CtW Connect

467,000 More Jobs Lost in June

2009-07-02T15:45:09Z

Hey, kids! Remember the last couple of months, when people could point at the unemployment statistics and think that maybe the economic free-fall was slowing down?

Well, forget that noise:

The American economy shed 467,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate rose to 9.5 percent from 9.4 percent, the Labor Department reported on Thursday. Job losses were widespread among the construction, manufacturing, and business and professional services sectors.

The losses were sharply higher than economists’ expectations of 365,000 lost jobs.

Here’s a direct link to the Bureau of Labor Statistics announcement.

In its story, the New York Times puts this month’s numbers into some context:

As the recession enters its 20th month, wage growth is stagnating, working hours are dwindling and 14.7 million people are unemployed.

In essence, economists say, months of deep, broad job losses are effectively making unemployment a way of life for millions.

The number of people who have been unemployed for more than 27 weeks has more than tripled since the recession began, to 4.4 million. The median time people go without a job has increased to more than four months, from slightly more than two months at the outset of the recession in December 2007.

“We have never seen a duration of that magnitude,” Lynn Reaser, vice president for the National Association for Business Economics, said. “There are a lot of ramifications. A lot of these people become discouraged, and they drop out of the work force. It affects their spending, their whole psychological frame of mind.”

In the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, Jeffrey Jones, 40, is feeling the weight of eight months without work. He has not found anything since losing his job as a cook at a senior center in October, and he worries about paying rent and caring for his four children. His blood pressure is up, he said, and some nights he stays up and watches television to distract himself from the worries that keep him from sleeping.

“I know I’m not supposed to be letting it stress me out,” he said. “The way I’m going now, I won’t be able to make it too much longer. I can’t go this long without doing something for my family.”

Perhaps the “centrists” who nickel-and-dimed President Barack Obama’s stimulus package back in February will call up Mr. Jones and ask him how their push to cut 500,000 jobs out of the stimulus so they could pose for the TV cameras as defenders of “fiscal responsibility” is working out for him?

Oh, right. Never mind.

(Image credit: the original photo from which the illustration from this post was created is part of French photographer Denis Darzacq’s collection La chute — “The Fall”.)

Smithfield Workers in Tar Heel Ratify First Union Contract

2009-07-02T14:49:15Z

Big news out of Tar Heel, North Carolina today — the workers at the world’s largest pork processing plant have ratified their first-ever union contract:

Members of UFCW Local 1208 will join more than 10,000 other Smithfield workers, and more than 240,000 others who work in the meat packing and food processing industry who have a UFCW union contract.

The new contract includes:

Wage increases of $1.50/hour over the next four years.

Continued company-provided affordable family health care coverage.

Improved paid sick leave and vacation benefits.

Retirement security through protection of the existing pension plan.

Continued joint worker/management safety committee, including company funded safety training for workers.

Guaranteed weekly hours that protect full-time, family supporting jobs in the community

A system to resolve workplace issues.

Three working days of paid funeral leave following the death of immediate family members.

“This contract will completely transform our workplace,” said Orlando Williams. “This is the biggest four-year wage increase Smithfield workers have ever had and it will make a real difference for our families and in this community. We could never have gotten that increase without a chance to bargain with the company. We will finally have a sense of security on the job because through our union we can make sure we have a safe place to work, and that everyone’s treated fairly.”

That’s a big step closer to achieving the American Dream for five thousand workers. Congratulations to all of them!

Training Workers for the Green Jobs of Today and Tomorrow

2009-07-01T15:37:13Z

You’ve probably heard lots of buzz about “green jobs” lately. But, you may have wondered, what does all that buzz translate to in the real world? How is the green jobs movement affecting real people and real communities? And are new green jobs being created in ways that make them good jobs — jobs that can help a worker achieve the American Dream — too?

