic times. President-elect Obama and Vice-President-elect Biden understand that we can’t recover from this mess and put people back to work if we are gutting the public services that are vital to our communities.

We have a big task ahead of us. This bill needs to pass through Congress fast. Every day of delay is a day when more Americans get a pink slip, when more communities see stores shuttering their doors, when more families find the American Dream growing dimmer and farther from their grasp. Congress has got to pass President-elect Obama’s plan, the sooner the better.

Amid a worsening economic crisis that has left nearly 2 million Americans without jobs and over 2.5 million more without homes this year, AFSCME and other leading progressive organizations and unions have announced a major national campaign to pass the jobs and economic recovery package being proposed by President-Elect Barack Obama and Congressional Leaders.

More than 20 leading progressive organizations and unions with millions of members have signed onto run a major campaign to pass a significant jobs and economic recovery package to create millions of jobs and help the economy grow in the near and long term. To date, the following organizations have signed on to the Campaign for Jobs and Economic Recovery Now: AFSCME, SEIU, AFL-CIO, NEA, Americans United for Change, USAction, Campaign for America’s Future, ACORN, Health Care for America Now, Sierra Club, People for the American Way Foundation, National Women’s Law Center, TrueMajority.org, Young Democrats of America, 21st Century Democrats, Community Action Partnership, Institute for Policy Studies – Cities for Progress, Progressive Future, National Priorities Project, Working Group on Extreme Inequality, YWCA USA, Economic Policy Institute, Women Voices, Women Vote and the League of Conservation Voters.

AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee will be speaking at today’s press conference announcing the launch of the coalition. Other speakers include Brad Woodhouse, President, Americans United for Change, Dean Baker, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and Debbie Sease, National Campaign Director, Sierra Club.

Council 31 Regional Director Larry Spivack speaks at a rally to support the striking workers at Republic Windows and Doors.

Congratulations to workers at Republic Windows & Doors who made justice happen. After a six-day sit-in at the plant, workers at Republic Windows & Doors in Chicago voted to accept a settlement late last night.

During the strike, a delegation from AFSCME Council 31 went to the plant gates to support the workers’ action.

This from the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) site, via Jobs with Justice:

The settlement totals $1.75 million. It will provide the workers with:

• Eight weeks of pay they are owed under the federal WARN Act;
• Two months of continued health coverage; and
• Pay for all accrued and unused vacation.

JPMorgan Chase will provide $400,000 of the settlement, with the balance coming from Bank of America. Although the money will be provided as a loan to Republic Windows and Doors, it will go directly into a third-party fund whose sole purpose is to pay the workers what is owed them. In addition, the UE has started the “Window of Opportunity Fund” dedicated to re-opening the plant.

As the UE Local 1110 leaders characterized the settlement, “We fought to make them pay what they owe us, and we won.”

More from AFL-CIO Now Blog.

Workers at Chicago’s Republic Windows and Doors were recently laid off with a mere three days notice. Instead of taking it lying down, they staged a sit-in protest to demand their vacation and severance pay that their contract required. Their struggle has become a national example for workers’ dignity, securing the support of numerous authorities, including President-elect Barack Obama.

The nearly 250 employees – members of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) – are clearly not alone in this battle. As the AP reports, unions such as AFSCME are standing firmly behind them:

Larry Spivack, regional director for American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 31, said the peaceful action will add to Chicago’s rich history in the labor movement, which includes the 1886 Haymarket affair (…)

“The history of workers is built on issues like this here today,” Spivack said.

“This is why organized labor still matters,” says columnist Katie Allison Granju from the Knoxville News Sentinel:

“[I]f these workers had just quietly walked away from the injustice done to them by their employer, this company and its financiers would have gotten away with it, too.

But instead the workers did the right thing. They organized, and they refused to be silent. They staged a peaceful, very public sit-in. They did exactly what the American labor movement has empowered them to do, and as a direct result, even the President Elect of the United States has taken notice.”

As you can see in this video, the fight at Republic Windows and Doors continues. Regardless of the resolution of this conflict, one thing is clear: Only organized workers can make their voice heard and have their rights respected.

