Sirotablog
David Sirota is a political journalist and nationally syndicated newspaper columnist at Creators Syndicate. David writes about political corruption, globalization and working-class economic issues often ignored by both of America's political parties.
-
July 17, 2007 1:44 PM
Brown Leads Fight for New Worker Protections
This (excerpted) press release just came over the transom:
Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, joined by Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), late last night introduced new legislation that would notify workers of mass firings or plant closings and add tools to enforce current law. The Federal Oversight, Reform, and Enforcement of the WARN Act (FOREWARN) (S.1792) would amend the current Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, which became law in 1988, to better protect workers...
The WARN Act now provides workers 60 days’ notification in advance of plant closings and mass layoffs. Employees entitled to notice under WARN include managers and supervisors, as well as hourly and salaried workers. WARN requires that notice also be given to a union, a local elected official, and the state department of labor...
The FOREWARN Act would give the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and state attorneys general the authority to enforce the WARN Act, and would increase penalties to double back pay plus benefits. In addition, it would reduce the mass layoff figure from 50 to 25, reduce the employer size from 100 to 50 employees, and lower the mass layoff trigger. The lower thresholds would protect employees in many smaller manufacturing firms. It would also lengthen the notification period from 60 to 90 days and require employers to provide written notification to the Department of Labor.
Another reminder why it's so good to have Sherrod Brown in the Senate, and how presidential candidates are realizing the old mantra: "It's the economy, stupid."
-
TAKE ACTION
-
About David Sirota
David Sirota is a political journalist and nationally syndicated newspaper columnist at Creators Syndicate. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Hostile Takeover. He lives in Denver, Colorado. His daily blog can be found at CREDO Action. He contributes regularly to the Denver Post's Web site, is a senior editor at In These Times magazine and is working on his second book. He has been profiled in Newsweek and the Rocky Mountain News and is widely known for his reporting on political corruption, globalization and working-class economic issues often ignored by both of America's political parties. Sirota serves as co-chair of the Progressive States Network, a 501(c)3 organization that supports state legislators and that is a partner of CREDO.
You can subscribe to Sirota's e-mail newsletter by going to davidsirota.com and signing up in the lefthand corner. To find out more about Sirota, download his official biography or see his recent media appearances. You can e-mail him at sirota@credoaction.com.
The views expressed on this blog are his own, and do not necessarily represent the views of Working Assets (publisher of CREDO Action) or the institutions Sirota works for.
-
Recent Sirotablog entries
- Teaching McCain Econ 101
- Fox News at 5:15 EST
- Will the Elite Pay Their Fair Share?
- What's Right and Wrong With This Picture
- Bill Kristol Needs to Get Out More
- Six Words for Better Wages...And Why We Need to Promote Ideological Warriors
- What A Huge Scandal!
- Radio West
- Report: America's "Free" Trade Policies Harming Rural Latin America
- Free Speech TV
-
More David Sirota
-
This Modern World
-
July 29, 2008 -
July 23, 2008 -
July 15, 2008 -
July 8, 2008 -
July 1, 2008
-
-
Donations Recipients
-
RSS feeds
Discussion
You know if the Dems pushed legislation that punished off-shoring and out-sourcing of jobs SEAsia it would be a step in the right direction.
But this is just a joke. It doesn't help workers at all, no safety net or added unemployment benefits for them. Just a extended fucking notice BFD!
Now it would have made a difference 10 years ago when the Clintonistas were using NAFTA to destroy our manufacturing base and the H1-B visa workers to gut our tech sector.
Good to see this.
It's about time Sherrod Brown did something other than vote to fund the Iraq war and to "save bees". That's all I had read about him lately.
I had been wondering where the Sherrod Brown from his Congress From The Inside book had gone....
This is all fine and good, but it means nothing if they can't get it out of the Senate, past the House, and signed by the President. At this point, I don't see any one of those things happening. There are more than enough pro-business globalists in Congress to shut this down. And unless they attach this to Iraq spending or something else Bush actually wants, you can damn sure bet that Bush will happily shoot it down.
This will fail just like that last labor bill.