Here’s a good story that answers all those questions: Seattle NPR affiliate KPLU reports on how Washington state has allocated nearly $15 million of the Federal stimulus money they received to create good jobs “weatherizing” buildings to make them more energy efficient — and how the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA, a CtW affiliate) has created a training program to provide its workers with the skills they need to fill those jobs:

Inside an old home in west Seattle, 23-year-old Joseph Cortez is cutting insulation as an instructor looks on. He gets praise for catching on quickly. He’s a trainee with the Laborers International Union of North America. His new position is part of a demonstration project, meant to show what the federal government’s five billion dollars in stimulus spending for weatherization can do. The union says their training program could create thousands of high-quality jobs and upgrade millions of homes in Washington State alone.

Cortez is newly married and has a child on the way, so he’s grateful for the prospect of union career, specializing in green building.

“Not a job paying minimum wage,” he says, “but a job that’s paying $20 an hour, so that we can live comfortably and have a great success in our lives.”

Washington passed a law in May that guarantees access to these jobs for low-income and disadvantaged populations. Cortez fits the demographic. The union plans to train hundreds more this summer.

And the program isn’t just benefiting people like Cortez. The retrofitting of the single mom’s home where he’s working is being done at no cost to her - $3,500 worth of work, which will also save her an estimated $350 a year in heating costs.

LIUNA’s not just training workers for green jobs in Washington state, either. Green for All reported a few months back on LIUNA’s weatherization training work on the other side of the nation, in Newark, New Jersey:

On a snow covered street in a suburb of brick houses in Newark, a sea of green hard hats filled the street to celebrate the first house “weatherized” as part of this new pilot program…

Laborers Local 55 will train the first class of 25 Newark residents in green construction techniques this winter. The weatherization work on homes will continue through January, and the laborers will earn accreditation while being paid union rates, with health benefits.

Ray Pachino, Vice-president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, spoke of the immediate benefits of weatherization:

“In our training center, where we had some of these workers training on Saturday, they put some of their newly learned skills to work and did some insulating around the building, especially in the garage area. We got a call this morning that the temperature in the garage was ten degrees warmer with the thermostat ten degrees lower.

So it works! It does work.”

From coast to coast, there’s lots of work to be get our economy ready for the energy challenges of the 21st Century — and the working men and women of LIUNA are leading the way.

Restoring the American Dream in the Inland Empire

2009-07-01T15:28:25Z

I’ve written before in this space on the campaign among the warehouse workers of California’s Inland Empire to join together in unions and achieve the American Dream, so it’s good to see that the Los Angeles Times has taken note of the movement:

The fledgling movement is backed by a coalition of unions with more than 6 million members known as Change to Win. That’s the national labor group that broke with the AFL-CIO in 2005 and includes the Service Employees International Union, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, the United Farm Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, among others…

Nearly 2,900 warehouses of at least 50,000 square feet each dot the Inland Empire. The facilities, which employ nearly 113,000 people, are operated by hundreds of companies, including some of the nation’s largest retailers…

“We’re not expecting to get these workers into the middle class this year, but we think our momentum is growing,” said Nick Allen, campaign coordinator for Warehouse Workers United. “The workers are hungry.”

Read the whole thing, or learn more about the campaign at the Warehouse Workers United Web site.

It's Time to Seat Al Franken

2009-06-30T18:20:27Z

The Minnesota Supreme Court rules unanimously in favor of Al Franken in the long-running drama of who won that state’s Senate contest last fall:

We affirm the decision of the trial court that Al Franken received the highest number of votes legally cast and is entitled under Minn. Stat. § 204C.40 (2008) to receive the certificate of election as United States Senator from the State of Minnesota.

Responding to the Court’s decision, our Chair, Anna Burger, calls on Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty to certify Franken’s election and give Minnesotans the full representation in Congress that they deserve:

Now that the Minnesota Supreme Court has made its final ruling, it is time to recognize Al Franken as the duly elected Senator from Minnesota. As is appropriate after any extremely close election, Minnesotans took the time to conduct an extensive and thorough recount process, but now that all reasonable legal options have been exhausted, Minnesota deserves its full representation in Congress. We call on Governor Pawlenty to pursue the state’s best interests and end this contest instead of favoring those who would allow the recount to continue for purely partisan reasons.

