[Educationforall] spam con huevos labor news, views and concerns, 5.09.12‏‏‏‏-I‏‏‏

Thu May 10 04:29:31 UTC 2012

Disappointing April Jobs Report: Public Sector Layoffs and Shrinking Labor Force  Why are Oil Refinery Workers Being Forced to Pay for a Deadly Explosion?  Why Are Student Loan Interest Rates Set to Double? Thank These Lobbyists Who Helped Kill the Bill Yesterday   REMINDER: June 1 registration deadline for Summer Institute on Union Women!‏ Republicans Block Student Loan Help‏ American Airlines is being un-American‏ Save Mart contract expires at midnight, but no strike planned
Jerry Brown tells unions to brace for California state worker pay cuts
 The Great Recession Is Pushing Women Out of the Workforce   National Nurses' Week - Special Thanks to Nurses!‏ 
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http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/912136/disappointing_april_jobs_report%3A_public_sector_layoffs_and_shrinking_labor_force/

Disappointing April Jobs Report: Public Sector Layoffs and Shrinking Labor ForceBy Meteor Blades | Daily Kos

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http://www.alternet.org/story/155303/why_are_oil_refinery_workers_being_forced_to_pay_for_a_deadly_explosion?akid=8752.16102.lCagxu&rd=1&t=24

-Why are Oil Refinery Workers Being Forced to Pay for a Deadly Explosion?It’s still too early to tell whether Tesoro’s demands will force a strike, but one thing is clear: USW members at Tesoro aren’t willing to pay for management’s mistakes. READ MOREBy Patrick Young / Labor Notes
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http://truth-out.org/news/item/9028-why-are-student-loan-interest-rates-set-to-double-thank-these-lobbyists-who-helped-kill-the-bill-yesterday

Why Are Student Loan Interest Rates Set to Double? Thank These Lobbyists Who Helped Kill the Bill YesterdayLee Fang, Republic Report: "On Tuesday afternoon, Senate Republicans blocked a measure that would have prevented a big hike for student loan interest rates. The legislation would have kept 'subsidized Stafford loans at 3.4 percent for an additional year, rather than doubling automatically for new loans starting July 1.' While the vote yesterday was certainly a partisan battle, a closer look at the interest groups driving the roll call vote explains the greater powers at play."Read the Article 

