Hot News for September 2009

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~ A Message from T.C. Gillespie, Pres. Tarrant County CLC, AFL-CIO ~
Sept. 29, 2009

To all concerned re: AFL-CIO Health Care Reform Actions

Healthcare can't wait - Congress is shaping health care reform legislation right now. To influence health care reform, we must turn up the heat now with calls and letters to Congress within the next two weeks and tell Congress to enact health care reform that:

• Controls costs,
• Provides guaranteed coverage for all Americans,
• Holds insurance companies accountable,
• Includes a public health insurance plan option,
• Requires all employers to pay their fair share,
• And rejects new taxes that would further hurt working families
  

The AFL-CIO is counting on union leaders to get at least 10% of membership involved in the push for members to call Congress on October 7th, the national call-in day.

Be a part of the solution and spread the word today. Open the links below to be heard!

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?State=Tx
John Cornyn & Kay Bailey Hutchison contact info here

http://clerk..house.gov/member_info/index.html
Find your member info here

"Tips for Calling" when you reach the Congressional office, say a few words your personal experiences why health care reform is critical to you and your family...Ask if you can count on the member's support for health care reform that includes a strong public health ins. option....Thank the person for conveying your message."

"We should not force working people to pay more for the insurance they already have in the form of increased taxes; working families are struggling already. It's time to rein in the insurance companies so they can't deny coverage or raise costs whenever they choose; people and their doctors should make health care decisions - not insurance companies. It's time Congress to side with working families and not insurance companies."

~excerpts from AFL-CIO Toolkit for September-October '09 Health Care Actions

Your feedback is welcome and your time appreciated in this matter; and it only takes a few moments to make the call. Thank you in advance for doing your part!

In Solidarity,
T.C. Gillespie

sent by: Laura Sparano
Tarrant County Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO
4025 Rufe Snow Drive
North Richland Hills, TX 76180
817-284-1461
817-595-4894 fax

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Sick Of It

A tremendous amount misinformation continues to circulate regarding regarding health care reform and it is difficult to separate the myth from reality, especially as the measure evolves and changes in Congress. Therefore it might be instructive to note who is voicing the biggest objection to change. Not surprisingly it is the biggest insurance companies. They have the most to loose. While our overall cost is going up, our coverages are going down and our co-pays going up, those companies are lobbying Congress to maintain the status quo, so as to protect their outrageous profits and executive bonus packages. And they are doing it with your money. The following is provided by the AFL-CIO for you to conveniently voice your objections.

Gary Moffitt
Legislative Director

In the past week, more than 10,000 activists across the country have contacted their insurance companies to demand that they stop denying care and stop using our premiums to lobby against health insurance reform.
Here at the AFL-CIO, we asked the insurance commissioners in Connecticut, Indiana, New York and Pennsylvania to investigate how insurance company lobbying costs are affecting our health insurance premiums. It's sickening that insurance companies are fighting health care reform with OUR MONEY!

We want real health insurance reform, including a strong public option, and it's time insurance companies got out of the way. Join us. Tell your insurance company that you are sick of it.

• Click here if a Blue Cross Blue Shield company provides your health insurance. 
• Click here if UnitedHealthcare provides your health insurance. 
• Click here if Aetna provides your health insurance.
• Click here if Humana provides your health insurance.
• Click here if CIGNA provides your health insurance.
• Click here if a different company provides your health insurance.
• Click here if you don’t have health insurance.

In solidarity,
Marc Laitin
AFL-CIO Online Mobilization Coordinator

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Democratic Rally

October 3rd, Weatherford

Marc Veasey, Wendy Davis

Candidates: Bill White, John Sharp, Felix Alvarado, Hank Gilbert, Bill Burton, Jeff Weems

>>> Click For Details <<<

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Musicians to Blast Canned Music at Ballet Opener
$700K paid to two Ballet Board Members, then Orchestras Ousted
Ballet Robbed Musicians’ Jobs to Cover Losses,
Fleeced patrons out of legit show

Click here to read more:
http://www.musiciansdfw.org/ballet_crisis/ballet_press_release10.pdf

WHO: The Dallas-Fort Worth Professional Musicians Association, affiliated Local 72-147 of the
American Federation of Musicians, which represents more than 1700 professional musicians
across North Texas and Southern Oklahoma, including musicians of the Dallas and Fort Worth
Symphony Orchestras and The Dallas Opera Orchestra.