During the election, Senator-elect Franken made clear he will work hard to rebuild our economy through real healthcare reform and the Employee Free Choice Act, as well as tackling the long-term challenges we face on the environment, keeping college education affordable and fixing our broken immigration system. Working families need him in the United States Senate to help restore the economy, rebuild the middle class and renew the American Dream for all workers.

UPDATE (4:15PM): Norm Coleman concedes the race to Franken.

10,000 Rally in D.C. for Health Care Reform

2009-06-25T18:47:15Z

Nearly 10,000 activists from coast-to-coast gathered in Washington, D.C. today to show their support for quality, affordable health care for all at the Healthcare '09 rally. The masses of grassroots activists were joined by Members of Congress, doctors, nurses, small business owners, labor leaders, faith leaders and others to lobby Congress for health care reform. From Dr. Howard Dean to Sen. Sherrod Brown, Anna Burger and Edie Falco - the message carrying the day is "We want health care, and we want it NOW!" For those of you who couldn't make it, below are some pics.

Fired Up For Health Care? Join the Crowd Tomorrow

2009-06-24T19:20:20Z

Tomorrow (June 25th), CtW Chair Anna Burger and thousands of activists from across the country are going to be in Washington, DC for the Health Care ‘09 rally — a mass demonstration and lobby day in support of quality, affordable health care for all:

On June 25th, 2009, thousands of grassroots people will descend on Washington, DC to lobby every Member of Congress in support of quality, affordable health care for all. We will also have a rally at 11:30 in Upper Senate Park and following there will be lobby activities in various locations.

Delegations of community leaders from over 40 states are attending in order to meet with key Members of Congress. The people comprising these groups include small business owners, rural representatives, faith leaders, health care providers, and others. Other event participants have been recruited from our 1000+ Member organizations including labor unions, grassroots community organizations, on-line groups, and faith communities.

The program on this day will begin at around 11:30am, with a large rally in Upper Senate Park which will feature variety of speakers from Washington, DC and the states. Following the rally, groups will visit with Members of Congress during scheduled or unscheduled visits and, in some cases, Town Hall Meetings. Our day will end at around 5pm, so that attendees to can travel home via plane, car, train or bus.

If you’re in the area and you care about this issue, you should be there too! Here’s a map and directions to Upper Senate Park:

View Larger Map

The Hidden Cost of Walmart's $4 Prescriptions

2009-06-24T14:39:24Z

Walmart has made its $4 prescription program — in which customers can get 30‐day supplies of a range of common medications for $4 — a key component of its effort to change its image from “rapacious, money‐hungry global megacorporation” to “friendly fun‐time global megacorporation.” But a new investigation by WakeUpWalmart.com raises a serious question about how the retail giant manages to offer these $4 prescriptions.

WakeUpWalmart reports that in order to profit on the $4 prescriptions, Walmart imports the drugs from cheap overseas suppliers. One of the suppliers, India’s Ranbaxy Laboratories, has been repeatedly investigated by the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Justice for “inadequate” safeguards against contamination, falsifying records and submitting false information to the FDA. The situation was so bad that in 2008 the FDA banned drugs from two Ranbaxy plants and in 2009 halted review of applications from a third:

2009 Violations

In February 2009, the Food and Drug Administration announced it had halted review of importation applications for generic drugs manufactured at Ranbaxy’s Paonta Sahib plant owned by Ranbaxy Laboratories, LTD, an Indian generic drug manufacturer, “due to evidence of falsified data.” According to the FDA press release, Ranbaxy “falsified data and test results in approved and pending drug applications.” In the warning letter sent to Ranbaxy, the FDA cited seven examples of false statements made by Ranbaxy to the FDA. According to FDA records, this was the third time Ranbaxy’s Paonta Sahib facility had run afoul of federal Food and Drug laws.