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 Leadership Schools · Workshops · Research Reports · Publications   31st Annual Western RegionalSummer Institute on Union Women July 23-27, 2012 SIUW is a week to honor, strengthen, and support women in the labor movement. The Institute will be held over the week of July 23-27, 2012, at the Sonoma State University campus in Rohnert Park in the heart of California’s wine country. The theme for this year’s SIUW is "Campaign School for a New Generation," which captures our commitment to mentor, train, and inspire new women leaders in the labor movement. We invite unions and community organizations to send their most talented and promising leaders to join us.  This year’s SIUW will provide an “organizer’s boot camp” to emerging new leaders. Participants will be able to choose from classes that offer hands-on training in building strategic plans, leadership development, building membership participation, bargaining in difficult economic times, understanding workers’ legal rights, building advocacy skills, and so much more. For more information and to register, please visit us online. Sponsored by the AFL-CIO and the United Association for Labor Education, and hosted by the UC Berkeley Labor Center The Summer Institute on Union Women welcomes participation regardless of race, creed, religion, ethnicity, color, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, or immigrant status.  SUMMER INSTITUTE ON UNION WOMEN July 23-27, 2012 Sonoma State University
1801 East Cotati Ave
Rohnert Park, CA 94928 $450 for single occupancy$380 for double occupancy$250 for commuters$75 for one day only  Stay connected to the Labor Center DonateJoin our mailing listFollow usBecome a fan Center for Labor Research and Education, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, University of California, Berkeley2521 Channing Way # 5555 · Berkeley, CA 94720-5555 · TEL (510) 642-0323 · FAX (510) 642-6432 If you do not wish to receive occasional emails from the UC Berkeley Labor Center, please reply to clre_unsubscribe at berkeley.edu and place UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line.
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May 9, 2012
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has warned Hyatt Hotels it is putting its housekeepers at risk of serious injuries.With student loan debt at more than $1 trillion, Senate Republicans yesterday blocked a move to prevent student loan interest rates from doubling on July 1. The party-line vote came after hundreds of college students and recent grads spent the day lobbying lawmakers.
Read more and comment.  OSHA Warns Hyatt on Housekeeper Injuries Barrett Wins Primary Race to Take on Walker in Wisconsin Recall This Deficit Story Can’t Be Repeated Often Enough! Harkin Demands Romney Mole Resign from NLRB Romney Saved the Auto Industry—and I’m Santa Thank a Teacher Today House Dems, GOP Agree on Export-Import Bank BillRead more important news of the day on the issues working families care about.Follow the AFL-CIO:
            Take the next step. Become a mobile activist
by joining the AFL-CIO Rapid Action Text Team.
Text NEWS to AFLCIO (235246) to receive action alerts and more.
(Message and data rates may apply.)
To find out more about the AFL-CIO, please visit our website at www.aflcio.org.
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Dear Friend,Is American Airlines above the law?The National Mediation Board (NMB) set May 17 as the date for a union representation election for over 9,600 ticket, gate and reservation agents at American Airlines. But in a reckless disregard for the rule of law, American Airlines has simply decided to refuse to provide employees addresses so voting instructions for the election can be mailed by the NMB.Click here to make sure that the NMB stands up to American Airlines and ensures the election moves forward.American Airlines is in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings. The company has announced massive layoffs, outsourcing and office closures, as well as dramatic increases in health costs and pay cuts for many of its workers.American Airlines CEO Tom Horton hopes that by breaking the law, he will be able to postpone the election while laying off hundreds of eligible employees and forcing others to make an immediate and irrevocable decision about early retirement.Even in this anti-worker climate, American Airline's disdain for the rule of law and the NMB is stunning. They will be spending thousands of dollars in legal fees to silence workers while telling their employees and creditors in bankruptcy court that they will not be able meet their obligations to them.Breaking the law to interfere with an election is simply not acceptable in a democracy. Click here to tell the NMB that you stand with the workers at American Airlines and for democracy.In Unity,Beth Allen
Online Communications Director
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Save Mart contract expires at midnight, but no strike plannedBy Tony Bizjak - Published: 4:57 pmSave Mart's contract with union employees will expire tonight at midnight with no reported agreement on a new contract. But grocery officials said the expiration is not expected to have an effect on 181 Save Mart, Lucky and S-mart stores in Northern California.Raley's, union agree to contract mediation
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Jerry Brown tells unions to brace for California state worker pay cutsBy Jon Ortiz - Published: 4:06 pmState workers' compensation is back on the budget chopping block.

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The Great Recession Is Pushing Women Out of the
Workforce
By Bryce Covert
The Nation
May 7, 2012
http://www.thenation.com/blog/167743/great-recession-pushing-women-out-workforce

Friday's jobs report seemedto grab 
headlines for one aspect in particular: the
labor force participation rate, i.e., the number of
people either working or looking for a job, fell to
63.8 percent, the lowest level since 1981. That means
more and more people are dropping out--retiring, turning
to something else like grad school or just giving up on
the prospect of a job altogether. But there was a
debate about how much of a bad sign this is. Is it
because the recession has made people lose hope of
finding gainful employment? Or is it just because baby
boomers are hitting prime retirement age and moving to
Miami?

It's likely a combination of factors. But there seems
to be a big difference in what's driving men and women
to leave the labor force.

What do the numbers look like for both genders?
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics's Current
Population Survey, men's participation rate--the ratio
of men working or looking for work versus those who
have dropped out--has fallen 3.1 percentage points since
the beginning of the recession, and women's has fallen
1.8 points. The dip looks more troubling for men than
for women. The last time women's labor force
participation rate was this low "was in June 1995,"
Joan Entmacher of the National Women's Law Center told
me. But her colleague Katherine Gallagher Robbins noted
that this year has been pretty steady for women's rate,
while men are starting to experience a real decline.