Contributing editor Trapper John had a great entry on Daily Kos earlier this week titled “How We Got Knocked Down, and How Employee Free Choice Can Get Us Back on Our Feet.”

Citing “the most coherent and cogent explanation I’ve seen of the financial crisis,” the post includes some choice excerpts from a speech from AFL-CIO Associate General Counsel Damon Silvers, including the following:

For thirty years, America’s economic elites and their political allies have pursued a combination of economic and social policies designed to produce a low wage economy. These policies—our labor laws and our broader system of labor market regulation, our tax policies and our approach to globalization, have yielded decades of stagnant wages and rising economic inequality.

But at the same time, policymakers of both parties have sought, with some success, to maintain high levels of consumer spending. The pursuit of the contradiction of a low wage, high spending economy has systematically destroyed the various ways we individually and collectively save and invest. Instead of an income driven economy, we have become an economy driven by asset bubbles fueled by cheap debt. The ultimate unsustainability of this strategy has brought us to our current economic crisis.

Adds Trapper John: “Without a real opportunity to join unions and build bargaining power, American workers will continue to experience stagnant wages. The Employee Free Choice Act isn’t just about fairness in the workplace — it’s a tool for engineering stimulus. And it won’t cost the government a dime.”

Read the full post.

During the roundtable segment on ABC’s This Week on November 23rd, the discussion turned to economic stimulus and what action the federal government needs to take to turn things around. Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks insisted that investing in infrastructure would take too long to get off the ground and would not produce short-term results.

Robert Kuttner, co-founder of The American Prospect and author of the book “Obama’s Challenge,” disagreed. Kuttner argued that while it may take some time before new jobs are added to our economy, it would take much less time than Brooks claimed – and, more importantly, the government can act right now to protect existing jobs by sending relief to state and local governments:

“Right now, state and local governments are laying off people, they’re deferring projects, they’re cutting health and education. If the government cuts a check to state and local governments to the tune of $100-150 billion dollars, not one of those layoffs have to occur.”

Brooks agreed.

“We can agree on state aid, I do agree on that. The things we know work: state aid works, food stamps works, extending unemployment – which they’ve done – that works. That clearly works to stimulate the economy.”

Watch the clip:

By now you have doubtless heard the media pundits rail against the alleged “exorbitant” wages of unionized autoworkers. Nothing like creating a straw man out of workers to push through an anti-union agenda and deny automakers financial aid that could make or break the industry.

After all, one out of 10 American jobs depends on the auto industry. According to a study by the Center for Automotive Research, if all three U.S. automakers were to cease operations, the economy would lose almost 3 million direct and indirect jobs in the first year, not to mention at least $156.4 billion in taxes within the first three years.

And yet, there are those who’d rather ignore the facts. Take, for example, New York Times financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin’s column on November 17, in which he falsely asserts that the average General Motors worker is “paid $70 an hour, including health care and pension costs.”

This argument has been repeated by numerous other commentators and it could actually be a demolishing blow to the U.S. auto industry… if it was true. But it’s not.

As Eric Boehlert at Media Matters points out:

Somebody at the Times needs to clarify the record, because the average United Auto Workers member is not paid $80 an hour. Or even $70. Not even close. Yet (thanks to the Times?) the issue has become a central talking point in the unfolding national debate about the future of America’s automotive industry.

But where does the bogus $70 an hour for “high-on-the-hog” autoworkers come from? Finance commentator Felix Salmon at Portfolio explains:

“The average GM assembly-line worker makes about $28 per hour in wages, and I can assure you that GM is not paying $42 an hour in health insurance and pension plan contributions. Rather, the $70 per hour figure (or $73 an hour, or whatever) is a ridiculous number obtained by adding up GM’s total labor, health, and pension costs, and then dividing by the total number of hours worked. In other words, it includes all the healthcare and retirement costs of retired workers.”

That’s right. Contrary to the claim by the anti-union media blaming autoworkers for the current industry crisis, “$70 an hour” doesn’t even resemble what its average worker makes or takes home.

Bear this in mind next time you find one of these “commentators” not letting the truth get in the way of their anti-union bias.