The FDA did include a caveat in its release, stating that the agency “has no evidence that these drugs do not meet their quality specifications and has not identified any health risks associated with currently marketed Ranbaxy products.”

A week after the FDA announced it was halting review of Paonta Sahib applications, Canada announced it was “quarantining” all drugs produced at the Paonta Sahib plant.

2008 Violations

Previously, in September 2008, the FDA issued warning letters to Ranbaxy regarding “significant deviations” from FDA standards for the manufacture of drugs sold in the United States. According to an FDA press release, the agency also banned the importation of any Ranbaxy drugs produced at the company’s Dewas and Paonta Sahib plants.

According to the release, the Dewas plant’s cross-contamination prevention program was “insufficient.” These programs are designed to prevent cross-contamination between different types of drugs. The plant also used “inadequate” sterilization procedures and performed “inadequate failure investigations.” According to the FDA release, failure investigations are performed “to address any manufacturing control or product rejection to determine the root cause and prevent recurrence.” The Paonta Sahib plant had “inaccurate” records regarding cleaning and maintaining of its equipment and “incomplete” records.

Deborah Autor, director of the Office of Compliance at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, announced that the “severe violations” had led the FDA to ban importation of drugs from these plants and to deny any new drug import applications for drugs manufactured at these plants.

Before the warning letters were sent and the sanctions put in place, Ranbaxy had the opportunity to rectify the problems at the Dewas and Paonta Sahib plants; however, the company’s “response failed to adequately address multiple, serious deficiencies.”

2006 Violations

The FDA had issued a previous warning letter in June 2006 to Ranbaxy regarding “significant deficiencies” in the Paonta Sahib plant’s “stability testing program.” According to Ranbaxy documents produced under subpoena, Ranbaxy was first notified of the violations by the FDA on February 25, 2006.

During the FDA’s inspection of the Paonta Sahib plant, the agency found fourteen instances where equipment cleaning records were signed by employees who “were not shown as present by security log records.”…

Download the complete report and take action at WakeUpWalmart.com.

Measuring the Impact

2009-06-23T14:31:29Z

Following up on my post from yesterday about how lobbying from insurance interests is leading the Senate away from a public option for health care despite massive popular support for such an option, here’s some interesting statistical work by Nate Silver that estimates just how big of an impact they’ve had peeling away Democratic support:

Suppose that the health care insurance industry were prohibited from making political contributions? In that case, the model predicts, 47 senators would currently support the public option, as opposed to the 38 who actually do. In other words, the insurance industry’s influence appears to swing about 9 votes against the public option. Whatever number of senators wind up supporting the public option, add 9 to it, and you’ll have a decent ballpark estimate for what the level of support might be if not for insurance industry contributions.

As the kids say, read the whole thing.

(Hat tip: Paul Krugman.)

Democracy and the Public Option

2009-06-22T14:09:44Z

Last week it was polling from the Wall Street Journal and NBC showing that a broad majority of Americans believe a public option should be included in any health reform package. Now polling from the New York Times and CBS backs them up:

Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

Some of the striking numbers from the NYT/CBS poll:

72% of all respondents favored inclusion of a public option; only 20% oppose it. Even 50% of those identifying themselves as Republicans supported including a public option.
57% said that they would be willing to pay higher taxes to provide truly universal health care. Among those earning less than $50,000/year, the percentage who were willing was even higher — 64%.
50% said that they believe the government would do a better job providing medical coverage than private insurance companies do; 59% said they believe government would do better holding down costs than private insurance companies do.

These are not “narrowly divided” numbers; they are landslide numbers. When was the last time you saw a poll where a majority of people supported their own taxes going up? And yet, on this question, that majority exists.

Listening to our leaders debate on this issue, though, you’d think this widespread consensus didn’t exist. For instance, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — member of the Senate Budget Committee and Robin to John McCain’s Batman — went on Sunday’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos to declare that a public option will never pass the U.S. Senate:

STEPHANOPOULOS: On the issues of taxes to pay for health care, on the issue of a public health insurance plan. But let me show you this “New York Times” poll that’s just out this morning showing 72 percent, 72 percent of the public supports a government health insurance plan and 57 percent of the public is willing to pay more taxes for universal health care. They seem to be ready for the kind of change that Republicans are fighting.

