An Atlanta TV station’s investigative report uncovered a Paulding County construction company’s efforts to circumvent federal Davis-Bacon prevailing wage laws and then, when caught by the U.S. Department of Labor again, attempt to avoid paying workers a fair wage for their work by changing their job descriptions to lower-paying classifications.
Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Scott Brown (R) portrays himself as a pickup truck-driving, Boston Bruins jersey-wearing friend of union workers and working families. He paints his opponent in the Senate race, Elizabeth Warren, as a woman who is an elitist college professor. Both points are untrue.
Today, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka set the record straight on Brown and Warren in an address in Boston to New England union members and leaders that media and political observers are comparing to his 2008 speech on the role race played in some workers’ opposition to President Obama’s candidacy.
If you’re a football fan, tonight’s the night. The first game of the 2012 National Football League season—between the Super Bowl champion New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys—will kick off at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
There’s plenty of excitement about the football matchup (even with replacement workers subbing as referees), but the construction workers who built the stadium can feel an extra surge of pride in the work they completed two years ago under a project labor agreement (PLA).
Now that the Republican National Convention—with its divisive policies, masked by a cynical call for unity—has wrapped up, let’s take a look at the deeply embedded anti-union and anti-worker philosophy in the Republican platform of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. Daily Kos’ Laura Clawson says:
The basic message of the Republican platform on labor issues is this: Rights are there to be taken from workers and given to the 1 percent.
Massachusetts Voters Beware. Millionaire candidate Sen. Scott Brown portrays himself as an “average guy in a pickup” when in reality he’s a big backer of Wall Street, not Main Street.
“ Scott Brown: Wall Street’s Favorite Senator ,” a new website launched by the Massachusetts AFL-CIO , highlights Brown’s two-year anti-worker voting record in the Senate.
Tom Trotter in the AFL-CIO Legislation Department sends the following.
A group of House Republicans, led by Steven LaTourette (R-Ohio) and Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), yesterday joined every Democrat except Dan Boren of Oklahoma, in defeating attacks on Davis-Bacon (prevailing wage) and Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) on key appropriation bills moving through Congress. Both Davis-Bacon and PLAs are instrumental in making sure that federally funded projects create good jobs and are done by using skilled labor, are completed on time and on budget.
A HT to our friends at Media Matters for catching Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) comparing electricians, teachers and other workers to bushels of soybeans and corn.
King, in a House floor speech calling for the elimination of prevailing wage laws on federal Department of Homeland Security construction projects, argued that the Davis-Bacon Act is an intrusion on the free market and that workers were merely commodities whose worth fluctuates up and down, according to supply and demand—like a pound of pork.
It’s been four years since low-wage workers got a raise. Sign the petition to tell Congress it’s time to raise the minimum wage.
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