Breaking: Senate Republicans Block Debate, Kill Paycheck Fairness Act

Senate Republicans used the filibuster to kill the Paycheck Fairness Act that would have made sure that laws requiring equal pay for women are enforced and would have helped women in their claims for pay fairness.

GOPers unanimously refused to let the bill be debated and proceed to a “yes or no” vote on the Senate floor. That included Republican Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe (Maine) and Kay Bailey Hutchinson (Tex.), plus one Democrat, Ben Nelson (Neb.) (Alaska GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski did not vote.)

Today, 45 years after passage of the Equal Pay Act, women still earn, on average, 77 cents for every dollar earned by men, the National Women’s Law Center said. “In this difficult economy, in which nearly 40 percent of mothers are primary breadwinners, women cannot afford to have employers discounting their salaries,” the center said.

The Paycheck Fairness Act would have given women the right to know what their male colleagues earn so that they'll also know whether they're experiencing discrimination. Without the Paycheck Fairness Act, an employer still can retaliate against or even fire an employee who just wants to know what her co-workers are earning.

Shades of Lilly Ledbetter. Ledbetter for two decades earned far less than men at Goodyear doing the same job, but was blocked from getting back pay by a Supreme Court decision that said she had no right to sue 20 years later, even though the discrimination was ongoing. In other words, she should have sued immediately, even though she didn’t know she was being paid less than her male colleagues. The Lilly Ledbetter Act, which fixed this backward thinking, was the first legislation signed by President Obama.

Make sure to check out this link to CWA’s National Women’s Committee webpage. 

CWA: Restore Fairness to Senate Rules

Members of CWA from Locals 2222, 2336 and headquarters leaflet outside Senate office buildings, spreading the word about how procedural rules that have caused two years of gridlock in the Senate can be fixed.

CWAers from Locals 2222, 2336 and headquarters leafleted outside U.S. Senate office buildings this week as Senators and staff returned for a post-election legislative session. The goal: to alert Capitol Hill workers to the current abuse of Senate rules that has blocked nearly all Senate business for the past two years.

Our event definitely got the attention of members of Congress and staff, some of whom tweeted about getting the info.

In the past legislative session, the House passed more than 400 bills, many of which would have provided real support to working and middle class families. Because of the Senate rules that permit an individual Senator to block even discussion of legislation, the Senate remained stuck in gridlock, with obstructionists in the Republican Party blocking important initiatives for working families, like restoring bargaining rights through the Employee Free Choice Act, ending tax breaks for corporations that move jobs overseas, providing bargaining rights for public safety officers and stopping pay discrimination against women, among others.

And it’s not just the filibuster that’s the problem.

Holds, secret holds and threatened filibusters by Senators meant government agencies like the National Labor Relations Board couldn’t do their jobs. The NLRB had just two members for nearly a year because of holds placed on nominees to fill the remaining three seats. That has denied justice for thousands of workers who were illegally fired or mistreated by employers.

Just 42.8 percent of President Obama’s appointments were confirmed by the Senate in the first 18 months of his presidency. Compare that to the 86.8 percent of nominations in the George W. Bush administration who were confirmed over that same 18-month period.

CWA supports reform of the Senate rules that will end these destructive holds and will bring about open debate and ‘yes or no’ votes after Senators engage in full discussion of the issues. Isn’t that why we elect them to office? These rules aren’t in the Constitution.

By abusing these Senate procedures and allowing special corporate interests to override the people’s business, a few Senators are able to block the Senate’s ability to have real debate. This is a disaster for American families and our democracy.

CWA: Congress Must Extend Long-Term Jobless Benefits

Some Republican members of Congress are playing hardball with the emergency unemployment benefits of 5 million jobless Americans, looking to force through a tax cut for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans in exchange for not letting the benefits run out.

If the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act isn’t renewed by Nov. 30, 800,000 people will immediately stop receiving those benefits, which average just $290 a week. Another 1.2 million will lose them by Christmas and 3 million more will lose them in early 2011.

But some members of Congress think it’s more important to give the wealthy a big tax cut. Extending those tax cuts will add another $700 billion to the deficit, but no Republicans are talking about offsetting those funds. Instead, some want to tie the tax cut for the wealthy to the extension of jobless benefits.

Long-term unemployment is a crisis in our country, with 6.2 million workers jobless for six months or more.

Now isn’t the time to play games with unemployed workers. Call your senators and representatives at 202-224-3121 and tell them to extend unemployment benefits.

AT&T Mobility Retail Sales Workers Organize in Puerto Rico

In Puerto Rico, another 376 AT&T Mobility retail store and sales support workers won representation by CWA Local 3010 through majority sign up. The former Centennial Wireless workers join more than 350 former Centennial workers at AT&T Mobility in Puerto Rico who have joined CWA this year.

Securing good health care benefits and the ability to take work breaks are among the workers’ top issues, said local organizer Javier Sepulveda. “They wanted to know how CWA could help them, and we got the message across effectively by having members from AT&T talk with them one on one,” he said. A key part of the campaign’s success was maintaining one-on-one contact with the workers, listening to their concerns, and letting them know the value of a union contract, said District 3 Staff Representative Jorge Rodriguez who led the campaign.