GRAHAM: Well, it’s just not Republicans, George. The reason you’re not going to have a government run health care pass the Senate is because it would be devastating for this country. The last thing in the world I think Democrats and Republicans are going to do at the end of the day is create a government run health care system where you’ve got a bureaucrat standing in between the patient and the doctor…

We do need to deal with inflation in health care, private and public inflation, but we’re not going to go down to the government owning health care road in America and I think that’s the story of this week. There’s been a bipartisan rejection of that.

Stephanopoulos then turned to his other guest, Democratic Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, and urged him to give up his crazy dreams of a public option in favor of something “bipartisan”:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Now Senator Dodd, I think that Senator Graham talked about the public there. We just saw that hole. But his read of the Senate seems pretty accurate right now. You have not only Republicans but several of your Democratic colleagues, including the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Baucus saying the public option isn’t going to fly in their committee. They want something bipartisan and that can’t include this public health insurance option.

To his credit, Dodd pushed back:

DODD: Well, again, I’m delighted to hear Lindsey talk about the possibility of having something like a co-op and non-profits. I happen to support a public option, I don’t think you can bring down costs without it. If there isn’t some competition out there to drive down the overall cost — costs have gone up 86 percent since ‘96, 1996. Forty-five percent might stay the loan, increase in health care cost. The American average working family can’t afford this. A family of four now it’s $12,000. We’re being told in 20 years, it could be half the gross income of a family spent on health care premiums. That is just unacceptable.

What amazes me in this exchange is that Stephanopoulos puts Dodd on the defensive, as if he’s some kind of wild-eyed dreamer building castles in the sky, while treating Graham as the sensible one. But Chris Dodd is advocating a policy that three-quarters of the public — a stunning level of support for any proposal in a democratic society — wants to see enacted. Graham’s opposition puts him in line with only 20% of the public.

And yet the Conventional Wisdom is that a proposal is not “bipartisan” or “centrist” enough unless it satisfies that 20% — even if that means leaving the rest of the nation out in the cold.

Why? Because the 20% includes the insurance industry:

Perhaps no idea is more disliked by the U.S. health insurance industry than a proposal by Democratic President-elect Barack Obama to have a public health insurance plan competing directly with them as part of his broad pledge to reform the country”s ailing health care system.

The [health insurance] industry is “going to fight and they”re going to kick and they”re going to scream,” said Sam Fleet, president and chief executive officer of AmWins Group Benefits, a wholesale brokerage. “The last thing private insurers want is the federal government to compete with them.”

… and for many (most?) Senators, their vote is, apparently, worth quite a bit more than yours is.

More than yours, mine and your best friend’s put together, in fact.

National Commission on ICE Misconduct Issues Final Report

2009-06-18T18:09:07Z

I’ve written before in this space about the work of the National Commission on ICE Misconduct, which has been investigating the heavy-handed tactics utilized by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) in its conduct of immigration raids at workplaces during the last few years. So I want to let you know that the commission has released its final report today.

The report, titled “Raids on Workers: Destroying Our Rights” (PDF), details just how wrong-headed and ineffective the Bush Administration’s immigration enforcement policy was:

Because of ICE’s repeated failure to address concerns by elected officials, humanitarian experts, immigration attorneys and worker advocates, the Commission felt it was critical to produce a report that documented the findings of each of its regional hearings and to use the analysis of these hearings as well as subsequent evidence and testimony submitted to the Commission to create a set of recommendations that could serve as a resource for elected officials and future Department of Homeland Security personnel.

At each hearing clear patterns began to emerge regarding the tactics used by ICE agents and how the procedures used by these officials were compromising individual and workers’ rights.

