By Doug Cunningham

As backers push to get the immigration reform bill passed by the U.S. Senate this week, the AFL-CIO says it’s anti-family and anti-worker. Ana Avendano is Director of the AFL-CIO’s immigrant worker program. The guest worker program in the bill is one reason the AFL-CIO opposes it.

[Avendano]: “Every single congressional commission that has studied these programs has rejected them because they are bad public policy. Because in every single temporary worker program that our nation has known - and the entire world has known - workers are exploited under the program. Why? Because the employers control the employee relationship."

The Senate began discussions concerning the Employee Free Choice Act Monday with a vote expected to come today. Jesse Russell reports:

The U.S. Senate has been working through a full plate including last weeks long debate on a new environmental bill, and this weeks discussion of the immigration bill and the Employee Free Choice Act. While all three have important parts for organized labor, it is the latter that is most important. If passed the bill would give unions the ability to organize through card check. Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy opened yesterday’s debate and explained what the climate for labor has been like over the past decade.

By Doug Cunningham

With a guest worker program still in the immigration bill, the U.S. Senate has pushed back a vote on immigration reform to June. Organized labor for the most part is against a guest worker program, arguing that it exploits workers while denying them the path to full citizenship that would give them full labor rights. Democrats say the immigration reform provides a tough but fair path to citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrant workers living in the U.S. The AFL-CIO says a guest worker program will guarantee a steady flow of cheap labor from workers who would essentially be indentured workers too afraid of being deported to protest substandard wages, benefits and unsafe working conditions.

By Doug Cunningham

As the U.S. Senate worked Wednesday to iron out the details of immigration reform organized labor remains opposed to a guest worker program for undocumented immigrants. The AFL-CIO believes such programs exploit immigrant workers and can act to depress wages and working conditions for other workers. Labor supports reform that includes a path to citizenship. And while individual unions differ in their approaches to immigration they are nearly all in agreement that guest worker programs amount to second-class status for workers. The SEIU, for example supports a path to citizenship but is against a new guest worker program.

On Wednesday Senate Republicans stonewalled a bill that would have allowed the government to negotiate drug prices directly with companies. One Idaho physician says the move could cost taxpayers millions of dollars. Jesse Russell reports:

When Senate Republicans successfully blocked a measure that would have shifted negotiations over drugs covered by Medicare Part D from the private sector to the federal government, they may have cost American seniors millions of dollars.

[Foutz]: "The whole point of having a large organization, like the government, in health care is to reduce costs. And one of the big ways you can do that is through wholesale purchasing."

With prices for prescription drugs under Medicare Part D rising sharply – Senate Republicans have blocked a bill that could lower those prices. Jesse Russell reports:

Senate Democrats failed in garnering the 60 votes needed to bring to a vote a bill that would have allowed the government to negotiate Medicare drug prices. Under the current Medicare Part D plan private insurers handle the negotiations with drug makers – Democrats believe the government influence companies to lower prices and cut costs for senior citizens. Republicans believe drug prices should be left up to the private sector and not put in the hands of the secretary of Health and Human Services. As Republicans were blocking the bill a new report was released that drug prices under the Bush Administration’s Medicare Part D increased by 9.2 percent – three times the increase in this year’s Social Security cost-of-living adjustment and four times as fast as the rate of inflation. The report was filed by the organization Families USA using data provided by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

By Jesse Russell

Hundreds of thousands of minimum wage workers have been waiting for nearly a decade for a minimum wage increase. 30 states have taken the issue into their own hands. Democrats in the U.S. House made a push earlier this year to raise the federal minimum wage to $7.25 per hour from $5.15 per hour, but Republicans in the Senate managed to block it and attach tax breaks for small business. The bill has now been attached to the already contentious emergency war spending bill that also calls for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. The Senate is scheduled to vote today.

By Doug Cunningham

ACORN - The Association of Community Organizations For Reform Now - is joining a push for paid sick days for all U.S. workers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 48 percent of American workers don't have paid sick days. A bill in Congress sponsored by Senator Ted Kennedy called the health Families Act that would give workers at least seven paid sick days a year.

By Doug Cunningham

Errol Hohrein is testifying before the U.S. Senate today on the need for the Employee Free Choice Act to restore the real right of workers to easily form unions free of employer intimidation.

[Hohrein]: “Without the Employees Free Choice Act these companies are never going to do the right thing. They’re not going to follow the law. They’re not going to do what’s right for their people.”

Horein says he was fired and his co-workers harassed and threatened when they came together to form a union at Front Range Energy in Colorado. And he says if Republicans block this labor law reform now, they’ll lose again at the ballot box.

An attempt by Republicans to block the right of airport screeners to organize has failed. Jesse Russell reports:

New legislation has passed the Senate that could give Transportation Security Administration airport screeners whistle-blower protections and the right to collectively bargain. The legislation is part of the 9-11 Commission recommendations that Democrats have been working to pass now that they have control of the House and Senate. The measure narrowly passed with a 51-46 vote and President George W. Bush has suggested he will veto it when it is put before him. The legislation also includes a provision that requires nearly $10 billion in emergency funding be distributed based on the likely hood that a city is likely a terrorist target.

