By Doug Cunningham

Workers, farmers, clergy, veterans and others are rallying in April and May demanding that Wall Street and big banks be held accountable for the damage done they’ve done to the economy.

The AFL-CIO’s Dan Pedrotty says on April 29^th Main Street is coming To Wall Street to protest.

[Pedrotty]: “We’re going to the scene of the crime. We’re taking the people’s voice to the heart of the Wall Street casino and taking our call to Wall Street that they pay to replace the jobs they destroyed, that they stop blocking common sense financial reform.”

 By Doug Cunningham

The United Mine Workers of America says its heart and prayers are with the families of those killed in the non-union Massey Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia. Ellen Smith, editor of Mine Safety and Health News says union mines tend to be safer.

[Smith]: “The union miners are much willing to complain about safety issues. They're much more willing to shut things down when things aren't working. They don't have the fear of being fired. They have the union behind them."

 By Doug Cunningham

Unions around the world are rallying in a Global Week of Action to support 3000 United Steel Workers strikers in the eighth month of their strike at the Vale Inco mine in Sudbury Ontario. USW’s Myles Sullivan says this is a monumental struggle the USW vows not to lose.

[Sullivan]: “They’ve gone right to the heart of the steel workers, right to the heart of our members and picked a fight with some of our most important, precious things that we’ve negotiated and we’re not gonna lose this fight.”

 Transit workers have been on the move across the country to drum up support for transit funding while also trying to bring attention to what they see as a transit crisis in the United States. On Wednesday the stop was New York City’s Penn Station where it was announced that transit unions and community organizations would be coming together to form a new coalition to fight for transit issues. John Samuelsen is President of Transport Workers Union Local 100 in New York City.

 Construction trade unions have renewed a project labor agreement that cuts costs for developers while maintaining good wages and benefits for workers in New York City. Bob Ledwith is Business Manager for Ironworkers Local 46.

[Ledwith]: “I would describe it as a win-win, we had to give relief to the developers and the owners; we did that, and we also kept our men working at wages and fringes that they can raise a family and have a good family environment and we’re very proud of what we’ve done.”

 One week before it was set to expire; building contractors, trade unions and New York developers agreed to extend their private Project Labor Agreement for an additional year. Bob Ledwith is the Business Manager for Local 46.

(Ledwith) “I would describe it as a win-win, we had to give relief to the developers and the owners; we did that, and we also kept our men working at wages and fringes that they can raise a family and have a good family life in a middle-income environment and we’re very proud of what we’ve done.”

Ledwith says the new agreement generally follows the lines of last year’s which produced labor cost savings of about 16% and in the process generated an estimated 10,000 jobs. He says the fine points of the one year extension, still have to be ironed out with the individual locals.

(Ledwith) “The total building trades is approximately 40 different local unions of which 36 are participating in this, maybe perhaps 37.” (Clifford) “How much work do you think it will mean?” (Ledwith) “Many of billions of dollars and many work hours for our men and our women, and we’ve got to continue to do this, so that we can provide employment possibilities for our people.”

At a forum on “The Jobs Crisis and What to Do About it” at the Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies, Rutgers University Law Professor Phillip Harvey says these types of agreements make sense in a tough economy.

(Harvey) When unions feel that a prudent exchange of some of the gains in exchange for assurances of continued employment, it’s certainly a reasonable way for them to proceed: On the other hand, I don’t think that it’s an answer to the problem of unemployment that plagues the economy as a hole, it’s kid of an individual answer to an individual problem.

The specific problem in Manhattan a year ago, was that developers were threatening to reduce the size of projects of shut them down completely. Ledwith says the Project Labor Agreement kept the construction sector alive then… and the sector still needs help in the year ahead.

(Ledwith) Well we call this a market recovery P-L-A, but in many ways it’s a stimulus program, a local stimulus program that creates jobs for our people. Washington has been a bit slow in brining the stimulus money to New York, so we decided as a group of men and women to stimulate our own economy.

Professor Harvey told the forum that the current federal jobs stimulus is falling short because it uses an indirect approach where it will cost over 200 thousand dollars per job to create 3 or 4 million jobs.

He says direct job stimulus, like the nation employed under the New Deal, would create 5 to 6 times as many jobs for the same amount of spending.

 (Harvey) As the New Deal demonstrates its particularly suited to infrastructure and construction work, but it’s also very well suited to the expansion of services, so that I think that across the board there are all kinds of opportunities to expand employment…using this kind of model.

Since Washington appears reluctant to adopt the professor’s approach, for now the renewal of the Project Labor Agreement may well be the best engine available to keep driving the construction sector of New York’s economy.

 The Alliance For American Manufacturing says a new report from the Economic Policy Institute shows enormous job loss from the U.S. trade deficit with China due to Chinese currency manipulation. AAM’s Scott Paul.

[Paul]:  “Across every state we've seen massive job loss. In fact 2.4 million jobs lost since China joined the World Trade Organization."

Congress is considering legislation punishing China for its currency manipulation.

 [Trumka]: “This health care bill is good for working families now and even more in the future. Now, it’s not a perfect bill. But we’re realistic enough to know it’s time for the deliberations to stop and for progress to begin. “

AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka. Trumka says most of the tax on health care benefits has been stripped from the bill

[Trumka 2]: “Eighty percent of it’s been eliminated for all Americans, and that’s because of the efforts of the workin’ men and women of the AFL-CIO.”

 [Amy Carroll]: “It's a really exciting piece of legislation in New York state that's going to make New York state that's really going to make New York the leader in the fight to end wage theft."

Make The Road New York Legal Director Amy Carroll, on a bill introduced in the New York state legislature to combat wage theft.

[Carroll2]: “A number of studies have come out recently showing just how drastic the problem is in New York. Workers are working 70 hours a week with no overtime, they're making under the minimum wage. This is going to be a statewide campaign to bring attention to instances of wage theft."

 By Doug Cunningham

While city building inspectors continue to focus more on safer union job sites, the feds are just the opposite. Richard Mendelson is the New York Regional Deputy Administrator for OSHA. The federal inspections recognize the reality that non-union job sites are more dangerous and in need of greater scrutiny.

[Richard Mendelson]: "The accident trends - for fatal accidents this is, one-third on unions sites and two-thirds on non-union sites…One-third of our inspection resources go to union sites and about two-thirds of our inspection resources go to non-union sites.”