WHAT: Professional musicians will protest Texas Ballet Theater’s canned music policy by forming
picket lines and distributing informational leaflets at the company’s season opening
performances, October 2, 3 and 4 in Fort Worth.

WHERE: Bass Performance Hall, 4th and Commerce Streets, Fort Worth, Texas.

WHEN: Friday, October 2, 2009, 6:30pm – 8:00pm; Saturday, October 3, 2009, 6:30pm – 8:00pm;
Sunday, October 4, 2009, 12:30pm – 2:00pm.

WHY: Texas Ballet Theater says it will not use its pit orchestras – the Fort Worth Symphony and
Dallas Opera Orchestras – and instead will utilize “canned” pre-recorded tracks for its 2009/10
season. The Ballet company has traditionally employed the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra to
accompany its seasonal performances at Bass Hall in Fort Worth, and has used the Dallas Opera
Orchestra for holiday Nutcracker performances in Dallas. The company’s decision to replace
live orchestra with recordings has eliminated hundreds of jobs for professional musicians and
deprives audiences of a legitimate ballet performance. “Texas Ballet Theater is cheating patrons
by charging regular ticket prices with no advance notice that the orchestra pit is empty. Patrons
paid for live music, but they won’t get it,” said Musicians’ Union president Ray Hair.
“Recorded music cannot replace the power, beauty and freshness of a live orchestra. With no
orchestra, Texas Ballet Theater presents artificial ballet.” In June 2008, the ballet company
traveled to China and paid $30,000.00 for recordings it used to displace musicians in March of
this year. The company boasted that it saved between $600,000 and $700,000 by emptying its
orchestra pit last season and outsourcing local musicians with recordings, some made in China.
Information obtained by the Union shows that prior to the company’s fiscal collapse in August
2008, two of Texas Ballet Theater’s Board of Directors were paid six figure annual sums
totaling more than $700,000.00 which went unreported in the company’s IRS filings. Board
members of non-profit organizations are generally expected to serve without compensation. The
Union will protest the ballet’s canned music policy with informational picket lines and
leaflets at all performances during the 2009/10 season.

For further information, visit www.musiciansdfw.org or contact Local 72-147 President Ray Hair
at (Metro) 817-469-6040 or 817-988-5238 (cell).

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Title II System Freeze

From: Schildge, Tiffany [mailto:Tiffany.Schildge@aa.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 10, 2009 4:21 PM
Subject: FW: TWU Title II System PTR Freeze - effective 7/15/2009 - LIFTED

All,

The freeze for the July reduction is now being lifted effective immediately for AA TWU Title II.

- All current requisitions will continue to be filled via the internal processes of recalls or transfers with current VP approval.
- Due to system wide External Hiring Freeze, we will need your EC Member’s approval to fill any vacancies externally.

As normal, Talent Services will request appropriate approvals from RMD, VP and/or EC Member before processing any newly created requisitions.

FYI - Next PTR Freeze will be effective 9/28/2009.

Thanks,
Tiffany

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Wall Street's Gall

by Les Leopold

The Progressive September 2009

“Morgan Stanley plans to repackage a downgraded collateralized debt obligation backed by leveraged loans into new securities with AAA ratings in the first transaction of its kind, said two people familiar with the sale. Morgan Stanley is selling $87.1 million of securities that it expects to receive top AAA ratings and $42.9 million of notes graded Baa2, the second-lowest investment grade by Moody’s Investors Service.” —Bloomberg News, July 8, 2009

YOU’VE GOT TO ADMIRE their gall. Wall Street firms crashed the entire world economy by selling fantasy finance instruments. They got bailed out by us to the tune of trillions of dollars in TARP money, cheap loans, and asset guarantees. And then they take our money and start it all over again!

And nobody in a position to do so seems willing to stop them.

Actually, the story is so outrageous that Wall Street is counting on us not to believe it.

