Labor Union Blog

The UAW and American Axle Manufacturing have reached a tentative agreement to end a strike by 3,600 UAW members at American Axle plants in Michigan and New York. The workers have been on strike since Feb. 26. The tentative pact was announced late yesterday.

Says UAW President Gettelfinger:

Our members at American Axle have displayed extraordinary solidarity during this strike. the bargaining committee worked extremely hard to achieve this tentative agreement and they have voted to recommend it to the membership.

Relations between workers and employers don’t always have to be hostile and contentious. Yesterday, two awards at the 2008 America@Work Union Industries Show in Detroit prove that when corporations respect workers, everyone wins.

International Specialty Products (ISP) in Calvert City, Ky., and General Motors Powertrain (GMPT) in Defiance, Ohio, were honored with the 2008 Union Label and Service Trades Department's (UL&STD's) annual Labor-Management Awards.

Says UL&STD President Charles Mercer:

These two firms represent the best of modern labor-management cooperation, providing work environments that invite pride and participation among their workers while producing competitive products for a global marketplace.

By Doug Cunningham

The UAW has reached a tentative agreement with American Axle after an 11 week long strike. The union confirms that the tentative agreement has been reached.

The UAW will hold a meeting in Detroit Sunday to explain the agreement to the workers at Detroit’s American Axle plant. Meetings will also be held with workers at American Axle’s plants in New York and in Three Rivers, Michigan.

More than 3600 workers went on strike after American Axle demanded deep wage cuts and an end to future retiree pensions and health care benefits.

The strike demonstrated worker power by shutting down or curtailing production at dozens of GM factories, costing the automaker at least a billion dollars and causing thousands of layoffs at GM.

Sen. John McCain took his campaign to Seattle and Bellevue, Wash., this week, and, as usual, he was confronted with AFL-CIO union members asking him for answers about the economy.

Union members in Washington State want to know what McCain’s role was in awarding a major military contract to a foreign company in March, costing good union jobs to the Seattle area and elsewhere. Workers in Washington are protesting the decision to outsource the building of an air tanker for the U.S. Air Force.

According to Time, McCain had a key role in the decision to send the air tanker contract overseas, and some of his current advisers, previously, were lobbyists for the European aviation company that won the contract. McCain also has a consistent record of voting for bad trade agreements that hurt workers.

Two new reports show today’s young workers are being squeezed by high costs of living and low or stagnant wages and they want the government to do more to solve this nation’s economic mess.

The Economic State of Young America by Demos presents a statistical study of the economic condition of young workers, and The Progressive Generation: How Young Adults Think About the Economy by the Center for American Progress (CAP) analyzes public polling of young workers. Click here for a copy of the Demos report and here for the CAP report.

Robert Masciola, deputy director of the AFL-CIO Center for Strategic Research, describes this week's Pulte shareholder meeting in the Detroit area.

Some 100 activists gathered on May 15 in Birmingham, Mich., at the annual shareholder meeting of Pulte Homes, with a straightforward message: Pulte must be held accountable for the conditions on its job sites!

Dissatisfied homeowners and workers were joined at the rally by supporters from the Detroit union movement, including many members of the Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA) and the Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT), along with members of the Detroit Metropolitan Interfaith Committee on Worker Issues and community supporters. Saundra Williams, president of the Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO, emceed the rally.

The House yesterday voted (256–166) a measure to help long-term jobless workers who face difficult times finding new work in the sputtering Bush economy with an extra 13 weeks to 26 weeks of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits. The UI extension was added to a supplemental spending bill to fund the war in Iraq.

Some 200,000 jobless workers a month exhaust their UI benefits without finding a new job and about 3.5 million unemployed workers will lose jobless benefits this year. The legislation would provide an additional 13 weeks of UI benefits for jobless workers in every state and an additional 13 weeks to those in states with high unemployment rates (more than 6 percent).

Poll after poll shows that most Americans believe this country is on the wrong track, going in the wrong direction. We’re worried about a failing health care system, stumbling economy, stagnant wages, disappearing jobs and an endless war.

How do we “Turn Around America?” Jesse from California says the first step in the right direction starts with each and every one of us. In his entry to the AFL-CIO’s Turn Around America Online Video Competition,” Jesse says:

America’s headed in the wrong direction, and things must change. And as it always has, it must start with me.

Click on the video to see his full entry.

You still have time to enter the contest—the deadline is May 20.

Barbara Easterling

Barbara Easterling, who in 1995 became the first female AFL-CIO officer when she was elected secretary-treasurer, has spent her life helping others. This week, she received two major accolades in recognition of her years of charitable work.

Last night, the United Way honored her with the Joseph Beirne Award for Community Service. Easterling, secretary-treasurer of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), stepped down from the United Way board last night, after serving on it for the past decade.

Earlier this week, the Faith & Politics Institute honored Easterling at its annual St. Joseph’s Day breakfast, calling her “a model of working people’s charitable commitment to human dignity in our communities and in the world.” The Faith & Politics Institute is a nonpartisan, interfaith organization to help public officials stay in touch with their deeper calling to public service. St. Joseph is the patron saint of the worker, and the institute's annual breakfast was founded to raise awareness of the spiritual and moral issues that affect economic life in America.