As our country’s economy has limped along from one crisis to another over the past several years, the impact of state and federal austerity measures on communities has exposed our troubling national priorities. A new report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showed that despite the Great Recession technically ending in 2009, schools have yet to return to pre-recession spending levels, and in some states the cuts reach up to 20 percent per pupil. These drastic cuts have become the norm as communities in states that have resorted to austerity to put out short-term fires must now cope with the fallout from such measures.
And then the government shut down.
So on top of underfunded schools, we had Head Start agencies on the chopping block,long-term WIC funding up in the air, furloughed workers flooding unemployment offices and the nation on the brink of defaulting on our debt yet again.
» Read more about: California’s Bold Alternative to Education Cuts »
As classical music piped through the audio system at the McDonald’s in downtown Seattle on a recent day, customers devoured hamburgers while sitting in maroon-colored seats and at tables bathed in warm colors.
Customers lined up at registers, exchanging cash and credit cards for an assortment of hamburgers, fries and drinks.
These days, many fast-food employees at large restaurants are hoping that more than just hamburgers, tacos, fried chicken and sandwiches will be exchanged across restaurant counters.
They are hoping that higher hourly wages will come their way so they won’t have to apply for nearly $7 billion in U.S. taxpayer assistance each year to offset what they say are wages too low to support themselves and their families.
See infographic, below right, in Just the Facts.
Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley announced last week that the median national wage for front-line fast-food workers is $8.69 per hour and that the $7 billion in taxpayer support amounts to a subsidy for a $200 billion industry.
The war isn’t over. It’s only a cease-fire.
Republicans have agreed to fund the federal government through January 15 and extend the government’s ability to borrow (raise the debt ceiling) through February 7. The two sides have committed themselves to negotiate a long-term budget plan by mid-December.
Regardless of what happens in the upcoming budget negotiations, it seems doubtful House Republicans will try to prevent the debt ceiling from being raised next February. Saner heads in the GOP will be able to point to the debacle Tea Partiers created this time around – the public’s anger, directed mostly at Republicans; upset among business leaders and Wall Street executives, who bankroll much of the GOP; and the sharply negative reaction of stock and bond markets, where the American middle class parks whatever savings it has.
The saner Republicans will also be able to point out that President Obama means it when he says he won’t ever negotiate over the debt ceiling.
» Read more about: After the Cease-Fire: What to Expect from the GOP »
Sandy Hellebrand was concerned. She needed to find a school that could educate her son Gabriel, who has autism and was about to enter high school.
Hellebrand thought she had found the perfect solution: She would enroll Gabriel and her two younger children in Sky Mountain Charter School, one of a rapidly-growing number of virtual schools in California and across the country.
After all, she reasoned, the school would provide excellent online instructional materials and instructors to guide Gabriel’s individual needs. Since Sky Mountain is a publicly funded school – although not a traditional brick-and-mortar one – the state of California would pay for her children’s education. And Hellebrand and her husband Rob, a public high school teacher, would receive about $1,800 a year for each of their children to help defray their costs of educating them at home.
“The idea is fantastic,” she says in an interview with Frying Pan News.
Chi-Town, the Windy City, Chicagoland – whatever you want to call it, the city just made a bold move to encourage good American jobs. On October 18, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) for the first time asked companies vying for a $2 billion contract to manufacture 854 rapid transit cars to disclose their plans to create American jobs and opportunities for American workers. CTA’s addendum to its Invitation for Bids encourages companies to develop comprehensive American jobs plans and follow through to create them if awarded the contract – a move that could create as many as 20,000 good American manufacturing and related jobs, according to University of Massachusetts, Amherst economists.
Jorge Ramirez, President of the Chicago Federation of Labor celebrated the decision, saying, “We applaud Mayor Emanuel and the CTA for taking a lead role in bolstering Chicago’s economy and creating jobs. We urge manufacturers to work in partnership with the CTA to create quality manufacturing jobs here in Chicago and around the U.S.”