Let’s take it from the top. Starting in the late 1970s, the nation embarked on a grand experiment. Our leading economists and policy makers believed heart and soul that our economy truly could become magnificent if we did two things: 1) deregulate financial services as much as possible; and 2) “reform” the tax code so that the wealthiest among us would be unshackled to create new and wondrous investments and products for our economy. These steps (along with demolishing unions, gutting the minimum wage, and running pell-mell toward globalization) were to bring about an investment boom of mammoth proportions throughout our economy, and so raise all boats.

The yachts sure did rise. Here are some statistics: • In 1970, the ratio of the top 100 corporate CEOs and the average worker’s pay was 40 to 1. By 2007 it was 1,723 to 1. • In 1970, the top 1 percent received 8 percent of the national income. By 2007, it was gobbling up 23 percent of the national income. • In 2006, the top one-tenth of 1 percent of tax payers (about 140,000 tax returns) reported as much income as the bottom 50 percent (67.4 million tax returns). The last time we suffered from such an extreme income distribution? 1928-29.

Most of us had leaky boats. Between 1975 and 2007, the real wages of the average production worker (94 million of them, as of 2007) decreased by 18 percent. So what did the tiny fraction do with all the money? Some of it was invested in the real economy. But there was so much money looking for tangible investments that opportunities dwindled along with rates of return. As a result, The Wall Street Journal noted four years ago, “Global investors are diving into a wide range of riskier assets: emerging countries’ stocks and bonds; real estate and realestate- backed debt; commodity funds; fine art; private-equity funds, which buy stakes in nonpublic companies; and the investment contracts called derivatives, including a kind structured to permit the sophisticated to take huge bond risks.”

Wall Street did what finance always does when income distributions get out of whack. It created a fantasy finance casino to attract that surplus capital. Wall Street’s hottest products were built around collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and other derivatives, which Warren Buffett has called “financial weapons of mass destruction.” Investment alchemists turned subprime loans, junk bonds, and risky auto loans into AAA-rated securities. They sliced and diced vast pools of this debt into securities that had varying amounts of risks that corresponded with various rates of return. The more risk, the higher the rate of return. And all of the rates turned out to be higher than comparably rated plain vanilla corporate or government bonds. It was a miracle of financial innovation.

Elite investors, hungry for the higher returns, grabbed these new securities as fast as they could. And since each one contained enormous embedded fees for the top banks and investment houses that produced them, Wall Street grew fat and rich—richer than ever in the history of finance.

The demand for these new products grew so great that the supply of junk debt couldn’t keep up with it. There just weren’t enough subprime mortgages to feed the beast. So our financial engineers invented new securities. Rather than taking the time and expense to assemble new pools of junk debt, they used insurance policies, called credit default swaps, to make “synthetic” collateralized debt obligations. Again the rating agencies, which were (and still are) paid by the large financial institutions to rate their goodies, would bless most of the slices with AA and AAA ratings.

These new synthetic CDOs also sold briskly, which led to even more exotic inventions like CDOs squared and cubed. All of it was unregulated.

Some institutions, like AIG, decided they could make a killing if they insured the risky CDO investments of others from default. The more fantasy finance instruments they insured, the more premiums they received, and the more secure their counterparties felt having their CDO slices guaranteed against failure. What a felicitous confluence of interests. The consumer got access to more and more credit, the wealthy got higher rates of returns, and Wall Street got fat fees—and then bonuses that would have made the Pharaohs blush.

There was only one small problem. The underlying assets that propped up this entire house of cards were getting shakier and shakier. When housing prices shot through the roof, losing all contact with economic reality, our deeply indebted consumers could not possibly continue to increase their debt load. The inevitable happened. Prices stopped rising and then declined. Strapped homeowners fell behind on their payments. The asset values behind the loans declined. The value of CDOs formed from the pools of junk debt declined, as did the various offspring of the synthetic securities. Through the miracle of modern financial engineering (and old-time greed), trillions of dollars of securities turned toxic in a manner of months, crashing the world’s financial system. Credit froze because every major financial institution was loaded with toxic assets and knew that others were in the same fix. They refused to loan to anyone. The freeze pushed the real economy off a cliff since nearly every business runs on credit. No credit, no jobs, no mortgage payments— and down we go. Welcome to the Great Depression II.

