The United States and 10 other countries are negotiating our next big trade agreement, called Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP. It's time to re-examine what works and what doesn't work.

Imagine a thought experiment, where we put environmentalists in each country in charge of negotiating the next trade agreement. Preposterous! I know. Stick with me. This is a thought experiment.

My career is invested in the aerospace industry, so it was very sobering to me when the Federal Aviation Administration ordered that 787 airplanes be grounded.

Friends ask me to explain the situation— what lessons can we draw from the 787? Invariably, we start with "outsourcing."

Flight attendants who work for Spirit Airlines filed a lawsuit against the airline for reneging on a contractual commitment to provide equal benefits for all employees by forcing employees who want health care coverage for their domestic partners into a lower-quality health care plan than the plan covering other employees. The flight attendants, members of the Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA), said that management is using procedural loopholes to avoid providing equal benefits.

This is a cross-post from the California Labor Federation’s blog, Labor’s Edge, by Communications Director Steve Smith.

We’ve seen a lot of big numbers this election. The Koch brothers' super PAC spent $4 million to back the deceptive Prop 32. Billionaire Charles Munger Jr. kicked in $35 million against Prop. 30 and for Prop. 32. A shady Arizona group that refuses to disclose its donors funneled $11 million into our state to attack California schools and workers. But now, there’s only one number that matters: 35,000. That’s the number of union volunteers fanning out across the state, in communities big and small, to fight the big-money interests behind the attacks on Prop. 30 and the fraudulent ads backing Prop. 32.

Engineers and technical workers at the Boeing Co. overwhelmingly rejected the company’s contract in a mail ballot ratification vote announced last night. The workers are members of Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA)/IFPTE Local 2001.

Boeing had claimed the union’s negotiating team did not represent the workers’ desires, says SPEEA Executive Director Ray Goforth. But on recommendation of the committee, the workers rejected the contract 15,092 to 608. Says Goforth:

It was the sixth day of the London Olympic Games and Jim and Cecilia Adrian still hadn’t seen their son Nathan for whom they traveled 4,800 miles to watch swim for the United States. Nathan, 23, was competing in his second Olympics. Nathan and his mom were exchanging text messages, but the two hadn’t spoken in-person in days. While waiting to watch the 100-meter freestyle race on Aug. 1, the Adrians chatted with some Australian spectators who were on their way to see a water polo match in the Olympic Park.

“They wished Nathan good luck,” says Jim. “But not enough to come in first…at that point, everyone was predicting [James] Magnussen would win.”

In a dramatic, heart-racing sprint, Nathan, of Bremerton, Wash., took home his first individual gold medal in the 100-meter freestyle swim, beating Magnussen by one-hundredth of a second. 

Nathan Adrian, 23, of Bremerton, Wash., took home his first individual gold medal in the 100-meter freestyle swim in the London Olympic Games last week, winning by a "fingertip," beating Australian favorite James "The Missile" Magnussen. 

The Seattle Times reported:

The margin of victory—one-hundredth of a second—was the tightest at the London Olympics.

Perhaps the swimmer's work ethic can be traced to his upbringing in a union family. Adrian's father, Jim, is a retired nuclear engineer for the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and former president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) Local 12. His mother, Cecilia, is a nurse in the Bremerton school district. Check back on the AFL-CIO Now blog next Monday for an exclusive interview with Jim and Cecilia Adrian. 

Fifty-nine pilot and flight simulator instructors at The Boeing Company voted by a 4-to-1 margin to join the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA)/IFPTE Local 2001 in an election that was certified today.

Stan Sorscher, labor representative for the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace/IFPTE  Local 2001 (SPEEA/IFPTE), describes what he sees as an emerging American Aristocracy in this excerpt from Washington Policy Watch.

I went to France in June and couldn’t help comparing the French revolution to our own. So, let’s start with aristocracy, then we’ll get to Ayn Rand. Stick with me.

The Paris Air Show—the largest and most prestigious in the world—draws thousands of aviation and aerospace companies looking for new products and technology and, in many cases, new manufacturing locations.