The testimony revealed several disturbing patterns:

U.S. citizens and legal residents detained for hours unable to leave even after establishing their status;

A lack of coordination by ICE with state and local labor and child welfare agencies and law enforcement;

Violations of the Fourth Amendment, which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, and other constitutional violations;

Repeated incidents of racial profiling and harassment;

The human toll of immigration enforcement, including family separation and children left without proper care;

Lasting psychological devastation of communities and families in the aftermath of workplace and community raids.

The report lays out a number of recommendations for how ICE can improve its methods to enforce the law without violating workers’ rights or devastating communities. The Obama Administration and new Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano begun moving in that direction, focusing on drying up the demand for illegal immigrant labor by busting executives who create it rather than hitting all workers at a worksite with Bushian “shock and awe” tactics. So there are encouraging signs that the behavior recounted in the report — workers’ rights being casually violated by the very agencies who are supposed to protect them — is on its way to becoming, as it should be, a thing of the past.

On Health Care, Give the People What They Want

2009-06-18T17:02:25Z

On Time magazine’s Swampland blog, Karen Tumulty notices something buried in the results of the latest NBC-Wall Street Journal opinion poll — Americans overwhelmingly support the inclusion of a public option in any health care reform package:

34a. In any health care proposal, how important do you feel it is to give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance—extremely important, quite important, not that important, or not at all important?

Extremely important …………………….. 41[% of respondents]
Quite important …………………………… 35[%]
Not that important ……………………….. 12[%]
Not at all important ……………………… 8[%]
Not sure …………………………………… 4[%]

That’s 76% of respondents who believe it’s important to include a public option — an overwhelming mandate. So what is a public option?

A “public option” would be a government-provided insurance plan that would be available to any American who wanted to use it. It wouldn’t replace private insurance plans (despite what Frank Luntz’s poll-driven scare tactics would have you believe); you could keep your private insurance if you preferred it to the government plan. But it would give an option to millions of Americans who are either uninsured or underinsured under today’s private insurance system, and introduce competition where no competition currently exists, in areas where one private insurance company has bought or bullied its way to a monopoly.

Which is why President Barack Obama supports a public option. He explained why in a town hall meeting held a few days ago in Green Bay, Wisconsin:

What we’re working on is the creation of something called the Health Insurance Exchange, which would allow you to one-stop shop for a health care plan, compare benefits and prices, choose the plan that’s best for you. If you’re happy with your plan, you keep it. None of these plans, though, would be able to deny coverage on the basis of pre-existing conditions.

Every plan should include an affordable, basic benefits package. And if you can’t afford one of these plans, we should provide assistance to make sure that you can. I also strongly believe that one of the options in the Exchange should be a public insurance option. And the reason is not because we want a government takeover of health care — I’ve already said if you’ve got a private plan that works for you, that’s great. But we want some competition. If the private insurance companies have to compete with a public option, it’ll keep them honest and it’ll help keep their prices down.

So on one side of this debate we have President Obama and three-quarters of the American people. But who’s on the other side? Insurance companies, which are worried that a public option might force them to actually have to start competing in the marketplace, and are responding with scare tactics of their own:

Blue Cross of North Carolina decided to jump the gun on President Obama and Congress and start running television ads telling people how awful a public health care plan would be. According to the ads, people enrolled in the public health care plan wouldn’t have a choice of doctors, would face long waiting periods for appointments and procedures and would not even be able to get a clerk to answer questions on billing.

That sounds pretty awful, but if it were true, you have to wonder why Blue Cross of North Carolina is so worried. After all, President Obama is not proposing that anyone would be forced to join a public plan. He just proposed that people have the option to buy into a public plan. Is Blue Cross of North Carolina really that terrified that it will be unable to compete with a public plan that doesn’t let patients choose their doctor, subjects them to long waits and doesn’t answer questions about billing?

See, that’s the thing about competition. If a public plan isn’t good for the people who choose it — if it forces you into long waits to see a doctor, or buries you under paperwork, or doesn’t cover procedures people need — then it won’t be competitive. Anyone who can will simply take private insurance instead.