To reboot the system, Wall Street received trillions of dollars of loans, asset guarantees, and TARP funds almost overnight—the greatest transfer of wealth since slavery. Nomi Prins, the writer and former managing director at Goldman Sachs, calculates that Wall Street has sponged up over $13.3 trillion and counting.

Having put the entire financial sector on the dole, Congress suffered a momentary bout of populism and instituted wage caps on bankers at those institutions that received TARP funds. Needless to say, TARP recipients wanted to pay back the Treasury as rapidly as possible so that the elite bankers and traders could go back to high-flying compensation packages.

Morgan Stanley is among the first to break clear of TARP restrictions. On June 17, with much ballyhoo in the press, they paid back $10 billion to the Treasury. I’m sure many fine wines were cracked open that night. Whoopee! We’re free of the $500,000 wage cap (which to Wall Street top executives is barely a subsistence wage). And since new financial regulations have not as yet been enacted, this is the perfect time to boost profits through a little casino CDO gambling.

Here’s the hidden outrage to which Prins draws our attention: Even after the TARP repayments, Morgan Stanley still owes us nearly $25 billion. They are profiting mightily from the $23.7 billion “Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program,” which gives investors a big incentive to throw their money at the banks again because the government has them covered.

So Morgan Stanley is once again peddling financial weapons of mass destruction. It is repackaging old toxic assets into new ones—and booking fat fees in the process. Apparently, they’ve also added a new layer of guarantees so that our trusty watchdog of financial probity— Moody’s—will bless it with a AAA rating. But don’t hold your breath thinking that you’ll share in the spoils of this rich man’s game. The public is subsidizing Morgan Stanley’s experiment in gall, but the profits will stay squarely in Morgan Stanley’s private pockets.

And just to rub it in so it really hurts: They’re using their listenersupported funds to finance the lobbyists who are fighting any and all controls on their crap game, including the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

The Obama Administration and Congress have a golden opportunity to shut down this casino before the dice roll. They should prohibit the creation of new collateralized debt obligations. They should outlaw the future securitization of mortgages. And they should insist that any financial instrument that serves as an insurance policy be strictly regulated, just like insurance is supposed to be.

Wall Street is carefully watching this test. Will Obama, Biden, Summers, Geithner, Bernanke, Dodd, or Frank do something, or just blink? Right now we’ve got a lot of fluttering eyelashes.

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Bumpy ride continues for American, unions

By ANDREA AHLES
aahles@star-telegram.com

For American Airlines and its labor unions, long gone are the warm, congenial feelings of 2003.
Instead, six years after working together to keep American, based in Fort Worth, out of bankruptcy, the parties are at odds again. American’s contract negotiations with all its labor groups — pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, ground workers and airport agents — are in federal mediation.

And after years of talks, the airline has no signed contracts, with no tentative agreements expected anytime soon.
The unions say workers deserve pay increases after taking substantial cuts in 2003 — particularly after American awarded executives millions in bonuses. The company says it needs workers to be more productive and must reign in soaring retiree medical costs and pension benefits.

"The changes we are seeking are things that would make the company competitive for the long term, and that is what we really think is in the best interests of all of the stakeholders," said Mark Burdette, the airline’s lead negotiator and vice president of employee relations. "It doesn’t do any good to agree to a proposal that is not sustainable in the long run."

When some contract talks started, American was posting quarterly profits. Now with the recession, fewer people are flying, and the company is losing hundreds of millions of dollars a quarter.

"It was in the benefit of the company to prolong negotiations from 2007, but now it’s in the best interest of the unions to try to fight for what they have and keep it at a constant amount until the economy turns around," said William Maxwell, a finance professor at the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University.

American Eagle, the regional carrier owned by American’s parent, AMR Corp., has contract agreements with its pilots. But its flight attendants’ contract becomes amendable in October, and all of its mechanics and ground crew contracts are in mediation.
Leaders at American’s biggest labor groups — the Allied Pilots Association, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants and the Transport Workers Union — say they recognize that the company is struggling financially but are frustrated with what they say are unreasonable proposals from American.

"Nobody wants to see American go into bankruptcy," said Laura Glading, president of the APFA. "There is not one work group that has any interest in going down that road. But I think we want desperately to be treated fairly."