Volunteer local union stewards Melvin Nazario, Rolando Hernandez and Elix Morales met with activists regularly to help them build worker support. “Organizing is a duty for all local unions,” said Local president Rafael Castro-Torres. “It is what we must do to grow our union and is the only way to create better contracts and a stronger labor movement,” he said.

This year, some 350 AT&T Mobility workers from Centennial have joined CWA through majority sign up this year in separate campaigns in Alabama, Indiana, and Michigan.

Tell Senate to Act Now on Bargaining Rights for Public Safety Officers

With Congress back for a post election legislative session, CWA is geared up to move Senators and Representatives forward on our key issues.

A critical one: bargaining rights for public safety officers. Currently, just 25 states fully protect the right of state and local public safety officers to bargain.

A bill with bipartisan support, the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act (S.1611), would change that.

The House passed the bill in July, attached to a spending bill, but Senate Republicans threatened to filibuster that entire spending package unless the bargaining rights language was stripped out. In the Senate, the bill has been stalled by filibuster abuse time and again, despite having six Republican co-sponsors.

CWA President Larry Cohen has said this legislation is likely our only opportunity to extend bargaining rights for workers this year.

CWA has put together a grassroots program to encourage members to contact key Senators to prevent a filibuster and to allow this bipartisan legislation to be brought to the floor for a yes or no vote, on the merits of the bill.

All CWAers are urge to take action. Read more about the campaign.   

What can you do: Send a hand written letter to your Senators. To make sure it gets to your Senator’s office on time, send your letter to Shane Larson, CWA Legislative Director, 501 Third Street, NW, Washington, DC 20001

And call your Senators at 202-224-3121 – that’s the congressional switchboard number – to make your voice heard. Call every day and ask your friends and family to do the same.

CWA represents about 22,000 public safety officers, many in states with no collective bargaining rights.

CWA Local Leaders Share ‘Intense’ MLI Experience

CWA local leaders in Washington for this year's Minority Leadership Institute.

CWA local union leaders shared experiences and built on their skills in communications, political action and more at CWA’s 2010 Minority Leadership Institute.

The diverse group, which included African-American, Asian and Latino CWAers, came from locals representing mainly telecom and IUE-CWA members.

There was a lot of focus on communications, with hands-on sessions covering public speaking, leadership and writing skills. Other sessions covered immigration, migration and the global economy, collective bargaining, the “green” economy and more.

The group also joined some neighborhood walks in Maryland to support CWA-backed candidates in the 2010 elections.

The MLI group met with some members of Congress and staff on Capitol Hill, and also with CWA officers President Larry Cohen, Secretary-Treasurer Jeff Rechenbach and Executive Vice President Annie Hill. Hill presided over the graduation ceremony.

Next for the latest MLI grads: a one week internship in their districts to work on an organizing campaign, political campaign or other event.

Participants were Rolando Scott, Local 1109; Byron “Chuck” Taylor, Local 2202; Rafael Castro Torres, Local 3010; Christine Shaw, Local 4100; Anetra Session, Local 6327; Jimmie Landa, Local 7704; Kristy Pham, local 9510; Shirley Komar, Local 13500; Carl Kennebrew, Local 84755.

Freshman GOPer Whines Over Delay in His Taxpayer-Paid Health Care

On the campaign trail, Republican Congressman Andy Harris (Md.) promised to repeal health care reform and slammed the very idea of a public option as “socialism.”

So what was the first thing Harris did when he got to Capitol Hill?

Why, he complained that his government-subsidized health care wouldn’t kick in for 28 days. At an orientation for new members of Congress, Harris whined about not having coverage for that period and asked “why it had to take so long.”

Funny, Harris apparently isn’t bothered by the fact that 59 million Americans went without health insurance for all or part of 2010.

He even asked whether he could purchase insurance from the government to cover the gap, you know, like you might be able to with a “public option.”

A number of Democratic House members are calling on Harris and other Republicans who say they want to repeal health care reform to give up their taxpayer-subsidized insurance. Representatives Joe Crowley (N.Y.), Donna Edwards (Md.), Tim Ryan (Oh.) and Linda Sanchez (Cal.), among others, wrote to the House and Senate Republican leaders: “If your conference wants to deny millions of Americans affordable health care, your members should walk that walk. You cannot enroll in the very kind of coverage that you want for yourselves, and then turn around and deny it to Americans who don't happen to be members of Congress.

Local Radio Serves Local Communities

TNG-CWA and NABET-CWA are calling on Congress to support the Local Community Radio Act (S. 592) that would create thousands of new local radio stations and give a stronger voice to educational, religious, nonprofit, first responders and other groups in their communities.

The bill, with strong bipartisan support in both the House and Senate, already passed the House but has been blocked in the Senate by secret holds.

CWA’s media sector has joined a diverse group of community radio supporters, including the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Consumers Union, Future of Music Coalition, the United Church of Christ, National Association of Evangelicals and others.

Their message to Congress: “please don’t stop local music, fresh perspectives and community news from coming to the public airwaves. Pass the Local Community Radio Act now.

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