By Doug Cunningham

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney is urging the U.S. Senate to grant collective bargaining rights to tens of thousands of Transportation Security Administration officers. By approving those union rights for airport security workers, the AFL-CIO says it would send a strong message that we must strengthen our nation’s security by really supporting those who are entrusted with protecting it. The AFL-CIO says without the protections workers get with unions security workers at airports won’t be free to speak up about security shortcomings.

U.S. minimum wage workers may have to wait a little bit longer for that raise they haven't seen in nearly a decade. Jesse Russell has the details:

On Wednesday Senate Republicans blocked plans by Democrats to push through a "clean" minimum wage increase bill. Senate Democrats had hoped to echo the House of Representatives by passing the bill with no amendments. That was thwarted when Republicans pasted on an amendment that would cut taxes for small businesses. Debate on the bill continues as Democrats failed to get the 60 votes they needed for cloture. If the bill does pass the Senate with the tax cuts on board, it may get held up in the House. The federal minimum wage is set at $5.15 per hour. On January 10 the House overwhelmingly voted to raise the rate to $7.25 per hour over a two year schedule. Wages have not been increased since 1997. Meanwhile, Iowa became the most recent state to come closer to raising its minimum wage when the State House voted overwhelmingly to send the bill onto the State Senate. That bill would raise Iowa's wages to $7.25 per hour by next January.

By Doug Cunningham

The U.S. Senate is expected to vote today on whether to end debate and bring up a clean minimum wage increase bill for a vote without attaching tax break strings for business. Tax break bills for business never have automatic minimum wage hikes attached, but George W. Bush and some Republicans want to hold the minimum wage increase hostage to more tax breaks for business. Organized labor wants a “clean” minimum wage increase with no more tax breaks attached.

By Doug Cunningham

George W. Bush is using a recess-appointment to put Richard Stickler in charge of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. According to the United Mineworkers of America the mines that Stickler managed from 1989 – 1996 had worker injury rates double the national average. The U.S. Senate twice sent Stickler’s nomination back to the White House. But Bush is using his presidential power to appoint Stickler to MSHA while the Senate is out of session. Forty coal miners have died on the job so far this year.

By Doug Cunningham

U.S. Senator Russ Feingold supports the Employee Free Choice Act. It would let workers join unions by signing union cards and increase fines for employers that violate union rights. Feingold says a change of Congress is needed to advance this issue and many others.

[Russ Feingold]: "Those issues won't get anywhere unless we change this Congress. We have one-party rule, it's hostile to labor and it's hostile to real health care reform. So we need change in America and we need it now."

By Doug Cunningham

Supporters of a real minimum wage hike want to defeat a bill up for a vote right now in the U.S. Senate because it would increase the minimum too slowly and has big tax breaks for rich heirs attached that will have an adverse impact on federal programs for the poor in the future. Holly Sklar of Let Justice Roll.

[Holly Sklar 1]: “What we want them to do is, at a minimum, pass the fair Minimum Wage Act which has been on the table over and over and over again. The Fair Minimum Wage Act, which is a clean bill, that is it doesn’t mix up the minimum wage with other issues.”

By Doug Cunningham

The Teamsters oppose the pensions overhaul bill in the Senate because in some cases it allows companies to reduce vested benefits – deferred compensation pension money earned by workers. Teamsters Legislative Director Fred McLuckie.

[Fred McLuckie 1]: “And these are benefits that our members have earned and are expecting to receive when they retire.”

The United Steelworkers are joining the Teamsters in opposition to the pensions bill. McLuckie says it’s likely to pass, but…

[McLuckie 2]: “This fight won’t end. We will be fighting at the bargaining table as best we can to make sure that our pensions are secure for our members.”

By Jesse Russell

Last week a majority of Republicans in the Senate voted down an attempt by Democrats to raise the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour by the year 2009. Just weeks before lawmakers in the House voted to raise their own salaries by 2 percent - increasing their pay to $168,500 a year. In 2004 the average household income in the United States was just under $45,000.

The federal minimum wage has been stuck at $5.15 per hour for nine years - only 21 states have a state minimum wage higher then the federal.

During the floor debate over increasing the minimum wage Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts called congress giving itself a raise while ignoring working Americans "obscene."

By Jesse Russell

As Senate prepares to return next week, it appears Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is preparing to resume the debate on repealing the Estate Tax.

[Ricchetti1]: The only way the opposition has been able to succeed on this issue, in defining it as a political imperative is by grossly misleading the public about who actually pays the estate tax and whose interests are involved in the estate tax.

That was Steve Ricchetti, chairman for the Coalition for America’s Priorities. During a conference call last week Ricchetti’s organization in conjunction with Responsible Wealth, released a study that showed the majority of Americans, when given complete information on the estate tax, has little support for reform of the tax.

By Doug Cunningham

The U.S. Senate has reached a bipartisan compromise agreement on immigration reform that creates a path to citizenship for many millions of undocumented immigrant workers. But the reform is far from becoming law, since it must first be reconciled with the U.S. House before going on to the president to become law.

The Senate plan creates a guest worker program that organized labor opposes. The AFL-CIO says this proposed reform creates a big group of second-class citizens who might not ever become U.S. citizens. The AFL-CIO has said that such a guest worker program
will put downward pressure on wages while taking jobs from citizens.