Pilots

American and its pilots union, the APA, which represents over 12,000 pilots, first swapped contract proposals in September 2006. Since then, negotiations have been slow, and tensions have been mounting.

Airline labor contracts fall under the purview of the Railway Labor Act and its complex rules governing how the two parties can negotiate in mediation.

The pilots union cannot legally go on strike until a federal mediator declares an impasse, at which point the union can seek "self-help."

The pilots union feels that after three years of talks, which have led to only nine tentative agreements out of 71 contract items, they are deadlocked with American.

"When you have an impasse, you have got to let the process work," said Lloyd Hill, president of the APA.

"We’ve been there for a long time."

American says that it is negotiating in good faith but that the pilots’ contract proposal asks for a 53 percent wage increase.

With the company losing money, company officials say, that’s not reasonable.

"Going back to 2003 pay rates is not what the market is for pilot jobs today," Burdette said.

He said the pilots have not come down from their original wage proposal, in October 2007.

The two sides met with a federal mediator last week in North Texas for three days of negotiations, but no new tentative agreements were made. American presented proposals related to medical benefits that the pilots say would double premiums, deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses.

The next set of talks is scheduled for the end of the month.

"My paycheck is the exact same dollar amount from 1992," said Hill, who notes that pilots are still upset with the millions of dollars in annual bonuses the company gives to management. "I’m working for 1993 pay rates, and I’m looking for a restorative contract."

Flight attendants

Among the groups, the 18,000-member flight attendants union, the APFA, has agreed to the most sections of its contract — over 71 percent of items.

However, contract talks last week in Washington, D.C., focused on the areas where the two parties are the furthest apart: wages and work schedules.

The APFA has not disclosed what kind of wage increases it’s seeking, but Glading said negotiators are growing increasingly frustrated with their company counterparts when it comes to compensation.

"They never have money for employees," Glading said. "They have money to refurbish. They have money to expand and to buy new china for the airplanes, but there is never money for the employees," she said, referring to American’s July purchase of china, cutlery and wine glasses for first and business classes.

Complicating wage discussions are talks related to work rules. Glading said the company presented proposals last week asking to schedule flight attendants 95 hours a month, which Glading feels is impossible.

American says flight attendants are limited to flying 77 hours domestically and 82 internationally. Most competitors allow maximum flight hours of 90 hours a month or more.

"We can’t continue to exist if we have unit costs that are higher than everybody else’s," Burdette said.

"In the long run, what we are saying is we expect to compensate our employees at or near the top of the industry. In order to do that or continue to do that, we are going to need to have productivity that matches up."

Unlike the pilots union, which admits that its relationship with management can be adversarial, the APFA believes that it can work with American management.

Last week, American announced that it will cut 921 flight attendant positions but that only 228 flight attendants will be laid off as the company and union officials worked to provide voluntary options such as two-month furloughs.

"This past week shows when we do work collaboratively, things can be achieved, and we need the company to show the same kind of attitude at the negotiating table," Glading said.

Transport Workers Union

Representing 26,000 workers in different work groups that fall under seven contracts, the TWU is American’s biggest union.

In May 2008, American offered lump-sum payments — one for 5 percent of pay and another for 3.5 percent — to all TWU work groups. Most groups rejected the offer, which also added paid holidays and sick time.

With the next mediation sessions set for the end of October, Robert Gless, TWU assistant air transport division director, said negotiators are working to find some common ground. Committees have been in meetings with American this summer to try to work through smaller issues.

"We are looking for a short-term agreement that would infuse some money and work rules into the workers’ pockets," Gless said. He said most contract proposals ask for raises of 2 to 3 percent.

"It’s just a moderate cost-of-living increase to keep us up with what’s going on today."

American said that it felt close to a contract with one TWU group last year but that talks fell apart over retiree medical benefits for new hires.

"Virtually nobody else has retiree medical funded by the company anymore, so we’re trying to make some changes there," Burdette said. "We would still provide access to the coverage, but it would be at the employee’s expense instead of the company for those above age 65."

