By Doug Cunningham

Workers and their unions are making a big push to get the Employee Free Choice Act passed in the U.S. Senate next week. A big rally featuring Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Ted Kennedy is set for Tuesday. The labor law reform making it easier to join unions has already passed the House.

By Doug Cunningham

In Washington D.C. today the Economic Policy Institute is hosting a forum on its Agenda for Shared Prosperity program called Work That Works. As EPI Vice-President Ross Eisenbrey explains, it’s a look at how the relationship between workers and their employers can be changed to benefit working families.

[Eisenbrey 1]: “How to get better benefits for working people, to get the kind of sick leaves and vacations policies that are prevalent in the rest of the industrialized world - and to restore the bargaining power of the average employee."

Eisenbrey says the public has rejected conservative economic policies that have enriched a few while leaving at least 80 percent of working America behind. The Agenda for Shared Prosperity is an overhaul of the social contract on a range of issues from healthcare, to trade policies, retirement security, paid sick leave and the right to organize unions.

By Doug Cunningham

Union organizers and activists in Washington for the AFL-CIO Organizing Summit are rallying on Capitol Hill in support of the Employee Free Choice Act that would restore the real right of workers to form unions and collectively bargain. Communication Workers of America President Larry Cohen.

[Larry Cohen]: “When the House of Representatives passes this bill, even before it passes in the Senate it validates that notion that a majority of the House of Representatives stands for collective bargaining again. That House will be out there, as George and Nancy have committed. They will be out there to say to the Comcasts and the Verizons and the Goodyears and the Peabody Coals and the Wal-Marts and Cintas that collective bargaining is comin’ back in America.”

By Doug Cunningham

Workers at the Catholic News Service says they don't want to give up defined benefit pensions or the right to bargain over them. The news service is owned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Paul Reilly is with the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild representing the workers. He says there's often a gulf between Catholic social doctrine supporting workers and the real life behavior toward labor at Catholic institutions.

[Paul Reilly]: "Well, unfortunately the U.S. Catholic Church - the various dioceses - sometimes talk better than they actually act."

Workers at the Catholic News Service haven't had a contract since January. New talks are supposed to happen this week. The union says management at the Catholic News Service insists on having language in the contract giving them the right to terminate or reduce pensions.

By Doug Cunningham

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. says the Bush administration’s efforts to gut collective bargaining at the Department of Homeland Security are illegal. National Treasury Employee Union President Colleen Kelley says it’s a big win for workers and their unions.

[Colleen Kelley 1]: “We won a sweeping legal victory for all DHS employees. What the court declared was that the labor relations portion of the Homeland Security’s regressive personnel system are illegal and they cannot be implemented.”

Kelley says the court was very clear that these Bush administration personnel system changes at the Department of Homeland Security are illegal attacks on collective bargaining rights.

By Doug Cunningham

At The Take Back America conference in Washington D.C. labor was part of the mix of activists exploring progressive political and media strategies. From Washington D.C., WIN’s Frank Emspak describes labor’s role in the conference.

[Frank Emspak 1]: "You have a lot of local Democratic Party officials, a lot of local elected officials who are not necessarily labor. So this conference provides a means for labor leadership and people associated with the labor movement to try to talk to people about what a labor-oriented agenda would look like. That's, I think, the real value of having labor participation here."

By Doug Cunningham

In Washington, D.C. today there will be a march and rally to both mark the anniversary of International Human Rights Day coming up on the tenth as well as protest the National Security Personnel System. Workers and their unions say this new personnel system guts collective bargaining rights and thus violates basic human rights. National Education Association President Reg Weaver.

[Reg Weaver 1] : "When we march it's for purposes of making sure that the individuals and the labor movement - we don't allow ourselves to be having civil rights and civil liberties threatened by what's coming down the pike as it relates to the national Security Personnel System."

The labor-management partnership of health care giant Kaiser-Permanente and its unions has reached the largest private-sector contract agreement of the year, covering 82,000 employees nationwide and providing significant increases in wages and benefits.

Kaiser-Permanente Senior vice president Leslie Margolin:

[Margolin] "This agreement is good for Kaiser-Permanente workers, it's good for our patients and our members, it's good for our purchaser groups, and it's good for the communities that we serve."

The agreement is receiving overwhelming support from union members voting this week, and the contract is expected to take effect Saturday. Peter deCicco, Executive Director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, says the labor-management partnership at Kaiser-Permanente is a huge improvement over the cost-cutting seen in most labor struggles:

By Doug Cunningham

A massive antiwar protest in the nation’s capital drew well over 100,000 people over the weekend demanding that U.S. troops be brought home from Iraq now. Organizers said the turnout was 300,000. The labor movement joined the protest as U.S. Labor Against The War gathered at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington to add labor’s voice to the demand to stop the war. Fred Mason is a co-convener of U.S. Labor Against The War.

[Fred Mason 1] : “The best way to support and protect our troops is to bring them home now and end the occupation.”

Mason says the AFL-CIO resolution earlier this year calling for immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops was historic and so was this antiwar protest.

UNITE HERE is in talks again today with hotel management in Washington D.C. UNITE HERE’s Press Secretary Amanda Cooper says progress was made last week and she’s hopeful about today’s talks.

[Cooper 1]: “We hope that every time we get together we make progress but we’re still in strike preparation because if we don’t get to the contract that we need by the fifteenth we need to move on.”

Workers at fourteen hotels in Washington DC are looking to the Presidential Inauguration to reignite stalled contract negotiations.

[Cooper1] "The workers have been working without a contract for more than three months."

Amanda Cooper is the press secretary for UNITE-HERE representing 3,800 hotel workers in Washington DC.

[Cooper2] "The guest experience is completely dependent on the work of our members and the administration wants to show their guests a good time, however it's a challenge for our members to get excited about serving the guests when management has shown them so little respect in the form of a sub-standard contract."