What the insurance industry is afraid of isn’t that a public option won’t be good. They’re afraid that it will be good — so good that they will have to cut into their legendary profit margins and huge CEO salaries to compete with it.

Which is why it’s disappointing to see Tom Daschle fold under the insurance lobby’s pressure:

In an attempt at bipartisanship, three former majority leaders of the U.S. Senate, Tom Daschle, Howard Baker, and Bob Dole, offered their solution today to the biggest obstacle to achieving health care reform — a public option.

“While I feel very strongly that consumers should have the choice of a national, Medicare-like plan, my colleagues do not… But we were concerned that the ongoing health reform debate is beginning to show signs of fracture on the public plan issue, so in order to advance the process of developing bipartisan legislation and to move it forward, it’s time to find consensus here,” Daschle said.

“We’ve come too far and gained too much momentum for our efforts to fail over disagreements on one single issue,” he said.

When one side of a “disagreement” is three-quarters of the American people, and the other one is the plutocrats of the insurance industry, I’m not sure why the “solution” is to just give the plutocrats what they want.

An overwhelming majority of Americans want a public option for health insurance coverage. They should get it.

(Want to take action to stand up for a public option? Join with 350,000 other Americans in standing up with Dr. Howard Dean to defend it.)

Workplace Safety: George Bush Was Doing It Wrong

2009-06-18T16:43:19Z

It’s shocking, I know, but the Government Accountability Office has confirmed what most people already knew — George W. Bush’s workplace safety program, which depended on corporations voluntarily complying with the law rather than inspection and enforcement, didn’t work:

Businesses that participate in OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Program are able to avoid routine inspections, as long as they demonstrate that they have exemplary safety and health program, have no ongoing health and safety enforcement actions, and have an injury and illness rate below the average rates for the industry. The program’s goal is to promote cooperation between workers and management on developing innovative workplace health and safety programs. Prodded by the Bush administration, the VPP more than doubled to 2,174 worksites over the last five years and now covers more than 885,000 out of the 112 million workers covered by Occupational Safety and Health Act…

The GAO found that OSHA did not properly ensure that only worksites which had exemplary safety programs were eligible for relief from routine inspections. The GAO found that 12 percent of the worksites participating in the program had an injury or illness rate higher than rates for their industry. In fact, one worksite participating in the VPP had an injury and illness rate 4 times higher than their industry average. OSHA performance goal is for VPP work sites to have an injury and illness rate of 50 percent less than their industry average.

In addition, OSHA continued to allow businesses to participate in the voluntary program even though companies were cited for serious safety violations. For example, one worksite was allowed to continue to participate in the VPP even though it had three separate fatalities over a five year period. Another workplace was cited for 10 violations related to a fatality, including seven serious violations, and one related to discrepancies in the site’s injury and illness logs, but was able to continue to avoid regular inspections as a result of their participation in the VPP.

Although VPP is intended to increase worker participation in safety decisions, GAO found that some employees at VPP sites said “that injury and illness rates requirements of the VPP are used as a tool by management to pressure workers not to report injuries and illnesses.”

Download the complete GAO report here.

Luntz's Lemmings: Sen. Tom Coburn Edition

2009-06-12T19:59:48Z

When it comes to finding ways to make policies that hurt everyday people sound downright appealing, the Republican Party’s go-to guy is pollster Frank Luntz.

Luntz has spent decades using polling research to find the most appealing ways to package right-wing policies in language that makes them sound wholesome and all-American. Most recently, he’s turned his attentions to health care reform, penning a widely-circulated 28-page memo (PDF) with instructions for Republicans on how to kill the reform effort — not by opposing it outright, but by claiming to support a health reform program, just not any program that actually gets put before Congress. The memo also suggests scare words for conservatives to use — such as referring to any proposed reforms as a “government takeover” of health care — that are designed to poison public opinion against reform.