Most competitors, like Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, no longer have pension programs or retiree medical benefits for workers after the airlines filed for bankruptcy protection this decade. American wants to improve its retiree insurance by changing to a Medigap program provided by a private insurer instead of continuing to self-insure retirees, Burdette said.

But Gless points out that TWU workers chose in 2003 to take greater wage cuts and significantly change their work rules because they wanted to protect retiree benefits.

It was in the benefit of the company to prolong negotiations from 2007, but now it’s in the best interest of the unions to try to fight for what they have and keep it at a constant amount."

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OR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 4, 2009

CONTACT: Jenifer McCormick
202-628-9262
jeniferm@ttd.org

Honoring Transportation Workers on Labor Day

WASHINGTON, DC – Edward Wytkind, President of the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO, issued the following statement in anticipation of Labor Day:

“As Americans observe Labor Day this year, some may have a lot more to celebrate than others. In the midst of a recession where high unemployment and slow job growth persist, transportation workers are calling on their elected leaders to create an economy that works for everyone, not just for the well off and the well connected.

“Last year Americans knew it was time for a change as the economy was severely deteriorating. Years of deregulation, outsourcing, attacks on unions and collective bargaining, and disinvestment in the nation’s infrastructure created an economic firestorm and a less hopeful America. We lived under a creed of greed that enriched those at the top but ignored the needs of millions of working Americans who were suffering.

“One of the first things President Obama and the new Congress did to address the collapsing economy was to pass an economic recovery bill that made new investments in our transportation infrastructure and is putting Americans back to work. Passing long overdue legislation investing in our surface, air and maritime transportation needs would continue that momentum and create millions of family-supporting jobs.

“On this Labor Day, we recommit ourselves to giving voice to transportation workers who form the backbone of our freight and passenger transportation system, the lifeline of our national economy. And we will fight with everything we have for an economy that works for everyone.”

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The Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO, represents 32 member unions in the aviation, rail, transit, trucking, highway, longshore, maritime and related industries. For more information, visit www.ttd.org.

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Twenty-six Lies About H.R. 3200

http://factcheck.org/2009/08/twenty-six-lies-about-hr-3200/

Plus 4 other FactCheck healthcare articles

http://www.factcheck.org/

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American Airlines

August 31, 2009

To: Domestic Airport Services Employees Represented by the TWU

Dear Colleague,

Last spring, we shared information with you regarding fall schedule changes that would be effective as early as late August in some locations, with the bulk of the activity effective in November. The upcoming adjustments include both schedule reductions in some locations and reallocation of capacity in others. These changes are designed to help strengthen American’s competitive position in an environment that remains challenging and continues to require forward thinking.

As you know, when schedules change, staffing requirements often change, too. After reviewing the level of support needed for the new fall schedule, we have determined that a reduction in force (RIF) action will be necessary. Effective November 7, 2009, a RIF for Airport Services Fleet Service Clerks and Facility/Automotive Mechanics in certain locations will be implemented.

To minimize the number of involuntary furloughs, the “Stand-in-Stead” (SIS) option will continue to be available for TWU-represented employees. As a reminder, to be offered a SIS, TWU-represented employees must be in the same classification and status as those positions deemed surplus. The deadline to place your name on the list to be considered for a SIS in time for the upcoming reduction is October 7, 2009. Employees can add/delete their name up until this “freeze” date. Once the freeze is effective, there can be no additions or deletions to the list.

To learn more about this option, log onto Jetnet. From the home page, click on the “Policies and Procedures” tab located on the menu bar at the top of the page, and then select “People Reduction Information” from the left side menu. Next, click on “TWU Represented Employees” and then select “Stand-in-Stead.” As always, your manager has the right to limit or deny employee elections based on operational necessity.

Please remember that timelines are extremely critical when applying for SIS. It is important to remove your name from the list in the event you no longer wish to apply for this option.

We realize selecting this option is an important decision. Take the time to make sure you are fully informed before making your decision. When reviewing information, please note that Jetnet contains the most accurate information regarding the SIS. If you believe there are differences between information contained in this letter and on Jetnet, please rely on the Jetnet content.

If you have questions after reading the information on Jetnet, please call Talent Services at (800) 447-2000 or speak to your manager.

Sincerely,
Tim Ahern VP Airport Services
U.S./Canada