Yet interestingly, a recent paper from the Federal
Reserve Bank of Kansas City (hat tip to Mike Konczal)
finds that the forces behind those numbers are very
different. For men, 60 percent of the drop from 2007 to
2011 has been due to a decline in "trend
participation," meaning things that were on course to
happen whether we were in an economic crisis or not.
That's because the rate for men "has been falling
steadily for 60 years," in part due to things like
increased access to Social Security benefits and an
aging population that make retirement look like a
pretty good option. In contrast, the paper "attributes
essentially all of [women's] decline to the cyclical
downturn of the labor market"--in other words, the fact
that we hit the Great Recession.

Why would a recession drive women out of the labor
force so much more strongly than men? Because when the
labor market looks shoddy, the Kansas City Fed paper
says, "nonmarket work can become relatively more
productive for many women." That's a fancy way of
saying that domestic work--and very likely childcare in
particular--becomes more valuable. "The difference
between the benefits of working or not working may
often be fairly small" for women, it says, while "the
human capital of men is often more specialized toward
market activities," in other words, jobs outside the
home.

When parents are trying to cut back on costs, it's
unsurprising that childcare could top the list.
According tothe National Association of Child Care
Resource & Referral Agencies, the average annual cost
of putting a 4-year-old in full-time care can be as
much as $14,050 a year. No wonder that nearly 40
percent of parentsworry that their income won't be
enough to cover it. And most parents evaluate that cost
against a woman's salary. Many mothers are deciding
that it's more cost effective to stay home and focus on
domestic work than to go out and try to get a job in a
terrible economy.

This is even truer for low-income women. Stay-at-home
mothers are more likely these days to be young Hispanic
women with low levels of education who may be unable to
get jobs that will pay enough to outweigh the cost of
childcare. The economy has made that decision even
harder in another way: state budgets that were all but
decimated by the recession led thirty-seven states to
pull back on childcare support.

Women who leave the labor force for care duties may be
hard to categorize, however. "For women it's a little
tricky because those who are out for family-related
reasons may not call themselves discouraged workers,"
Entmacher said. While more men are counted in the
category of workers who have given up entirely on
looking for a job--a troubling group --women who can't
find jobs that work with their care-giving
responsibilities may be just as discouraged but not
counted as such.

On the brighter side, it's also possible that women's
higher inclination to get a college degree is playing a
role. As Catherine Rampell reported at the end of last
year, the high number of young women dropping out may
not be doing so indefinitely, but instead are leaving
to get more education. While demographic trends may be
leading older people to drop out of the labor force and
into retirement, there are a lot of young people
leaving as well. Evan Soltas calculates that of the
millions of "missing" people who should be in the
workforce if we hadn't entered a recession, the young
are seven times more over-represented. That could mean
that rather than giving up altogether, young women are
going back to school in the hopes of upgrading their
prospects once the job market really rebounds.

I hope more women are dropping out for the latter
reason instead of the former, because taking a break
from the labor force to care for children can have a
huge impact on women's earning capacity. As a report
from Rutgers notes, women who take maternity leave
often "pay a penalty for leave-taking in wages and
earnings long after [their] child's birth," a portion
of which is likely due to salary increases that would
have happened had she stayed in her job. Similar
penalties will apply to women who are being squeezed
out of the labor force and into the home by the
recession.

____________________________________________

PortsideLabor aims to provide material of interest to
people on the left that will help them to interpret the
world and to change it.

Submit via email: labor at portside.org
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  Dear Carlos,It’s National Nurses’ Week! And like a lot of people across the nation who are touched and saved by the contributions of 3.1 million registered nurses, we want to say a simple THANK YOU.Your work is not easy. You must have compassion and endurance to be there in the middle of the night, when your patient is struggling with pain. You must have patience and courage to fight that bureaucratic red tape that’s delaying your patient’s medications from the hospital pharmacy.You must have the composure, medical knowledge, and technical skill to insert that central line into the distressed ER patient who needs medication. You must have an endless supply of “knock knock” jokes to comfort that frightened child.And one thing we continue to fight for is R.E.S.P.E.C.T. for nurses.Read the complete blog and get FREE Downloads to show our appreciation for nurses everywhere.Thank you nurses!UNSUBSCRIBE | www.NationalNursesUnited.org | www.MainStreetContract.org
National Nurses United | 8630 Fenton Street, Suite 1100 Silver Spring, MD 20910
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