Building Trades News

If John McCain had a chance to take a break from his presidential campaign stop in Wilkes-Barre yesterday and put his feet up to watch a little TV, he would have gotten an earful and an eyeful over his recent remarks calling Social Security a "disgrace" and his support of privatization.

The Alliance for Retired Americans bought a three-day ad blitz for airing on area stations during shows popular with older viewers. The ads show the reaction of several Du Pont, Pa., seniors to McCain's remarks at a July 7 town hall meeting in Denver where he called Social Security an "absolute disgrace...it's got to be fixed."

Says one senior, "What do you mean--fixed?" Another warns, "Don't mess with it."

With the U.S. economy sputtering toward recession, working women and their families will feel more pain than in past downturns.

According to a report by the congressional Joint Economic Committee, women are now working in jobs and industries that are more likely to lay off workers than they were in most previous recessions:

In recessions prior to 2001, women could buffer family incomes against male unemployment because they did not experience sharp job losses. However, this changed in the 2001 recession as women lost jobs on par with men in the industries that lost the most jobs.

For seven and a half years, the Bush administration has delayed and sometimes just refused to act on workplace safety and health rules that could save lives and prevent serious injuries. Had the administration acted on those stalled rules, it may have prevented the deaths of 13 workers in a Georgia sugar plant explosion in February and the more than a dozen crane accident deaths this year in New York City, Las Vegas, Miami and Houston.

Now, with time running out on the Bush White House, it is fast-tracking a secretly written rule?long sought by the business community?that could increase workers' exposure to dangerous chemicals and toxic substances on the job and tie the hands of future administrations trying to improve workplace safety.

Bandages may work OK for scraped knees, but as Working America members and union activists in Minnesota told Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) today, the nation?s broken health care system needs serious and comprehensive reform?not a ?Bandage Solution."

The activists marched to Coleman's St. Paul office and at a press conference outside the office delivered a long roll of ?No Bandage Solution? petitions strung together by colorful bandages and signed by more than 23,000 Working America members in Minnesota.

Transafrica Forum's Mwiza Munthali

Nearly 100 trade unionists and other worker justice activists marched outside Zimbabwe's embassy in Washington, D.C., yesterday demanding fair and free elections and an end to government-sponsored violence against opponents.

The demonstration was sponsored by the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the Transafrica Forum, the AFL-CIO and several other groups.

Members of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe?s ruling party have waged a violent and deadly national campaign of intimidation, with union members as major targets, to ensure he remains in power. Mugabe has ruled the country since 1980.

Not only is the U.S. health care system on the "wrong track" and needs to "change direction," but its performance is declining, it costs too much and ranks below most other industrialized nations in terms of access and quality.

A new report from the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit research group, warns:

Rising costs put families, businesses, and public budgets under stress, pulling down living standards for middle- as well as low-income families. New national policies that take a coherent, whole-system, population view are essential for the nation's future health and economic security.

The report, released last week, is the group's second National Scorecard on U.S. Health System Performance and examines access, quality, healthy lives efficiency and equity. It finds:

Overall, performance did not improve from 2006 to 2008. Access to health care significantly declined, while health system efficiency remained low?.Of greatest concern, access to health care has significantly declined. As of 2007, more than 75 million adults?42 percent of all adults ages 19 to 64?were either uninsured during the year or underinsured, up from 35 percent in 2003.