CTA’s adoption of the Jobs to Move America framework demonstrates the growing muscle of the coalition of community,
» Read more about: Chicago Gets Rolling Toward Good American Jobs »
A tentative agreement between striking Bay Area Rapid Transit workers and BART management has ended the employees’ four-day strike. The new contract must be approved and ratified by members of SEIU 1021 and ATU 1555, the rail system’s two largest unions.
Last night, in a statement released by Local 1021, John Arantes, BART Chapter President of that local announced:
“Tonight the hard working men and women who keep the Bay Area moving, can go back to work making BART the most efficient and successful system in the country.”
Added Des Patten, President of SEIU 1021’s BART Professional Chapter:
“Let us be clear that our commitment to improving the safety at BART doesn’t end with these negotiations. With this agreement, we expect that General Manager Grace Crunican will continue the dialogue with its unions on working conditions and health and safety at BART.”
According to SFGate,
After months of negotiating in bad faith, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) management Thursday night left BART workers no other option but to go on strike. What a shame. It didn’t have to come to this.
With all the misinformation swirling about on the BART strike, there are a few things to clear up.
Here are the three things you need to know about the BART strike (h/t to Pete Castelli of SEIU 1021):
1) The strike is NOT about wages or benefits. BART workers made concession after concession on the economic proposals with the goal of averting a strike. BART workers and management agreed to a deal yesterday on wages, health care and pensions.
2) BART management pulled the rug out from under workers at the last minute by insisting on new workplace rules that infringed on the rights of workers.
» Read more about: Three Important Facts About the BART Strike »
(Labor 411, the group dedicated to promoting products and services that carry the union label, offers a couple of spooky recipes for Halloween treats that are reposted below.)
According to a recent survey, more Americans than ever will be getting in the Halloween spirit this year. Halloween has now become one of the fastest growing and most widely loved holidays in America. We here at Labor 411 love Halloween because it’s all about the candy — and so much of it is union made! You can get a complete list of union-made candy by clicking here.
Sometimes buying union candy can be confusing, mostly to do with what we call “bridge companies,” which can make some of their products both in the U.S. and out of the country. So if a company is listed in our directory but you’ve heard they make candy out of the country,
Poulinna Po had just walked into the Long Beach offices of Khmer Girls in Action when she got the news: Governor Jerry Brown had vetoed Assembly Bill 1263, which promised to expand the number of state medical translators. The measure had seemed to offer a straightforward solution to the dilemmas faced by California’s estimated three million Medi-Cal beneficiaries who speak little or no English when they talk to Anglophone doctors or medical staff.
One tragic example of this kind of patient-doctor miscommunication occurred in 2008 at Los Angeles County General hospital, when a pregnant Maria Guevara, who only spoke Spanish, was prescribed an abortion-inducing drug — which she then took, believing it to be part of her prenatal care. She lost her baby.
“That lack of communication between the doctor and me has changed my life forever, ” Guevara would later bitterly recount.
When the town of Sandy Springs, Georgia, spun-off from Fulton County and established a brand new government, it didn’t sign a Declaration of Independence; it signed a contract.
The 100,000-person town entered into a five-year contract with the for-profit management company CH2M Hill to operate almost all of the town’s services: running trash collection, and street cleaning, and wastewater management, and even security and administration for the courthouse. A for-profit company, rather than public officials and public employees, would be in charge of providing all “public” services except for fire and police departments. CH2M Hill employees, wearing Sandy Spring uniforms and driving trucks with Sandy Spring logos, even enforced municipal ordinances like grass-cutting and parking regulations.
Sandy Springs, an affluent suburb of Atlanta — home to Herman Cain, professional sports players, and the woman who voiced iPhone’s Siri — had been fighting for years to spin-off from Fulton County,
» Read more about: How CH2M Hill Is Outsourcing the Future »