One other thing, any pro-worker legislation no matter how anemic like the FORWARN act will ever pass because of Bush.
BTW the FDA has just annouced it will close half its labs(courtsey of CNN). The assualt on the American people continues despite Democratic control of congress.
Obama isn't doing jack SHIT for the working class folks. In fact, Despite Rhetoric, Obama Pushed Lobbyists’ Interests !! David, Obama's a lot sneaker than you can imagine. That rascal sure took a lot of pages from the Bill Clinton handbook of using lip service false "populism" to FUCK the workers ! If Obama wins the nomination, don't be surprised if Nebraska goes 80% GOP !
It's one small step. Now the Democrat legislators need to take several more, and hopefully larger ones.
End "free" trade, support fair trade which ends the exploitation of workers around the world, and the dumping of goods on countries' markets which destroy their economies.
Increase funding for OSHA, and the EPA. Put more muscle into the NLRB, and initiate programs to re-train workers who's jobs have been outsourced in real jobs, not burger-flipping at McGreasy's.
And, for cat's sake, help the majority of Americans, not the stinking rich, with getting decent medical care, and good public schooling, not the no-funding Every Child Left Behind teach-to-the-test scam that Bush pushed on us.
Right now with the exceptions of Ron Paul, Edwards and Kucinich the presidential campaigns is a dismal battle between kleptocrats.
Its no longer a contest between Democrats and Republicans but between puppets owned by the same wealthy people behind the scenes. They win if any of their puppets(Romeny, Ghouliani, Obama or Billary) win.
Then add the MSM stenography corps to the mix where they refuse to do anything except repeat verbatim what the candidates say no matter how badly they lie. Who needs Limbaugh when CNN and MSNBC are willing to carry the kleptocrats water?
Its depressing as hell.
Brown may want to tackle this terror event:
JETBLUE TERMINATES UNION ACTIVIST
FLIGHT ATTENDANT AFTER ASSAULT BY PASSENGER
Washington, DC - A JetBlue flight attendant and supporter of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA) organizing campaign at
her carrier was recently terminated for what appears to be a blatant anti-union tactic by JetBlue executives. Last month, off-duty senior
flight attendant Mala Amarsingh was getting ready to board a flight from Las Vegas to New York when an intoxicated passenger approached her in
the gate area and began to verbally assault her. The drunken passenger, who was denied boarding on previous flights, then spat in her face and
eventually resorted to physical threats. Several days later, after filing an incident report, Amarsingh was terminated by JetBlue management for using a curse word in response to the shocking incident.
"I believe that if this happened to any other JetBlue employee, management would not have stooped to termination, but because I am a
vocal and proud supporter of AFA-CWA, management saw me as a threat and used this incident as a pretext to get rid of me," said Amarsingh.
"I love being a flight attendant and I have been a loyal employee. It is unfortunate that JetBlue management chose to condone physical and
verbal assaults from a passenger as a means to cover up their union busting."
Union busting, often referred to as a union avoidance campaign, unfortunately is standard practice by employers. According to American
Rights at Work, over 82 percent of employers hire high priced union busting consultants to fight union organizing drives. However, in the
case of Amarsingh, being physically and verbally assaulted was all it took for JetBlue to destroy her career.
"The actions of JetBlue management in this situation are deplorable," exclaimed Patricia Friend, AFA-CWA International President. "Ms. Amarsingh was assaulted, and instead of standing up for an employee who has given a great deal to the company, management decided to use this incident as an opportunity to slow the progress of an organizing campaign. This action clearly illustrates why JetBlue flight attendants need the protection AFA-CWA can provide them. If management will not stand behind their employees after an assault, how can they claim to have their employees' best interests in mind?"
For over 60 years, the Association of Flight Attendants has been serving as the voice for flight attendants in the workplace, in the aviation industry, in the media and on Capitol Hill. More than 55,000 flight attendants at 20 airlines come together to form AFA-CWA, the world's largest flight attendant union. AFA is part of the 700,000-member strong Communications Workers of America (CWA), AFL-CIO.
Visit us at www.afanet.org.
Join the Discussion