Labor

WASHINGTON - (PAI) Just over two years ago, in one of the most horrific individual industrial accidents in recent memory, Eleazar Torres Gomez was sucked into a 300-degree industrial dryer at a Cintas laundry plant in Tulsa, Okla., and died.

Here’s the latest example of how far corporations will go to stop real health care reform. Rick Scott, a multimillionaire, is putting $5 million of his own fortune into an ad campaign against President Obama’s health care plan. But what Scott doesn’t say in his ads is that he ran a company that had to pay the largest fine in history for Medicare fraud.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama has appointed a key union activist as senior adviser to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, another sign of the influence that organized labor wields in the Obama administration.

A crowd of workers, labor leaders and community activists launched the most determined lobbying effort yet for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act at an April 22 Washington press conference.

LANSING, Mich. — They are 40,000 strong and they feed, clean, and teach Michigan’s young, in their most formative pre-school years. And for doing such an important job, what do they earn? “In Wayne County, we earn $1.66 an hour for each child,” said Daisy Jackson, an American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees organizer from Detroit.

May Day is a great time to think about labor unity.

CHICAGO - While announcing a $3.2 billion quarterly profit April 22, AT&T officials remained silent about their intransigence in ongoing contract negotiations with the Communications Workers of America union that involve 100,000 workers in the company’s wireline unit. They have been working without a contract since April 4.

Happy Earth Day! It’s a great time to celebrate the cooperation between the environmental movement and the union movement in building a stronger, greener economy. A big part of that collaboration is making sure that green jobs are good jobs, so workers can bargain for health care, pensions, job security and fair wages.

Workers at Commercial Forged Products (CFP) have had enough. After signing a new contract last year, 60 members of USWA Local 2154 have endured a constant stream of attacks and African American and Latino workers have been targets of racist harassment. They are mounting a fight back for workplace dignity and equality.