On Wednesday, Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), speaking on the Senate floor, called out some of his Republican colleagues for parroting Luntz’s dishonest talking points:

Senator Merkley was too polite to call out any Republicans by name. But I’m not nearly that polite, so let me introduce you to a particularly egregious example of a Republican following Luntz’s strategy like a lemming: Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma.

This past Tuesday, June 9, Senator Coburn rose on the Senate floor to address that body on the subject of health care reform. Here’s how he described the shape of the crisis:

If you cannot get treatment when you need it, there is a crisis. If you are denied the ability to choose the doctor or hospital that is best for you, that is a crisis for you. If you cannot afford the coverage you need for you and your family, then you have a crisis.

We need to stop looking at it from a global perspective and restore the humanity to health care. We need to focus more on people and less on the system.

(Check it yourself — here’s a link to page S6357 of the Congressional Record, which contains his remarks.)

So why is that remarkable? Because Coburn’s words were lifted almost exactly word for word from Luntz’s how-to-kill-health-care-reform memo. Turn to page 4 of that memo and, inside a box labeled “WORDS THAT WORK,” you’ll find the following:

If you can’t get the treatment you need, when you need it, there is a crisis.

If you are denied the ability to choose the doctor or hospital that’s best for you, then it is a crisis.

If you can’t afford the coverage you need for you and your family, then you have a crisis.

We need to stop looking at it from a global perspective and restore the humanity to healthcare. We need to focus more on people and less on the system.

… followed by Luntz’s blunt explanation of why using these words will help push the debate in the direction of killing health care reform:

This is the single best approach to the crisis language because it individualizes and personalizes healthcare - and shows empathy for anyone and everyone struggling right now. This plays into more favorable Republican territory by protecting individual care while downplays the need for a comprehensive national healthcare plan.

(Here’s a screenshot of the telltale “WORDS THAT WORK” box.)

What’s striking about this is that Coburn, addressing the Senate, didn’t make even the slightest effort to inform his colleagues that the ideas he were expressing — heck, the very words he was using — were not his own. He threw them out there on the Senate floor as if they were the result of his own independent thinking. But given that his words are almost exactly the same as the words found in Luntz’s memo, they seem less like “independent thinking” and a lot more like “copy and paste.”

So if you were wondering which Republican Members of Congress had decided to follow Frank Luntz like lemmings as he marches off to prevent Americans from getting quality, affordable health care, you now know the name of one such lemming: Senator Tom Coburn.

CVS: Unlock the Condoms

2009-06-11T20:12:54Z

More than 200 community groups from across the country came together today in Washington’s Dupont Circle, just across the street from a CVS, under the banner of the Cure CVS campaign, with a simple demand for the pharmacy giant: unlock the condoms.

Public health advocates have criticized the practice of locking condom cases, saying that it creates a barrier to access and stigmatizes condoms, both of which could lead to decreased condom use.

Even more unsettling is the fact that CVS disproportionately locks condom cases in communities of color and Latino communities. Surveys of more than 2,200 CVS stores found that the company locks up condoms in 19 of 21 markets surveyed. In 9 of those markets, CVS is at least three times more likely to lock condoms in communities of color than in white communities.

CVS locks condoms in these communities despite the fact that HIV/AIDS is the number one killer of black American women between the ages of 25 and 34, and the rate of new HIV infections among Latinos is three times the rate of whites.

Speakers at the rally included Rev. Bob Coleman of New York City’s Riverside Church, Melody Drnach of the National Organization for Women, Waheeda Shabaaz-El of the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP), Sarah Audelo of Advocates for Youth, Antonio Davis of ACT UP Philadelphia, Juan David Gastolomendo of the Latino Commission on AIDS, Julie Grigsby of Black Women for Wellness, Richard Zaldivar of The Wall/Las Memorias, and Brian Hayes of Operation Samahan.

I was there with my digital camera, so I present you now with a slideshow of photos from the rally:

Want to help? Sign the campaign’s online petition urging CVS to unlock the condoms!