Political Action

See Also:

• AFL-CIO
• PA AFL-CIO

Key Voting Dates	Up for Election
Primary - April 22 General Election - November 4	U.S. House -19 State Senate - 25 of 30 State House - All 203

Key Local Races:

19th Congressional District – Phil Avillo (D)

Phil Avillo is once again challenging Todd Platts (R) for the 19^th congressional district seat. Local 229 supported Phil 2 years ago in his unsuccessful run. Phil is a strong labor candidate and Local 229 will again be meeting with him to discuss issues and have him attend a union meeting to address our membership. Todd Platts stands 180 degrees from us on working family issues! We need to elect Phil and send someone to Washington who will support working family issues.

Pa 95^th Legislative District – Eugene DePasquale (D)

Eugene DePasquale is an incumbent freshman state representative that has a 100% voting record on working family issues and the ONLY Democratic representative from York County . He is a strong supporter of organized labor and an innovative, motivated leader that has a bright future in Pa and possibly national politics. Local 229 supported Eugene in his initial run for office 2 years ago and he has not let us down! We need to support him again and work to make sure our concerns are heard in Harrisburg . Eugene will also be meeting with Local 229 leadership and addressing the membership at a regular monthly meeting in coming months.

Pennsylvania's Manufacturing Crisis

Since 2000 Pennsylvania has lost about 180,000 manufacturing jobs. Because manufacturing jobs have often been among the best paying jobs in the state, the impact of this job loss on communities across the state has been significant.

The Pennsylvania economy is generating new jobs, but at one of the slowest rates in the nation and in spite of recent business tax cuts.

According to data from the Keystone Research Center, Pennsylvania 's newer jobs are not paying as much as the jobs the state is losing. Since the beginning of the recession in Pennsylvania (March 2001), sectors with lower wages have added jobs and sectors with higher wages have lost jobs. The nonagricultural industries whose wages exceeded the statewide average annual wage in 2002 lost a total of 5.3 percent of their jobs. Sectors where wages were below the statewide average increased their employment by 2.9 percent.

Missing that Last Raise?

You are not alone.

According to a recent article in the New York Times , even though the U.S. economy as a whole added 2.2 million jobs in 2004 and produced strong corporate profits, the wages of 95 percent of all U.S. workers fell or had no gains after inflation. Income for those in the top 5 percent of wage earners grew by 1 percent on average with some gaining much more.

Economists cite a number of reasons for poor U.S. average wage gains: increasing competition from overseas labor, the pressure of Wal-Mart's low wages, and increasing energy and benefit costs.

The Times article suggests that many economist say the U.S. may be returning to a period of very slow wage growth like that of the 23 years between 1973 and 1996 when inflation-adjusted wages stagnated or grew very, very slowly.

Corporate CEOs enjoyed substantial growth in income. Their average pay was up some 12 percent in 2004.

Freedom to Choose a Union

The polls make it clear: many Americans, as many as 57 million, would vote to join a union if they could, and most think unions are a good way to get problems solved at work.

Most American workers have a right, founded in their Constitutional rights of free speech and association, to form a union at their workplace. Unfortunately, many employers choose to do everything they can to prevent employees from joining a union.

One recent report on union organizing efforts found that:

Ninety-two percent of private-sector employers, when faced with employees who want to join together in a union, force employees to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda; 80 percent require supervisors to attend training sessions on attacking unions; and 78 percent require that supervisors deliver anti-union messages to workers they oversee.

Seventy-five percent hire outside consultants to run anti-union campaigns, often based on mass psychology and distorting the law.

Half of employers threaten to shut down partially or totally if employees join together in a union.

In 25 percent of organizing campaigns, private-sector employers illegally fire workers because they want to form a union.

Even after workers successfully form a union, in one-third of the instances, employers never negotiate a contract.

It is abuses like these that led to the introduction of the Employee Free Choice Act in the U.S. Congress in April, 2005.

Attacks on the Freedom to Choose Unions in Pennsylvania

In March of 2005 the so-called "Open Workforce Initiative" was introduced in the Pennsylvania House by Representatives Daryl Metcalfe ( R-Butler County ), Rep. Teresa Forcier ( R-Venango County ) Rep. Tom Creighton, and Rep. Sam Rohrer ( R-Berks County ).

If passed into law, the collection of bills would allow non-union workers to get all the economic benefits of union membership while paying nothing to support the bargaining efforts that secured the benefits in the first place. Federal law requires unions to represent all workers -- union and non-union -- in a workplace where there is a union.

What is the Employee Free Choice Act?

It’s no secret that the percentage of the American workforce represented by labor unions has been on the decline in recent decades. And it’s no surprise that the middle class has been struggling economically during this same period of time.

The best hope for workers to improve their situation is joining with their brothers and sisters to bargain with their employers for better working conditions, wages and benefits.

The Employee Free Choice Act (H.R. 800, S. 1041), supported by a bipartisan coalition in Congress, would enable working people to bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions by restoring workers freedom to choose for themselves whether to join a union. It would:

o         Establish stronger penalties for violation of employee rights when workers seek to form a union and during first-contract negotiations

o         Provide mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes

o        Allow employees to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation.