Connecticut@Work

2011-06-13T08:45:00.000-07:00

SEBAC is the coalition of CT State Employee Unions responsible by law to act as the single bargaining agent for issues related to pension and health care plans for all unionized CT state employees

CT State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC) Coalition Unions

15 different unions in SEBAC represent 34 bargaining units, each with their own contracts as noted:

1. Council 4 – AFSCME, AFL-CIO 15,600

Representing employees in social and human services, correction, treatment and parole officers, clerical employees, higher education program administrators, judicial and criminal justice workers, and many more:

· Clerical (NP-3) Contract expires 6/30/12 4,500

· Human/Social Services (P-2) Contract expires 6/30/12 3,800

· Corrections (NP-4) – (In Negotiations) Contract expired 6/30/11 4,800

· Criminal Justice Employees Contract expires 6/30/12 1,000

· Judicial Non-Professional (JN-7) Contract expires 6/30/12 600

· Dpt. Higher Education Administrators Contract expires 6/30/12 700

· Technical Colleges Administrators Contract expires 6/30/12 80

· Charter Oak College Professional Emps Contract expires 6/30/12 70

· State University Administrators Contract expires 6/30/12 40

2. New England Health Care Employees Union, District 1199/SEIU, CTW 7,700

Representing healthcare employees including nurses, physicians, social workers, therapists, technologists, technicians, mental health, developmental, and children service employees providing care and service in the departments of mental health, developmental services, children and families, public health, corrections, UCONN health center and others:

· Health Professionals (P-1) Contract expires 7/1/12 3100

· Health Paraprofessionals (NP-6) Contract expires 7/1/12 4600

3. AFT Connecticut, AFL-CIO 6,800

Representing employees in higher education administration and faculty, healthcare, vocational education, financial management and planning, probation and child support enforcement officers, and many more:

· University Health Professionals, UCONN Contract expires 6/30/12 2,500

· UConn Professional Employees Contract expires 6/30/12 1,600

· Vocational Technical Federation Contract expires 8/31/12 1,200

· Judicial Professionals (JP-6) Contract expires 6/30/12 1,300

· Tech Colleges Faculty Contract expires 6/30/12 200

4. Administrative and Residual Union (A&R) AFT – AFL-CIO 3,300

Representing non-managerial professional state administrative workers including accountants, fiscal

workers, tax collectors, bank examiners, inspectors, attorneys and their supervisors. Also included are

a many very specialized professional job classes such as airport managers and elevator inspectors.

· Administrative and Residual Contract expires 6/30/2012

5. Connecticut Employees Union Independent, Local 511, SEIU, CTW 4,500

Represents service and maintenance employees, including D.O.T. maintainers, maintenance/custodial staff for the State Universities & UConn, skilled tradespersons, cooks, and custodians at a majority of State agencies:

· Maintenance and Service (NP-2) Contract expires 6/30/12

6. Congress of Community Colleges, CCCC, Local 1973, SEIU, CTW 2,000

Representing full and part-time faculty and professional staff working at Connecticut's twelve community college campuses:

· 4Cs Faculty & Professionals Contract expires 6/30/12

7. CSEA SEIU Local 2001, CTW 3,900

6 bargaining units representing workers who deliver diverse public services, ranging from inspecting bridges, to maintaining air quality, to educating blind children, to protecting consumer’s personal information, to conducting criminal investigations:

· Education Administrators (P-3A) Contract expires 6/30/12 240

· Institutional Educators (P-3B) Contract expires 6/30/12 700

· Engineering, Scientific, & Technical (P-4) Contract expires 6/30/12 2,418

· Correction Supervisors (NP-8) Contract expired 6/30/12 400

· Police Inspectors (DCJ) Contract expires 6/30/12 75

· Supervising Judicial Marshals (SJM) Contract expires 6/30/12 50

· State Police Commission Officers (CSPCOA) NEW - First contract in negotiations 45

8. UConn Faculty – AAUP 2,000

Representing full-time faculty, research professionals, and coaches, as well as part-time faculty at the University's main campus in Storrs, and the regional campuses in West Hartford, Waterbury, Torrington, Stamford, and Avery Point (Groton):

· Faculty and Researchers at UCONN Contract expires 6/30/12

9. CT State University Faculty – CSU-AAUP 1,150

Representing full-time and part-time faculty, counselors, librarians, and coaches at the four CT State Universities (Central, Southern, Eastern and Western):

· CSU Faculty Contract expires 8/23/12

10. UConn Health Center Faculty - AAUP 550

Representing full-time and part-time faculty at UConn Health Center

· UCHC Faculty NEW - First contract in negotiations

11. Connecticut State Police Union, NTC 1,150

Members are troopers, sergeants, and master sergeants in Connecticut’s Department of Public Safety Division of State Police, regionalized into 12 Troops across three districts, as well as decentralized specialized units, statewide; responsible for patrolling state highways, providing primary law enforcement services for 80 towns and cities statewide, and has multiple specialized units to assist Troops and municipal police departments as requested:

· CSPU (NP-1) Contract expires 6/30/12

12. Protective Services Employees Coalition, IUPA/IAFF AFL-CIO 900

Represents law enforcement, firefighting, regulatory, and other public safety personnel employed by the State of Connecticut:

· Police/Security/Fire Personnel (NP-5) Contract expires 6/30/12

13. IBPO/SEIU Local 731, CTW Judicial Marshals 750

Representing judicial marshals working for the State Judicial Branch, whose duties include providing prisoner transport and courthouse security, as well as staffing 24-hour lockup facilities in Hartford and New Haven:

· Judicial Marshals Contract expires 6/30/12

14. Connecticut Association of Prosecutors 260

Representing Connecticut's prosecutors and fighting for justice on behalf of the victim's of crime, their families, and the people of the state:

· State Prosecutors Contract expires 6/30/12

15. Connecticut Federation of School Administrators Local 61, AFSA, AFL-CIO 61

Represents the Connecticut Department of Education's principals and assistant principals at the
18 Connecticut Technical High Schools located throughout the state:

· Technical High School Administrators Contract expires 6/30/12

Revised Draft 5/10/2011

2010-03-22T14:13:00.000-07:00

It’s time to fix the ailing health-care system

CT@Work

By Eric Bailey

It’s been over 15 years since the last great debate over healthcare reform spurred national inaction on the issue. Since then, according to the national non-profit, non-partisan organization Families USA, 294,000 of America’s moms, dads, sons and daughters, people someone loved and cared for died from a lack of health insurance. Connecticut lost 2,100 of those lives and that killer fact is growing.

There is no excuse for this. When threats to public health arise, we take action. Swine flu outbreaks are a call to arms with truckloads of vaccines and hand sanitizers being deployed to stop the disease in its tracks. E coli outbreaks from contaminated vegetables are met with teams of investigators identifying the source of contamination and millions spent on teaching you how to wash cow poop off your lettuce. But when it comes to the outbreak of deaths from a lack of affordable health insurance the problem goes unrecognized, ignored and even denied. And we’re paying a high cost.

It’s no wonder. Lost jobs, reduced hours, benefits cuts increasing health premiums and co-pays are all contributing to the mass erosion of what used to be the economic security net for middle class Americans.

But still, too many public officials, who claim we are the wealthiest nation in the world with the best medical system possible, refuse to acknowledge that we have a healthcare problem. Of course, it’s not a problem for them. Members of Congress have a great healthcare plan and need not suffer from their lack of action. Rich people needn’t worry; after all, they probably have a pile of insurance company stock that’s been paying big dividends into their finances giving them the money they need to cover rising healthcare costs.

American healthcare definitely isn’t a problem for the insurance industry, which has made billions in profits off of the present system. A system where your healthcare doesn’t follow you to your next job, where developing an illness between or in plans saddles you with a “pre-existing condition” that encourages the healthcare accounting department to deny your coverage, and where the most affordable plans cover next to nothing, guaranteeing only premium increases the following year and adding to the bankruptcy rate of which more than half is the result of debt from illness.

Are we sick of this system yet? Obviously not.

Lobbyists and executives from the insurance industry have argued quite successfully that the free market competition has kept prices down and policies competitive. That government would only screw up the system if we created a public option. Your choices for healthcare would vanish and socialists would occupy your homes.

Well that plan has worked great. So great, that Anthem jacked up rates by 24% this year and many companies are shifting those costs to the shrinking pool of poorer middle class workers.
Despite the insurance companies’ rhetoric, their support for the free market has its limits. When Congress proposed a public option to compete with private health insurance plans and bring costs down for everyone, the insurance industry said, “No way.” What happened to the free market?
Without healthcare reform and a public option, there is little to ensure that people will have access to a plan that is affordable and portable. Americans have been calling on Congress to step up, and while they tell us they’re close, we’re still waiting.
Every day that Congress fails to act, 75 people are dying from lack of health insurance, and hundreds more are joining the ranks of the uninsured, increasing the likelihood that they will be become numbers 76 and beyond.

Americans cannot afford to wait another 15 years for our so-called leaders to take action to change our healthcare system. Congress has the ability to create a healthcare system that is affordable for everyone.

People are dying. If Congress doesn’t find a way to fix the problem we may need to defend ourselves by acting the part of the healthcare accounting gatekeeper - and deny their coverage - in the next election.

Eric Bailey is the communications director for AFT Connecticut. He lives in Windsor.

2010-03-17T08:05:00.000-07:00

JournalInquirer.com

A little can mean a whole lot

CT@Work
By Eric Bailey

Published: Thursday, March 11, 2010 12:03 PM EST

It is in our nature as people to be charitable, even when times are at their worst. Case in point: When my oldest son was 5, he wanted to do something to help people in our community, specifically the hungry. We decided the best way to help would be to raise money for the local food bank.

That year, with the help of his kindergarten classmates, my son collected $100 through a penny drive. He has continued his penny drive every year, enlisting the aid of his school, church, and many local businesses.

Last year, as we were placing collection cans at local businesses, I told my son that he might not reach his fundraising goal because the economy was tough and many people didn’t have extra to give. But I was wrong. To my delighted surprise, my son raised $3,000, the most he had raised in six years of collecting.

At a time when Wall Street greed and risky banking practices had led to an economic recession in which people were being laid off, their homes were being foreclosed on, and their pockets were often empty, people were more charitable than ever. They gave what they could, and every little bit helped. Their pennies added up to thousands of dollars to feed the hungry.

This concept of “every little bit helps” is being applied in a unique way overseas.

In Great Britain, activists have proposed the “Robin Hood” tax. Like its namesake storybook character, the Robin Hood tax would take from the rich to help the poor.

How big of a tax are we talking about? And who would be taxed?

Banks would pay an average tax of just 0.05 percent on speculative transactions — the same types of transactions that led to this economic recession.

Five-hundredths of a percent may seem like so little that it could hardly raise enough money to do any good. In fact, this tiny tax could generate more than $400 billion that could be dedicated to improving health care and education, reducing poverty, and slowing climate change.

This innovative tax would not impact individual or retail bank accounts. The Robin Hood tax would target specific bank operations like high-frequency, large-volume trading of stocks, bonds, and foreign exchanges. People who invest in their retirement, take out a loan, or make a withdrawal from an ATM would not be affected by the tax.

If you’re worried that the banking industry can’t afford to give up $400 billion, fear not. The banking industry is the most profitable in the world, with nearly $800 billion in profits in 2006. Those figures are predicted to double by 2016. Banking is 26 times more profitable per employee than the average of all other industries.

Of course we know that banks are not going to willingly part with their profits. Sure, they’ll give their CEOs millions of dollars in pay and stock options, but when it comes to helping those of us on Main Street, they’ll raise their collective noses and say, “Sorry, you need to work for it the way we did.” All the while they will continue to get richer off the same risky practices that sunk our economy and resulted in the loss of millions of jobs.

So it’s time for us in the U.S. to join our neighbors across the Atlantic and take up arms. We must challenge our elected leaders to stand up to the banking industry. We must insist that if the banks want to take risks with our money, they will have to pay to do so.

The 0.05 percent Robin Hood tax would be no more than a “penny drive” to the banking industry. But to hurting Americans, those pennies would mean a whole lot.

Eric Bailey is the communications director for AFT Connecticut. He lives in Windsor.

2010-03-04T08:00:00.000-08:00

JournalInquirer.com
Standing up for what’s right

CT@Work
By Eric Bailey

Published: Thursday, March 4, 2010 12:08 PM EST

You can’t get what you don’t ask for. And sometimes you’re forced to fight for what’s right.

So why have the number of strikes declined dramatically since 1974? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics which keeps track of strikes involving 1,000 or more workers, there were 424 strikes in America that year. Last year there were five.

Why such a significant decline? Perhaps union workers walked into contract negotiations and the bosses said, “The good times are rolling and we want to share the wealth with you.”

Not likely. What happened was that union membership was dropping during the Reagan-Bush era.

The result has been the erosion of America’s middle class.

Productivity has grown steadily over the past few decades but wages have stayed flat. All the while, the fat cats on Wall Street and the corporations they represent have seen record profits.

Fast forward to today, where America faces an economic crisis and we’re all being asked to sacrifice to get us through these tough times. Politicians are turning to public employees and asking for contract re-openers, wage freezes, and furlough days. Public employee unions are making concessions because that’s what is necessary to do.

But during good economic times, will the states, municipalities, or private-sector employers acknowledge the workers’ or reward them for their sacrifices? Will they say, “We want to open up your contract so we can give you a raise. We want to share our wealth with you because you helped to keep us afloat during our darkest hour.”

That has never happened and likely never will. In fact, Wall Street has worked to take back the gains labor unions made in the last 60 years.

Workers are being pushed to their breaking point until the only options they have left are to give up or fight for what is right. Sometimes that means going on strike.

Stop & Shop’s 36,000 union workers throughout New England have been forced to take action. Last week, the members of the five United Food and Commercial Work locals representing Stop & Shop employees voted to strike after the company initially refused to agree to modest pay raises, despite outstanding profits.

How much profit are we talking about? $13.4 billion. That’s how much Stop & Shop made in net sales from January through October 2009. That was nearly half of the $28 billion net sales their parent company, Royal Ahold (I’m not making that up), made in that time period.

You would think Stop & Shop would be more willing to share the wealth with its workers. Instead, it is forcing them to fight for what they deserve.

The Teamsters union, whose members deliver food to Stop & Shop stores, have pledged not to cross UFCW picket lines. The Teamsters understand the strength of solidarity and the age-old adage, “An injury to one is an injury to all.”

Solidarity is the foundation that drove workers to form unions to fight for fairness and justice in the workplace throughout the 20th century. And unions helped to build America’s middle class.

In my mind, it’s disgraceful that the hard-working employees of Stop & Shop are being forced to fight for what is right. But their struggle brings me hope for a brighter future. This time, people seem to recognize that what Stop & Shop is doing to its workers is simply wrong. Thousands of people throughout New England have pledged not to buy groceries from Stop & Shop if the workers must strike.

If that attitude catches on, we’ll see the resurgence of unions and the rebirth of the middle class. Americans will stand up to the Royal Aholds of the world. When that happens, we will all be better off for it.

Eric Bailey is the communications director for AFT Connecticut. He lives in Windsor.

2010-02-27T07:54:00.000-08:00

JournalInquirer.com
Nurses, techs, and 'union-busters': the battle at Manchester Memorial
CT@Work
By Eric Bailey
Published: Saturday, February 27, 2010 6:10 AM EST

Warning: Union-busters threaten patient care in eastern Connecticut.

Think I’m making this up?

Read on.

For more than 40 years, the registered nurses at Manchester Memorial Hospital have had a union. For nearly 10 years, the service and skilled maintenance workers at Manchester have also been organized. Both are affiliated with AFT Connecticut, the largest representative of acute care hospital workers in the state and the organization that employs me.

A few months ago, registered nurses at Rockville General Hospital voted to form a union and affiliate with AFT Connecticut. They recognized how having a union contract benefited their colleagues at other hospitals and voted “union yes” to improve their lives and working conditions.

Next week, a group of LPNs and techs (the folks who run X-rays, CAT scans, and breathing machines; assist in surgeries; and so much more) at Manchester Hospital will make a choice. Like their colleagues at Manchester and Rockville, these workers will decide whether the Eastern Connecticut Health Network — owner and operator of both hospitals and other area health facilities — will continue to dictate their pay, benefits, hours, and working conditions or if they will organize to have a voice in their workplace.

When ECHN fought hard to keep the Rockville nurses from organizing last year, it was a surprise. The hospital’s reaction was counter to decades of positive labor relations at Manchester Memorial. And when the National Labor Relations Board found that ECHN had violated the law and called for a new election, which the nurses won, management should have learned a lesson: Obstructing the rights of workers to join together doesn’t work.

But ECHN didn’t learn that lesson. It is at it again.

With only days before the election, ECHN managers, consultants, and lawyers are hard at work pressuring workers to vote “no.” Most of the discussions are taking place in “captive audience” meetings where LPNs and techs are called away from their work of caring for patients in need. People with critical conditions are suffering a loss of services while hospital bosses berate the union that already represents most of the professionals at ECHN. This loss of patient-care time is in addition to the 6 percent reduction in hours that workers have been opposing all year.

To make matters worse, ECHN is using scarce resources to hire an “outside consultant,” an expert at writing “trash talk” scripts about the unions for hospital managers to perform at anti-union meetings. The going rate for a professional union-buster ranges from $500,000 to more than $2 million.

During these tough financial times, rather than trying to dissuade LPNs and techs from organizing, wouldn’t that money be better spent on patient care for the 19 communities ECHN serves?

ECHN runs nonprofit hospitals. Its priority is supposed to be caring for the citizens of our communities. Patients should be put ahead of profits.

So the question must be asked: Why is ECHN fighting so hard and spending so much money to keep the LPNs and techs at Manchester Memorial from joining the same union of which many of their peers belong?

It’s true that union health-care workers have a voice in their pay, benefits, and working conditions. As the professionals who work long hours to save lives each day, that is as it should be. But these union employees fight for more than their own interests. They fight for better quality health, adequate staffing levels, and resources for patients to ensure the hospital provides high-quality care for our friends, loved ones, and all citizens in our communities.

It seems to me that our health-care facilities, including Manchester Memorial Hospital, will benefit from encouraging workers to voice their professional concerns and work together to improve not only their own lives and working conditions but, more importantly, the lives and health of our citizens.

High-priced, union-busting attorneys can never accomplish that, no matter how much you pay them.

Eric Bailey is the communications director for AFT Connecticut. He lives in Windsor.

2010-02-22T10:04:00.000-08:00

JournalInquirer.com
Working together to close the education gap
CT@Work
By Eric Bailey
Published: Thursday, February 18, 2010 3:11 PM EST

Over the next quarter-century most of Connecticut’s future work force that will be driving the economy will be coming from Connecticut’s cities, where under former President Bush’s No Child Left Behind requirements, 185 schools are failing.

There are people pushing for changes and offering plans that would help overcome the obstacles our cities face when it comes to educating our future work force. At a press conference last week, the state Legislature’s Black and Puerto Rican Caucus offered a 10-point plan supported by a coalition of organizations called Campaign LEARN (Leadership in Education, Achievement, and Reform Now) that they believe will help.

Their plan included a variety of ideas, including California’s recently passed “parent trigger” legislation. “Parent trigger” allows 51 percent of parents and/or guardians of children at a failing school to sign a petition and force that school to choose one of four options under Race To The Top. Those options include: closing the school permanently; closing it and reopening as a charter school; firing half of the teachers and the principal and hiring new people; and implementing professional development and evaluations for the teachers to improve education.

The “parent trigger,” it is claimed, will engage parents in the education process. Signing a petition to close a school does not engage parents in a dialogue or decision-making process. Minimizing responsibility for a school system to a simple majority signature campaign negates parental power and involvement. It also risks abuse and racial polarization where the intention behind a petition may be about more than improving education.

Another supporter of this legislation was ConnCAN (Coalition for Achievement Now), and it’s no wonder they like the “parent trigger.” Half of the options create more charter schools. ConnCAN is focusing their energy on opening more charter schools and pushing for the “money follows the child” approach, which would make a school district give their student funding to the charter school. What’s wrong with that? ConnCAN wants that amount to be based on the state average per pupil spending, approximately $10,000. A poorer school district that spends $6,000 per pupil would have to come up with an additional $4,000. Where would that money come from?ConnCAN’s shortsightedness neglects the fact that that education money isn’t just invested one child at a time. It’s invested in all members of our future work force. Resource-strapped public schools lay off teachers, grow class sizes, and slice time and resources from kids who need the most help. That lowers test scores and fails more schools. It makes this more like a race to the bottom for everyone except for the few who get access to the good schools.

If the goal is to improve education and increase parental involvement, there are better ways to be more inclusive and reach more kids faster.CommPACT Schools, created by legislation last year, integrate some of the good ideas that have risen from the education laboratories our charter schools were designed to be when they were first created. CommPACT Schools develop education-focused coalitions among students, parents, teachers, teacher unions and associations, school administrators, school superintendents, and school boards. Students and teachers have a strong voice in decision-making. Student ownership of learning is integral and founded in application-oriented opportunities. Teacher ownership of their evidence-based curriculum choices is equally fundamental to increasing collaboration. Teachers are empowered to choose the most appropriate strategies for their students.

To assist in this, field-based practitioners work with the schools to facilitate links to resources and researchers as needed by the individual site. With the support of the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education, CommPACT Schools have the resources to increase student learning in a collaborative environment. Furthermore, CommPACT Schools, unlike charter schools, are open to all students.

If we are going to close the education gap, it will take all vested parties, from parents to teachers, administrators to school boards, working together to ensure that every student succeeds.

Eric Bailey is the communications director for AFT Connecticut. He lives in Windsor

2010-02-11T12:05:00.000-08:00

Journalinquirer.com

Elections for sale
CT@Work
By Eric Bailey
Published: Thursday, February 11, 2010 12:09 PM EST

Things are shaking up in the world of elections, both nationally and here in Connecticut. There’s the recent Massachusetts election for senator and President Barack Obama’s appearance before the Republican conference, but the biggest shaker, in my book, centers on campaign-finance reform.Saying the magic words “campaign finance” elicits groans, rolling of eyes, and comments like “What’s that got to do with me?” But there is a bigger connection than most are willing to admit.

Look at it this way: Every month when you pay your electric, gas, phone, and car insurance bills, that money goes to corporations. Those corporations use that money to do a lot of things, like pay their employees, cover overhead, and maintain their businesses — all while, hopefully, turning a profit and handing that over to investors.

But corporations also do some other things with your money. They use it to hire lobbyists who go to the state legislature and Congress and get laws passed or changed to benefit their bottom line and make bigger profits. In many instances, that means a bigger utility bill for you and more bucks for the fat cats.

I am wholeheartedly in favor of publicly financed elections. I am a former lobbyist for Connecticut Citizen Action Group and Common Cause of Connecticut, and I helped pass the 1999 Clean Elections Act that was swiftly vetoed by Gov. John Rowland.

When Rowland was led off to prison a few years later, it made sense why he opposed it so strongly. Rowland’s conviction for corruption was good reason to pass a law that changed the hot-tubs-for-cash rules into reform. Our bill allowed a set number of minimal contributions to be collected in order to qualify for public funds. Lobbyists and their spouses were prohibited from contributing, as were lakeside cottage kitchen remodelers, corporations — any business with a state contract — and labor unions. In exchange, candidates would receive a set amount of money with which to run their campaign.

Interestingly, many of the legislators who opposed Clean Elections participated in it in 2008. Many of the same principles of public financing were included, clearly recognizing that campaigns are better spent speaking with voters than raising money.

Fast-forward to last August, when a U.S. Superior Court judge ruled the Clean Elections law is unconstitutional, largely because the rules discriminate against minor parties. The program is winding its way through the courts.

To move faster and keep a few judges from making the decisions, the state legislature could tweak the bill so it passes muster. It would be good politics. A recent Zogby poll found that 79 percent of Connecticut voters support public financing and 58 percent said the governor and legislature should act quickly to save it.

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the government couldn’t ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections. Specifically, the court lifted the restrictions on corporate spending to support or oppose candidates and the restriction that bans the broadcast, cable, or satellite transmission of “electioneering communications” paid for by corporations or labor unions from their general funds in the 30 days before a presidential primary and in the 60 days before the general elections.

While the decision did not specifically reference them, policy experts agree the ruling applies to labor unions as well.

That would explain why Fox News and editorials nationwide, and even the Journal Inquirer’s own Chris Powell, railed about how labor unions would be the problem here, flooding campaigns with cash and influencing elections.

Really? Let’s take a closer look at campaign contributions, shall we?

In 2008, corporations outspent labor 26-to-1. In 2006, it was 17-to-1. In 2004, it was 24-to-1; 2002, 10-to-1; and in 2000, it was 13-to-1.

Between the 2000 and 2008 presidential elections labor union contributions have actually decreased from $90 million to $74 million, while corporate contributions have dramatically increased from $1.2 billion to $1.96 billion.Here in Connecticut, labor unions are prohibited from contributing to candidates that participate in the Clean Elections system, which, if the last election is any indicator, will once again be more than 75 percent of the candidates. And unlike big business, labor unions only support candidates that support their issues.

By making Connecticut’s Clean Elections law meet constitutional requirements, the state legislature can show the people of our state that elections should belong in the hands of its voters and not, as the lopsided Supreme Court would have you believe, in the hands of corporations.

Eric Bailey is the communications director for AFT Connecticut. He lives in Windsor.

2010-02-11T12:02:00.000-08:00

JournalInquirer.com

Time to start walking the talk
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, January 28, 2010 12:08 PM EST

There are people who walk the walk and those who talk the talk. My favorites are the multitaskers who walk the talk. And they all can be found in politics — you’ve seen them everywhere.

Take Merrick Alpert. Alpert is walking the state — literally — to prove he can be a senator. Look around when you’re on the road and you’ll see him walking the walk. By doing so he hopes you’ll vote for him, or at least remember his name and why he’s walking.

Then there’s the talking the talk crowd. My favorite example is from soon-to-be ex-Gov Jodi Rell.In November 2008 the economy was headed down the toilet. People were really starting to feel the pain of the failing economy.

Rell called a meeting with state employee unions at Dinosaur State Park to offer ways that would help her crew of public servants to lose jobs, wages, and benefits like so many of the victims of Wall Street and the rest of the world.To soften the blow of the pending tough times Rell was prepared to put her workforce through, she talked the talk and offered the classic “I feel your pain” soliloquy. It was a moment I wish I had witnessed but have heard about many times: a heartfelt, empathetic expression of connection with the suffering of the masses.Rell understood tough times. Everyone was facing them — even her own family, all the way out in Colorado. The economic disaster was taking its toll and she knew how hard it was going to be to get through the mess. But working together, she told SEBAC leaders, we all can make it.

The governor went on to say that her pain was felt by her beloved daughter who, up until our looming depression, always had the wherewithal to purchase brand-name croutons for her salads, Pepperidge Farm croutons, to be exact. Times were so tough, daughter sadly relayed to mom in a phone-call back home, that she was forced to buy generic store-brand croutons at Safeway.

The SEBAC leaders gasped in horror. The talk was talked — kind of.

And the rest is history, as they say.

All downside drama aside, my favorites are those who talk a good game — like deep-thinking Journal Inquirer weekly columnists who really get it — and then put words into action by doing something about their subject lines. I like people whose moral compass and principled behaviors guide them in making our towns, state, and nation better places for all.

Even better: I like people who live their lives informing people about their own choices and empowering them to walk their own talk and build brighter futures for themselves and everyone else.I have been incredibly fortunate to have penned 35 weekly columns at the Journal Inquirer since June. As a labor leader and liberal Democratic political activist, I have had the ability to offer a weekly view on issues, something no other commercial paper in the U.S. offers to its readers. I commend the JI for its innovative embracing of that concept and hope you have had a good time with my 700 words every week.

Talking the talk is not enough for me, though. This will be my last column here so I can actually do a bit of walking — in the 15th House District, trying to inform and excite the electorate into being a part of the effort to make our state a better place to live, work, grow our families, and enjoy our idle years.My passion to walk my talk and make a difference is putting me smack dab into the middle of politics as a candidate and out of JI column writing.

One way or another, I’ll let you know what I learn.

And for all the victims of the meltdown suffering from generic crouton overdose: Let’s get to work fixing this economy.

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor. All columns are posted on

2010-01-23T19:03:00.000-08:00

JournalInquirer.com

It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Saturday, January 23, 2010 12:08 PM EST

As I was scanning the channels after the announcements began pouring in that Martha Coakley had lost the election for U.S. senator from Massachusetts I thought I saw Howard Beale on the Union Broadcasting System in the rant that was heard ’round the world — again.

“I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it,” Beale said.

But I was mistaken. It must have just been a spooky flashback from 1976.

Beale’s network wasn’t on my TV Tuesday night, but the banter leading up to the election’s result reminded me that some things — like the plight of the middle class, and anger always chasing a spot to spew — never change.

There’s no question we are in the midst of an anger pandemic that is spreading faster and infecting more people than the H1N1 virus. Coakley can testify to that.

People are really worried about their jobs, their future, and their families. Most people want some kind of fix of the broken health-care system but don’t like the fix that’s winding its way through Congress. Most people didn’t want the economy to collapse but they don’t like the outcome of the fix that ended up putting more profits on Wall Street than potatoes on dinner tables on Main Street.

It’s harder to make ends meet — especially now that so many people are spending more in an effort to pay off credit cards, other debts, and refilling pension funds instead of working hard to increase their credit limits.These frustrations and many others are making people lash out at just about anything they can — especially politicians.

And just like Beale’s situation in that 1976 movie “Network,” there’s always someone who can smell an opportunity to exploit some crazed anger for his own gain.

It’s a funny thing that the wave of anger as expressed by Massachusetts voters could, for instance, actually kill the effort to fix America’s seriously flawed health-care system. It is bitterly ironic that the anger seeking ventilation about things such as out of control health-care premiums and co-pays; loss of coverage because of job change, pre-existing conditions, or just getting sick; seeing one’s children start careers with no coverage at all; and many other unbearable health-care coverage atrocities has been directed at the people and institutions that are working hardest to fix the problems instead of the parties that have been at work creating them.

That’s the same “art imitating life” trick UBS used on Beale to goad his anger in an effort to boost ratings and residual profits.

But it seems to me that the goaders on a lot of issues are the ones we should be getting mad at.We pay more and more each day to feed big insurance and big pharma’s profit addictions. And then they spend some of our money to rile up the anger and aim it at blocking the system changes we need the most but might dampen profits.

People are in a rage about working harder, longer, and faster while getting less in return. The goaders rile up the folks about the taxes taken from their shrinking paychecks. But who is shrinking the paycheck and stealing the rewards for the extra effort and productivity? We’ve been through an unprecedented era where most of the rewards for productivity went to the top of the income ladder while the workforce was being pushed down — one rung at a time.

Who’s mad about that?

Beale got it partly right when he challenged his audience: “So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

The part he left out? Just make sure you get angry at the right people.

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor.

2010-01-14T12:47:00.000-08:00

JournalInquirer.com

The war between the classes is over: Guess who won
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, January 14, 2010 12:08 PM EST

Let me be first to declare that the most recent war of the classes is over. As has been the case throughout history, the wealthy class has won again.There never was a real contest in this round. Victory was pretty much snatched from the armies of the nonwealthy when weapons and resolve were abandoned as they became convinced class warfare is nothing but a symptom of a socialist disease that needed to be purged from American tradition.

Of course, as always, the ones who were actually screaming the loudest and fighting the hardest in this bout were the richest few, along with those on their payroll and everyone else who wished they were.

A few years ago early hints suggesting victory for the richest was near came from the woolly caterpillar for the ruling class, Warren Buffett. In a New York Times article written by Ben Stein, Buffett said, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” That was then affirmed by an observation that showed that, in 2007, 23.5 percent of all income in America went to the top 1 percent of earners. The last time that happened was 1929.

Evidence of the victory is mounting daily. Last month, third-quarter reports revealed a huge up-tick in worker productivity, with an 8-percent increase that showed the American workforce producing more and getting nothing in return. The productivity/profit curve continues to leave out the workforce from the reward cycle.

It’s a simple age-old equation that was amplified back in the day by John D. Rockefeller who said: “I’d rather earn 1 percent of 100 people’s effort than 100 percent of my own.”

So, it stands to reason that the net would improve by chasing a bigger effort from fewer people. Why create new jobs when you have more to squeeze out of the ones you have left.

As Elizabeth Warren, chair of the congressional oversight panel created to oversee the banking bailouts, stated in her “America Without a Middle Class” article: “Today, one in five Americans is unemployed, underemployed, or just plain out of work. One in nine families can’t make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy every month. The economic crisis has wiped more than $5 trillion from pensions and savings, has left family balance sheets upside down, and threatens to put 10 million homeowners out on the street.

Profits are rising, the Dow is rapidly recovering ground, black ink is flowing in bailed-out companies, and hedge funds are hedging again. All while the workeras are getting squeezed even harder.

But the most recent and conclusive indicator this war is over came with last week’s outbreak of giddiness on Wall Street as bankers bid on the number of zeros — six, seven, or eight — that need to be penned on their bonus checks.

It’s over. They won.

Peace is good, right?

It’s a new day and a new beginning. It’s time to rebuild the class war-ravaged economy and renew the commitment to competition.

As the captains of business and industry might say, it’s time to clean out the junk that slows our state’s and nation’s business down — health plans, pensions, sick time, and all that hampers competitiveness. High wages and government-sponsored safety and security nets are barriers to profits — we must tear down those walls. Workers’ quality of life expectations can be adjusted for us to compete with India, Singapore, China, and hungry emerging nations, the victors suggest.

To the victors of war goes that booty, and just because American wealth has already won all contests with the rest of the world in disproportionate levels, that’s no excuse to trim the chasm between the wealthy and the rest of us — even if it leads to another collapse bigger than the last two.

Can’t beat ’em; can’t join ’em. What’s left?

How about some real competition between workers and the wealthy to win a bigger share of the pie?

"Healthy competition" is not a socialist disease, right?

Let’s rumble.

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor.

2010-01-08T11:25:00.000-08:00

JournalInquirer.com

Practical nursing program
shouldn’t be tossed overboard
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, January 7, 2010 12:09 PM EST

Jetsam is an amusing word for vocabulary enthusiasts. Unless you’re a crossword junkie or a mariner of sort you may not have much use for it though. Most ship captains are not fans, since they know the word doesn’t have any relationship to fun and they’d rather not have a need to use it at all.

But, in this economic maelstrom we’re in, the captains of our ship of state are faced with tough decisions about how to weather the storm and come out intact. One choice is to take on a heavier load temporarily and provide more stability on the rough seas. The other is to empty out the hold and lighten the ship by tossing overboard anything they can get a hold of.

The outcome of those tactics often depends on the storm.There’s no doubt we’ll weather this one so the better choice is stability. Tossing everything overboard may bring storm survival but with little left but a lighter ship and piles of irretrievable jetsam lining the bottom of the abyss. Adding a bit more weight that can be dispensed when the seas calm will ensure we still have a ship to sail and contents that will help provide for our futures when the sun shines again.

One item among many in our state in line to become jetsam as the captains debate how or when it may be tossed is the licensed practical nurse adult education program.

The LPN program is offered at 10 state technical high schools and rewards about 350 eager students with productive lives in health care as LPNs every 18 months. There are about 400 students and 44 teachers at work in the program now. Students pay $4,850 in tuition, about 20 percent of the full cost of the program.It’s claimed that suspending the program would save the state $1.7 million. But an analysis by the State Vocational Federation of Teachers, the union representing teachers in the vo-tech school system, shows that suspending the LPN program will actually cost the state $850,000 or more.

Most of the teachers are protected by the no-layoff agreement with state employee unions and they’ll be placed in comparable positions, as they essentially will be paid not to teach. In addition, the state must repay application fees to the 1,000 applicants already lined up for the program. Lost tuition that covers the salaries of the teachers and maintaining dormant facilities adds to the cancellation costs.

A better reason to make this program jetsam-proof is jobs. Our rate of recovery from the storm is directly related to rates of rehiring and new job placements. The best way to storm-proof our future economy is to ramp up the jobs.

Unfilled jobs do not generate taxes or put dollars back into the economy when Connecticut needs it most.At a recent press conference, Matthew Barrett, from the Connecticut Association of Healthcare Facilities, pointed out that new data shows baby boomers trending as less healthy and more likely to need care.

The Connecticut Department of Labor forecasts 324 openings for LPNs each year for new and replacement positions. Suspending this program will have a significant impact on those job openings and the care that needs to be provided in already understaffed health-care facilities.

Just let applicants go to private LPN programs, some say. There are three private LPN training programs in Connecticut. But most students don’t have access to enough gold doubloons to pay the tuition, which ranges from $32,000 to $48,000 — a bit more than the $5,000 affordable tuition at the vo-tech program.

This program has demonstrated value, has served the state well in developing and placing qualified people in decent jobs, and is critical to fulfilling future health-care needs.

The LPN program could be saved and restored by the end of this month without consequence. Otherwise, we all lose out. The next restoration window would be September. By then the damage will be done, as some job and public health stability will have been senselessly tossed away.

That’s not an amusing use for jetsam at all.

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor.

2010-01-01T07:40:00.000-08:00

JournalInquirer.com

Optimism for a new decade
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, December 31, 2009 12:09 PM EST

I can’t let a new year pass without the usual “eat right, exercise, lose weight, and stop cussing” commitments that last about a week. But here’s a few New Year’s resolutions I can keep. They’re easier and focused on a lighter, brighter optimistic new decade.

It’s a good time for optimism — pessimistic bitterness and anger have been around for too long.
To start, I will laugh more.

Opportunities to laugh are still few and far between, so humor needs to be found in different places. For instance, when I hear senior tea-baggers screaming “Keep government off my back, and don’t touch my Social Security or Medicaid” I won’t shake my head or roll my eyes.
I’ll laugh and optimistically assume that person is joking and really knows Medicaid isn’t a gift from the HMOs.

Next on the list: More music; less Limbaugh, Hannity, and Vicevich.

These three miss my targets anyway, but I feel the need to listen and be more informed about all perspectives. The broadcasts of these anger jockeys have become bitter, propagandistic blather, where it’s hard to disconnect issues and policy angles from blatant propaganda that riles up the resentment junkies.

A couple of generations ago Spiro Agnew labeled his liberal detractors “nattering nabobs of negativity.”

It seems like the anger jockeys have absorbed the nabob role quite well.

Now that’s funny.

For the rest of the new year I need to speak up more about things that need to be said starting with this: Chris Dodd is one of the most effective, committed, and helpful U.S. senators our state has ever had working for us. He is a decent human being with an incredibly deep understanding of what the people of our state and nation need. He has acted valiantly on our behalf and stands squarely in our corner.

Ted Kennedy spent his entire political career looking out for us. The Kennedy family had a genetic disposition to be fighters for equity, justice, and helping those in need. I’ll miss that. But while Dodd has no Kennedy descendency, he is guided by the same moral compass and disposition in his advocacy for all of us. He will fill the void left by Kennedy’s passing — something our nation desperately needs.

Dodd has a huge record of accomplishment. Most recently he led the charge for health-care reform, assuming the HELP committee leadership role as Kennedy became too ill to see it through. Dodd is taking on big finance and fixing Wall Street, banks, and credit cards. He led efforts for the Family Medical Leave Act, Combating Autism Act, and firefighter safety. He pushed for the National and Community Service Act and AmeriCorps, along with Connecticut jobs and funding for state projects that helped boost our economy. And a lot more.

When Vice President Joe Biden was in Connecticut recently he said Dodd is the Senate’s go-to person for getting things done.

Dodd serves as the chair of the Banking Committee and is moving reforms that have been stuck for years. He is a key leader in the Foreign Relations Committee, especially on South and Central American issues.

Dodd is a leader in a venue where it takes 20 years to reach maximum effectiveness and it takes 60 votes to win on any significant issue. He is where most new senators can only hope to be and he’s mastered the skills needed to move issues that matter. He’s in a better position than he’s ever been to help Connecticut and all working families.

Many of the things that need to be heard, such as how much Chris Dodd has done, have been drowned out by inane angry shouting. Maybe the next year, or even the decade, will be filled with less shouting and brighter lights shining on things that really count. I’m optimistic.

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor.

2009-12-24T11:42:00.000-08:00

JournalInquirer.com

No snow? No Santa? No way, if we work on warming
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, December 24, 2009 12:06 PM EST

We may be at the cusp of an event that could reshape the season to be jolly for eons.

With all the talk about global warming, no one has yet asked the most important question: What will happen to the white Christmas in a warm world? What about Santa, the sleigh, tiny reindeer, and chimneys? The dire consequences from the impact of a balmy life on earth will surely put a damper on good will toward men. Laying off the winter legend because there’s no more winter would be just awful.

Don’t get me wrong. I hate winter, and Christmas only somewhat tempers my distaste for frostbite and snowblowers.

But a rewrite of the winter scenario for a warm-world Christmas Eve might bring us Don Ho Ho Ho skirting the globe with gifts for kids — on a flatbed surfboard being pulled by Rudolph the red-nosed dolphin and his eight fin mates, dropping presents by the palm trees decorated with care.

I’m hoping that picture may be whimsical, but there is no question we have a problem in the making. But there’s still time to change the image of that ghost of a Christmas future.

For that reason, and a few others, it’s good to know that a lot of people were at work saving Christmas in Copenhagen last week.

Coverage and information about the climate summit was widespread as the delegates mulled over serious actions needed to keep humans from burning down the house.

What you may not have heard was that 400 union members — 40 of whom were American — were in on the talks.The global-union delegation was led by our CT@Work friend, Sharan Burrow, president of the International Trade Union Confederation ITUC. Burrow is the highest-ranking union leader in the world and presented labor’s views on the issue at summit sessions.

“Trade unions support the highest ambitions for binding targets in developed countries and ambitious actions in developing nations that must limit the temperature rise to 2 degrees or less. We urge nations to accept transparency, to ensure trust through a global treaty finalized in the first half of 2010. Wealthy nations must lay the foundations for that trust with the finance and technology to kick start low carbon development, the investment to ensure climate resilience, employment and decent work,” Burrow said.

But Burrow was among those disappointed that more was not done to negotiate a solid agreement by the end of the summit.

Upon adjournment, stepped-up negotiations and world leaders who can work past their differences so everyone can start tackling the difficult problems were both missing.

Financial commitments and politics aside, Copenhagen, in my view, is really less about global warming than it is about bad policy and actions that allow the captains of business and industry to pollute our air, water, and land for the sake of riches the rest of us never touch.There are also no consequences for the atrocious planet pillaging that our children will end up paying for in many ways.

We still have a shot at achieving climate commitments that have consequences greater than a lump of dirty coal in polluter’s stockings. We can stem the tide of poisoning our planet and jump on a huge opportunity for green jobs. We can help poor nations throw out the polluting bums who are exploiting their economic vulnerability by providing resources to those countries.

And we can also use this as a new opportunity to boost America’s green industry, retooling and rebuilding our economic engine while getting the U.S. off the litterer’s list. The solid investment program for our planet suggested by unions and others brings great potential to grow jobs, the economy, fresh air, clean water — and even Christmas trees. “Those investments will transform our economies and create millions of new jobs as we rebuild after the devastation of the global financial crisis. We must all take responsibility in this global challenge,” Burrow said.

But, with all that in play and hopefully, a good agreement next year ready for the 2010 Mexico Summit, my wish to wear sneakers, shorts and Hawaiian shirts in Connecticut in January may be dashed.

But that still won’t prevent me from asking Santa Claus for a clean, cooler earth as my Christmas gift — while he’s still around, anyway.

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor

2009-12-17T14:02:00.000-08:00

JournalInquirer.com
Many contenders in these no-holds barred games
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, December 17, 2009 12:00 PM EST

At this time the world competition for the sport of Throwing People Under the Bus (TPUB) has not received enough recognition to be accepted as a sport for the 2012 Games of the XXX Olympiad in London. But it’s becoming so popular I’m betting by XXXI in Rio we’ll be watching the judges rating style, speed, and accuracy in HDTV.

At Connecticut’s biggest TPUB arena, the state Capitol, trials are being held in just about every hall, caucus room, or office that can fit a contestant and a TV camera. Future TPUB sports reporters, currently deployed at the Capitol bureau, are covering the contests with vigor, enthusiasm, and watchful observance of technique and speed.
Leading in the games, on the second floor of the arena, Gov. Jodi Rell has just received a high score for style and delivery as she threw the state’s poorest children — along with their parents and many others — under the Budget Cuts Express. It was a particularly precise and well-executed throw, tossing the most programs and people in the least amount of time, while also drawing the loudest roars from the people who care the most about the people who are most in need.

TPUB team games can be found in rings even on street corners. Go to any Democratic political event and you’ll find the teams roped in by yellow tape and police barriers, heaving people and programs under the yellow Thomas Minotour.
The Titan Tea Baggers are the stars now. They beat out the Wall Street Greedy Bums, last year’s champs who won the gold — well, actually lost the gold — by throwing every working stiff with a 401(k) under the NYC M184 on Broadway. The Bums lost the belt to the Tea Baggers, who scored higher with their spin-loop dump twist that lobs Sen. Chris Dodd under the bus daily while blaming him for every bad event for the last 165 years.

Dodd was solely responsible for the Great Depression and the Irish potato famine, you know.

There’s a newcomer to the official TPUB Games. She developed her skills by heaving WWE workers under the ropes. But Linda McMahon is finding her stride and may have a future as an Olympic contender. Her best showing so far is the double flip-flop Rob Simmons toss. Her early attempts at chucking scored low but the judges got more keyed into her style and scored her higher after she offered them jobs working on her campaign and free rides on the RAW RAW RINO bus. Now McMahon has a panel of judges who can work on convincing voters that she really knows the difference between a smackdown and a roll call.

If they’re rolling, they’re already on the mat, right?

Then there’s “Fightin’ Joe” — Chris Healy. He’s a Republican Party chair contender who threw more people under the bus than the Bums — mostly Democrats and anyone who seems to look Democratic. His venue is located wherever and whenever a reporter can be found. If you are ever roaming about the Capitol you might hear a zziipp … thwump … thump … screeech. You can bet “Fightin’ Joe” just flipped an unsuspecting Dem lookalike under the shuttle. He’s a chucking champion and popular among media types who don’t want to travel far for a quick matchup to cover.

Good thing most reporters or columnists don’t look or act like Democrats.

All of that makes the TPUB Games so extraordinarily interesting: They are no-holds barred, multidimensional, complex, and allow contestants to say and do things that are totally outside the corporate skybox. These games allow full audience participation, manipulation, and decoration by tire treadmarks. These games are becoming so popular there’s just no way the International Olympic Committee will be able to pass it up, at least as a demonstration sport.

There is one thing that may hamper progress for the sport here, however.

The last couple of governors never really put much emphasis on or funding into mass transit. There just might not be enough buses around for the contenders to use for practice sessions.

There might be a few people who would be happy about that.

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor.

2009-12-03T16:36:00.000-08:00

JournalInquirer.com

Adapting to our new multichromatic mosaic
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, December 3, 2009 12:08 PM EST

“It don’t matter if you’re black or white,” Michael Jackson once sang. It would be great if we could say the same thing about our country. But we can’t … yet.

About 45 years ago our monochromatic nation’s composition was close to 90 percent Caucasian. America’s white-centric ways dominated everything, from business to government to educational institutions. The culture and upbringing of the population in those times has been a driving force for much of what we do and how we do it now.

But scroll forward 45 years. It’s projected that the U.S. will be less than 45 percent white — quite the demographic swing towards a more multihued melting pot. As that shift is now under way, our culture, language, and behavior patterns are shifting and reforming — quite rapidly — into a new American mosaic.Unfortunately, white American customs are not changing at the same speed. And when it comes to health care, we are moving even slower.

In 2006 the Institutes of Medicine issued a report that concluded we have a problem with disparities in health care for people of color and cultures beyond our traditional pallor. Newer research shows serious differences when comparing minority populations such as African-Americans, Native Americans, Asian-Americans, and Hispanics with whites. Some minority groups have higher incidence rates of chronic diseases, higher mortality, and generally worse health outcomes.

There are many disease-specific cases of racial and ethnic disparities. For instance, cancer incidence rates among African-Americans are 10 percent higher than for whites. Adult African-Americans and Hispanics have near twice the risk as whites of getting diabetes. And there’s plenty of evidence showing serious problems in how people of different racial, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds are treated when they get into our traditional health-care environment.

There’s now a better flow of new information that’s coming out for this old and neglected issue. To fix it we need to become more aware of how and why it happens. Then comes the hard part: embracing the fact that our own cultural character may need to change.

New knowledge, new skills, and new beliefs must be consciously put in play to help us adapt to our national color and cultural shift. Medical practices need to be updated to meet the challenges of a dramatic shift in cultural and racial diversity. It doesn’t happen automatically. We essentially need to be reprogrammed at all levels, and Caucasian leaders need to be in the vanguard of change.

Add the numbers and the whole picture shows our country’s face and make-up are changing faster than the transformation needed to end health disparities. There’s been little time to collect and assess data and alter behaviors to help dissolve the problem.But there are signs of hope. The Sustinet health-care bill that survived Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s veto pen became a public act that calls for a panel of experts to examine racial and ethnic disparities, and put in place solutions to stem poorer health-care outcomes for nonwhite citizens.

Sure, sensible public policy is critical to reducing disparities. The wonk in me gets that. But something bigger is at work here. We need to better understand our diversity.

America’s palette is destined to be multichromatic. That’s a beautiful thing. We get to look at and learn more about the rainbow of human presence and how wonderfully different we are. In my book, this is a far sight better than the 1950s, when we all looked and acted the same.

But all of this change — this busting of molds — is going to be hard, especially for the dominant culture that fears losing its grip on numerical advantages. It’s incumbent on all of us to embrace and adapt — the sooner, the better. And we should do so not only because it makes moral sense, which it does, but because it also makes economic sense. We’re spending way too much money on health care and getting too little in return to accept the senseless costs of disparate racial outcomes.

Put another way, it shouldn’t matter if you’re African-American or Caucasian … or Hispanic or Asian or Native American.

I like that song better.

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor.
All CT@Work columns can be found at www.ctatwork.blogspot.com.

2009-11-30T06:01:00.000-08:00

JournalInquirer.com

Good reasons to give thanks - not just for turkeys
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, November 26, 2009 7:11 AM EST

We just can’t let a Thanksgiving Day go by without giving thanks for good health, great friends and family, the turkey on the table, and the lives we have been fortunate to live.

It’s also good to expand that list with a few thank-you options that might even make the conversation around the dinner table livelier.

Some could thank our governor. Before Jodi Rell leaves, there’s time to carve out more services and programs that prevent the poor and unfortunate from going hungry or getting the help they need to survive. A half-billion dollars of cuts to education, senior programs, social services, public safety, and programs that make life in Connecticut so precious will be sacrificed so we can protect all those billions that were gained on Wall Street while unemployment lines gained on Main Street.

Others could praise the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for its relentless battle to fight atrocious regulations that, for instance, would force business and industry to stop polluting our air, lakes, and rivers. Its half-billion dollar lobbying campaigns over the last dozen years have also successfully fended off affordable accessible health care for everyone, while preserving the ability for its members to reap even bigger profits by such measures as denying care or coverage to the sick, and passing along health-care costs to workers.

The lives of working families would be so much richer were it not for the efforts of the chamber, whose real job is to make the lives of its members richer at our expense. When the governor makes cuts, people bleed and the chamber gets the Band-Aids.

And someone might offer a positive acknowledgement to all the yams in the conservative media that have offered “fair and balanced” perennial criticism and perspectives on important issues. They’ve been brewing tea parties, questioning President Barack Obama’s American birthright, and carping about Democrats and public servants while praising businesses and service cuts. Without that loud 24/7 voice, people could begin to realize that there are actually many things that work well, help protect us, and make our lives and economy work better.

Most of us share a common bond in our national desire to care for, provide for, and protect our loved ones and ourselves. We want to live secure and comfortable lives, work productively, and be able to pay for the house, the car, and the kids. Health care that helps when it’s needed and a pension that allows a comfortable retirement are among the items on most everyone’s common list.

It seems to me that sometimes the rest of America cares more about each other than maybe the governor, the chamber, or the conservative media do. That’s something the rest of us can be thankful for.

And if there is a common dream for a decent living and a recapturing of middle-class status that makes work rewarding and our lives more secure and comfortable, then we need to thank the ones who are actually doing the most to make it happen.

The majority of the state legislature has fought hard to protect those most in need, keep services that benefit everyone, and push for a revenue system that is fair, equitable, and funds the services that people need, want, and use.

President Obama, Sen. Chris Dodd, and our local congressmen, John Larson and Joe Courtney, have fought hard to stop polluters, and they support middle-class values and the ability to prosper in a rapidly expanding world of wealth amassed by a shrinking pool of earners. They have fought hard to revamp a health-care system that creates more profits than cures, and they make sure we all have a better means to provide for ourselves when we can’t work or choose to slow down in our senior years.

We also have a blooming venue of alternatives to conservative media, online and in this paper. Bet you didn’t know the Journal Inquirer is the only commercial newspaper I’ve found in America that prints a weekly column written by a union guy.

As bad as some things may seem, there really are many good things that are happening that can give us good reasons to give thanks - and not just for the turkeys.

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor.

2009-11-19T15:55:00.000-08:00

JournalInquirer.com

Gangster capitalism: Don’t pay the workers
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, November 19, 2009 12:08 PM EST

Free-market capitalists and some media pundits are among the loudest voices bemoaning the stress of broken backs from too much government. The noise is so loud that many have begun to believe that government regulation, monitoring, and enforcement is a bad thing.

Well, it is — if playing fair hampers your profits.

The market credo asserts that profits come by raising prices or cutting costs. This economy favors the latter. So, turning off lights, firing workers, buying cheap pencils, cutting wages and benefits, or just not paying people are among the many cost-cutting tricks that can be found in the magic profits kit.

Not paying people?

Yes, that trick seems to have become quite popular.

The trick is to just forget to pay the workers for their time on the job or — oops — use the wrong pay rate. Maybe put the old batteries in the little handheld payroll calculator to knock the OT calculations off a bit — in favor of the company, coincidentally.

Labor laws have their weaknesses and loopholes. They are sometimes a bit confusing and enforcement may not be at peak. So, with those conditions in place, the unchecked “oops” factor is becoming more common. That’s evidenced by the rising “mistakes” rate.

If making “mistakes” is easy, cheating is even less work.

Walmart, with thousands of employees in many states, has regularly been caught making wage and hour “mistakes.” In a recent combined class-action court case in Nevada, the judge found that the retail giant, and pillar of the community had failed to give its workers their entitled rest and meal breaks, skipped overtime pay, and doctored time cards to keep overtime down — 1.5 million times.

That case, with its $65 million-plus payback, is one of many brought against the company as its totals now exceed hundreds of millions of dollars in back wage and penalty payments.

Save money. Live better. No consequences.

And Walmart is not alone.

It shouldn’t work like that, but if lawsuits, penalties, and wage settlements cost less than paying for overtime, extra hours, or working lunches, then, sadly enough, it sounds like a profitable business decision to let a judge assess the wage payouts.

Gary K. Pechie, the director of Connecticut’s Department of Labor Wage and Workplace Standards Division, has seen a noticeable increase in inquiries, “mistakes,” and outright cheating here in our state.

In fiscal year 2008-09 the 30 crackerjack investigators in his department worked full speed and got $8.1 million paid back to workers whose bosses kept their cash. That was about a 12 percent increase over the previous year.

At a news conference state Sen. Edith Prague and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal asked why a contractor that has violated wage and hour rules, and was banned from Massachusetts state contracts, was still awarded a contract by our state’s Department of Transportation. There’s disagreement over the rules and eligibility for violators.

It shows how our system isn’t protecting us.

Worry not, the cavalry is coming.

Many states are tightening rules, boosting fines, and enforcement. U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis is at it too. She’s expanding the U.S. Department of Labor wage and hour investigative unit to hunt down more cheaters and “mistakes.” Connecticut’s federal DOL investigation unit will expand by 33 percent, from 9 to 12 people. They will work in tandem with Pechie’s crew, chasing the wage scofflaws.

We have a couple million people employed at tens of thousands of workplaces. I don’t doubt the ability, energy, and effectiveness of every one of our 40-plus Connecticut investigators chasing wage and hour violators and protecting our paychecks. Just think what 80 or 160 investigators could do.

Seems to me we have a case — that’s not an isolated one — where it makes sense to add a bit more government to guarantee fair and just outcomes. Sure, CBIA and the Chamber of Commerce may scream like banshees. But, really, should one’s labor and honest wages be the subsidy for the ill-gotten gains of any boss? Not in my book.

That’s not free-market capitalism. It’s gangster capitalism. And we all should be breaking our backs to stop it.

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor.

2009-11-12T12:14:00.000-08:00

JournalInquirer.com

A gallon of vinegar for Rell
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, November 12, 2009 12:08 PM EST

Benjamin Franklin once said that a spoonful of honey will trap more flies than a gallon of vinegar. With the press, politicians, friends, and family ladling out the honey upon the news of Gov. Jodi Rell’s impending retirement, I thought I should share some thoughts and catch a few pesky flies of my own.

First off, I say “rah-rah” to the governor.

Rell has accomplished many of the goals she set out to meet once she took over the ship of state from her wayward running mate and mentor, John Rowland.

During one of the most difficult economic challenges and protracted budget battles any governor has ever seen in this state, Rell courageously kept her focus and determination, without detour from the outcome she wanted. Slashing public services we all depend upon — cutting programs from early childhood education programs to elder care and everything in between — were actions geared to protect the wealthy and largest corporations from having to contribute their fair share of what it takes to make our state a great place to live and work.

Rell deserves recognition for warding off the forces of evil with her magical veto pen, without prejudice for those on either end of the economic spectrum. Last year she vetoed the minimum-wage bill; this year she focused on millionaires tax increase prevention. But the good fighter missed her mark. The minimum-wage veto was overridden, allowing an $8 per hour minimum for 2009, and the tax rate on extreme wealth did rise. Minimum-wage earners are now 35 cents per hour richer. A millionaire making $480 an hour has become about $2.50 an hour poorer.

Yes, it was a loss. But that is the kind of commendable effort this governor puts into her work.

Rell worked to fix our broken health-care system, vetoing the “Pooling Bill” that would have helped cities, towns, nonprofits, and small businesses with health-care costs — twice. Her forceful effort to provide affordable and accessible health care to every resident of our state came with a veto of the Sustinet Health Care Bill.

Last week I saw Life Star bringing in the rescued victims of unfortunate circumstances to Hartford Hospital. New reports are coming in daily about people who are in need of food banks and pantries to help boost them back on their economic feet.

Our departing governor stood up against those programs in order to help ease hardship on suffering Wall Streeters. But give her credit. She knew when to step back. The governor could have forced the issue and achieved those cuts in human services and emergency care, but she held back. Lives were saved. As Kenny Rogers might say — she knew when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em. That’s a remarkable attribute of our governor.

The governor has made many efforts to boost our economy. The “Little Dig,” a project she inherited, was miserably botched by Rowland and lousy contractors. The project essentially had to be redone. But that’s twice the jobs in a sluggish economy.

Thankfully, Rell then vetoed the bill that would have required more oversight and more controls on the use of outside contractors for projects like the “Little Dig.” Later she did take ownership and sign a clean contracting bill in 2007. Now, the panel to oversee the program is still not in place and it has a target of 2011 to be up and running. That means we still have two more years to get twice the jobs from every state construction project — just what we need in this recession.

I have many more tales of gubernatorial derring-do, but there’s still 14 months to go to enhance the record of protecting the privileged, and helping those in need. We can count on more heavy lifting, heroic action, and maybe even some more judicious use of taxpayer-funded pollsters until the day of the 2011 Inauguration, when M. Jodi Rell’s term officially ends and she gets to ride off into the sunset.

It will be a glorious day. I’m counting the minutes in anticipation. And, I just might release all my honey flies as a tribute to the departing governor.

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor.

2009-11-05T10:48:00.000-08:00

JournalInquirer.com

Rescuing Main Street and the people who make a difference
CT@Work
Published: Thursday, November 5, 2009 12:10 PM EST
By Leo Canty

Who made the rule that we should bail out bankers, hedge-fund managers, and corporate executives instead of the people who are really important?

If your house is burning down, do you page your banker to help put out the fire? Do you think Bernie Madoff or his hedge-fund buddies would help someone fix a flat tire? Has a health insurance exec ever been called to help defibrillate a heart-attack victim?

No.

So who is really important?

A severe medical emergency brought local police and ambulance personnel to help a family member this week. Their committed efforts and skills in saving lives struck me as a stark reminder of just how important these people and services are, and how we can’t do without them.

While politicians and captains of business and industry are all chasing bigger slices of a smaller pie, many people are doing incredibly important things — helping those in need, rescuing loved ones from danger, and saving lives.

The problem is, in many instances, they have to do more with less help.

Windsor, for example, has a volunteer ambulance service, WVA, that made more than 4,000 calls last year. It’s a million-dollar operation that gets its money from patient billing, subsidies, and fundraising. The staff of two paid, do-everything managers and more than 75 volunteers respond to emergencies, save the lives of thousands of loved ones, and keep the operation at the ready for everyone. They are part of the team that helped keep my family member alive. They are incredibly important people.

Knowing that they are so important, why aren’t they treated like the Wall Street elite? Why aren’t bailouts, TARPs, and stimuli being tossed their way?

Funding to support the WVA operation is down. Revenues pay for equipment, supplies, staff, and pizza for volunteers. Patient billing brings in the most money, but customers who have lost their insurance, jobs, and the ability to pay have put a damper on the billing.

Windsor supplies a building for a minimal lease-back fee and a $10,000 subsidy. The subsidy used to be bigger.

And you can guess how well the fundraising is going during this recession.

What it all means is that the people who do incredibly important things are struggling to make it all work — for us.

I really don’t ever want either of the two WVA top dog EMTs and operations crew members, Laura Kennedy or Dan Moylan, shout out the “clear” call as they spark a defibrillator on me. But you can bet that if I get in that spot, I sure don’t want to be under the paddles when some crusty old defib battery that needs to be replaced craps out.

Having up-to-date, good working equipment, necessary supplies in ample quantities, vehicles that can be counted on to make the transports, facilities to support and train the volunteers, and paid help to keep the operation operable requires resources.

The payback for that investment could be your saved life.

Talk to Moylan and Kennedy and you’ll see how determined they are to make the program work, no matter what it takes. They aren’t complaining about the lack of support, and they’re proud of what they do within the limits that are put on them. But their eyes light up when they talk about how they could improve the program — if only they had the resources.

Windsor is fortunate to have great, caring, committed people working for the WVA. They do what it takes to help us.

As we let big business, big insurance, entertainment moguls, banks, and Wall Streeters corner the money market — wrestling away funds that support the WVAs of our country — we need to recheck our priorities.

Let’s get the important people at the WVA what they need to do a better job to help us.

That’s called putting Main Street ahead of Wall Street.

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor.

CT@Work is America’s only weekly column authored by an individual labor leader/political activist printed in a commercial paper. It can be found in the Journal Inquirer (CT's 5th largest circulation) every Thursday.

2009-10-29T21:08:00.000-07:00

Coming Internet fight promises a Web of intrigue
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, October 29, 2009 12:07 PM EDT

The sides are lining up in the corners of the ring for the big contest: Tel-Com Giants in one corner, Internet Heavyweights in the other. But they’re not the only ones in this fight. Congress, consumers, labor, business and Net-nerds are also staking their spots on the mat, making their presence and preferences known.

There’s a lot at stake for the winners and losers in this battle over the future of the Internet for America.

Are you ready for this rumble?

Most Internet users know how to punch the keys to check e-mail, do some e-shopping or engage in other forms of e-browsing or business. The ubiquitous Net is always there on your laptop, desktop, or portable portal waiting for your command to do something. And we’re commanding in increasing numbers.What we’ve been overlooking lately is what it takes to provide that access and who really owns it.

There are also issues about the complex system and type of infrastructure needed to provide that access.And let’s not forget all the politics that will ultimately surround the call on who will win or lose.“Net Neutrality” is the promoter of the big fight. The argument, in an overly simplified description, is: Should the Internet be a free, open, accessible information highway for the use and benefit of anyone that gets on it? Or should it be managed and controlled allowing for restricted access — as determined by that free market that has done so well for us of late?

The FCC has begun drafting the rules and answering those questions as it moves to define “Net Neutrality.” It’s about time.

Many nations are way ahead of us on the issues of Internet access rules and expansion. We have more users but we’re falling behind rapidly in penetration, especially with high- speed broadband. We are way behind No. 1 e-nation South Korea, and Estonia is a few pegs above us.

We are collectively in another contest outside the ring, inside the global marketplace. Technology, fast and available, boosts nations in this competitive environment. Wide-open, unrestricted paths make it easier to achieve better economic outcomes. Jobs, education, health care, government services, social connections, services for the disabled, safety, and security can all be enhanced with fewer controls and restrictions on Net access, along with a faster, expanded system.

Understandably the Tel-Com Giants have an issue in their desire to restrict the flow. The current Internet infrastructure — that stuff we’re ignoring — is limited now and may not be able to handle a big expansion of volume. Capacity is an issue.

Net Neutrality opponents shout that argument from their corner. More likely, they’re less able to boost big, fast profits without more control of the supply as demand increases. It’s about money. Lots of money.

The real question is: Should a bunch of Tel-Coms make a ton of money, or should a ton of companies make a bunch of money? Access restrictions could also hamper free speech and grow our technology divide. It’s a big issue that we’ll hear a lot more about soon.

The Tel-Com Giants can’t foot the bill for a big Net expansion, especially if they can’t monopolize profit-boosting outcomes. So why don’t we all invest in the program and get a jump on nations like South Korea and Estonia. Other countries are investing in their Net structures, they see the potential for a great return with jobs and enhanced lives.

Ding! A winner!

And here’s some information about a winning plan for us. The Communications Workers of America is focused on the Internet, speed and broadband jobs expansion, and people all across America. Punch those keys for www.speedmatters.org and find out about the Net stuff CWA has been paying attention to while we were e-mailing and browsing.

Our nation can’t afford to get knocked out of the ring in the global economic bout because we’re too slow. Americans surely don’t want to be left out of the loop when it comes to Internet-access rules.

Let’s hope the FCC and Congress makes us all winners in this fight.

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor.

2009-10-22T10:34:00.000-07:00

JournalInquirer.com

In tough times like these, chicken is better than pork
CT@Work
By Leo Canty

Published: Thursday, October 22, 2009 12:04 PM EDT

My dad’s birthday is today. If he were alive we’d be celebrating his 101st. His generation was indelibly marked by tumultuous times, most significantly the Great Depression. My father survived the struggle, but his stories of suffering and want resonated. He never wanted to see an economic disaster affect the lives of future generations the way the Depression affected his. But now we’re coming close.

Bread lines were commonplace in Depression times. Wall Street’s greed and corruption forced mass numbers of unfortunate victims — working families like yours and mine — into a struggle to survive. More than 13 million people lost their jobs. No paychecks; no government safety net. The lifeline to survival was a long line and wait for a loaf of bread from the local charity so the family didn’t starve that day. It was a shameful and scary experience for too many proud Americans.

This month unemployment put 15 million jobless workers in the struggle to get food on the table. Government assistance programs shrunk the woes of the Great Depression but, sadly, America is increasingly the land of the shredded safety net and the growing Wall Street bonus program. Charitable organizations are still left to pick up the slack.

In communities like Manchester, dedicated food resources are available for people in need. But this recession has sent more people hunting for help, straining food inventories.Dale Doll, the food services director for the Manchester Area Conferences of Churches, runs a successful food pantry as one of the services MACC provides. Midday hot meals, the food pantry, and counseling are all part of the program. Its food assistance volume has jumped as much as 49 percent at certain times during the last year as MACC’s 800 to 900 monthly clients increased to about 1,700.

As the lingering budget battle raged at the Capitol, MACC made the news as the legislature added a $150,000 appropriation for the food bank ($75,000 each year of the biennium).

A food-fight then broke out between Gov. Jodi Rell and the legislature, as they flung rhubarb pies at each other over the issue. The governor’s attempt to line-item veto what she labeled “pork” failed. MACC received $75,000 this year and more hungry people are being helped.

Doll appreciates the funding. So does the community that needs the help. But she maintains a light-hearted attitude about the drama. When asked her about it she said, “We don’t have much pork here; chicken is better.”

Doll gets it. The community gets it. Citizens understand that bad times need good deeds, so that attitude has helped stock MACC’s pantry shelves.

The governor and her pork-slicing pals should visit MACC to get a closer look at real need.

But food alone cannot manage the crisis of need for those sinking in the current economic crisis.

The MACC staff works with people who have never had to manage their food or make a plan on how to eat healthy with no resources. They are coached in new survival skills, and shown where to go for services they never thought they’d need. More staff, more counseling, and more survival knowledge imparted help more people for longer stretches of bad times. But that takes more resources.Hats off to the staff and volunteers. They are the ones witnessing the psychological, social, and economic damage being done to innocent people.

Losing a job and not being able to provide for one’s family is a debilitating experience. The first time people come to MACC they are often humbled but still hopeful that will be their last visit. But, when they come back the second or third or fourth time, drained spirits become obvious to the staff. Support and encouragement for the weary become more important than food.

Those scenes boiled out of the cauldron of the Great Depression. Stories I heard from my dad and Dale Doll. Thank goodness we have the strong shoulders of staff and volunteers at work at MACC and in numerous pantries around Connecticut. It’s good to know there’s someone who wants to help and really cares in times like these.

Maybe the governor could work on internalizing the issue a bit. She could always maintain her stance on no pork for food banks and still help out. Doll would rather have a chicken in every pot anyway.

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor

2009-10-16T10:24:00.000-07:00

JournalInquirer.com

Why are there so many bad bosses out there?
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, October 15, 2009 1:07 PM EDT

Friday is National Bosses Day. Let me do my part by giving a big cheer for bosses on their special day. If it weren’t for a lot of them we probably wouldn’t have as many labor laws, labor departments, unions, and bad-boss Web sites.

Among America’s massive army of bosses, there are plenty who use their power appropriately to motivate, encourage, and support their charges in thoughtful and productive ways. They’re the ones you will see all over the place tomorrow — at lunches and happy hours laughing it up with their staffs. They get to enjoy their fawning moments and expressions of gratitude then.
No need for me to do it here.

I want to send cheers to the ones that probably won’t be getting lunch or doses of flattery. Here’s to the bosses whose knuckles drag along the ground as they visit your duty station regularly to remind you who is the boss. They’re whip crackers, constantly pushing for more output with less reward. Let’s give a shout out to those sociopaths that love to make you shudder in your boots, fear for your job, and keep that knot in your stomach nice and tight well after you punch out. They ratchet up workplace tension to ulcer-producing levels and have you asking yourself every day if you’re going back tomorrow.

Bad bosses are common, and chasing ways to deal with them commonplace. Do a “bad bosses” Google search and up comes 19.9 million Web references. There are scads of horror stories and even more sites offering consolation and advice. Canmybossdothat.com, in particular, offers some interesting assistance on ways to relieve bad boss afflictions.

What do you do if you have a bad boss? Quit?

Unfortunately, jobs in downturns can seem more valuable than sanity. If you leave, where do you go? The unemployment rate’s trending up toward 10 percent. Sure, go tell the bank, utilities, car dealer, and grocer, “My boss is a heartless, primal jerk, so I quit my job. Can I just, like, skip my payments for a while till I find a nice boss?”

Nope.

If you’re among the oppressed who can’t quit, rest assured you are not alone. A poll conducted by Lake Research for Working America (www.workingamerica.org) suggests that more than 50 million workers say they feel so pressed by the economy they’d rather suck it up and stay than quit because of a bad boss.

In the 150 million-member American work force, that means at least one out of every three workers won’t be lunching on burger-bites with the higher-ups Friday. They’ll more likely head out to TGIF happy hours with co-workers to beef about their bosses instead.

In times such as these, we all wish workers and bosses would bond in a more supportive and united all-in-this-together mode. But it’s not working that way. The bad times seem to be transforming way too many bosses into “dysfunctional, disrespectful, dishonest, demonic dictators,” as one Web site puts it.

The sad part about it all is that productivity is not enhanced with primal behavior and work force whippings. It is reduced. Yet too many of those in charge, or almost in charge, still harbor the belief they can intimidate, threaten, abuse, or disrespect people to get the job done.

Think about it. There is no rocket science here. Most humans need support, coaching, feedback, encouragement, and sometimes a simple “please” and “thank you” to make things work better. Some employers have even figured out that improving wages and benefits works wonders for morale and production.

Go figure.

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor.

2009-10-11T06:59:00.000-07:00

JournalInquirer.com

Benefits need protection too
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published October 8, 2009

Has the bad economy got you working harder with longer hours and more on-the-job-stress for the same or less pay? Do you go home every day wondering if you’ll have a job tomorrow, even though you’re now doing two jobs? Has your paid time off, bonuses, 401(k) matches, medical benefits, access to the nap room or the company Mercedes been shrunk or lost?

Wait a minute – nap room, Mercedes?

Well, if this happened to you – you’re not alone.

The captains of business and industry are chasing the crown in the competition to steal the title “King of Slicing and Dicing” away from Ron Popeil. Yesiree – wearing their scheme-cooking aprons and sharpening up their wage and benefit Chop-O-Matics, they are hard at work making sure American workers are working harder for less. The free market rules!

The Society for Human Resource Management, recently surveyed 522 human resource professionals regarding 274 benefits that companies offer. The results showed what we already know: benefits are being dropped or frozen in most places. The economic slump is taking its toll on the items most people covet as just reward for their hard work.

That slice-and-dice approach to boost profits is everywhere and that’s not a good thing. Employee morale and productivity are very much tied to how well one is treated at work. While the Chop-O-Matic approach may work for the accountants and next quarter’s returns, the effect and impact on both the company and the workers morale is breeding some tough long term productivity challenges.

The bitter irony is that while the fortunes of the workforce are diminishing, the bosses are getting a boost. According to the AFL-CIO’s Executive Paywatch site, while the economy was tanking last year, CEO benefits (just benefits) grew to $336,248 on average. The bosses, in other words, get well rewarded while gutting their companies, workers and even shareholder gains. Seems to be just a bit out of balance.

So why does this happen? Because we let it. It’s quick, easy and legal.

But there are ways to better balance the workplace economy. Jobs, wages and benefits can be more stable, less stressful and boost morale and productivity. A unionized workplace certainly makes a difference, adding workforce benefit security while preventing wild grabs for profit boosting benefit slashing. Granted, nap rooms or the company Mercedes are not in union contracts; but working family necessities like health care plans, retirement security, paid time off and other benefits are and can be better protected.

Laws can also be enacted to shield people from the dire consequences of unrestrained free-market thinking. Real enforceable rules can uphold fundamental workers’ rights and basic human needs without subverting capitalism but rather by tempering its gangster instincts. Weak labor law in our country has exacerbated, not improved, the wage and wealth gap and has left our benefit structure way too vulnerable to corporate piracy.

Sharan Burrow, the highest-ranking union leader in the world, has some insight about the global workforce. She will offer her thoughts in this and future columns. Sharan is President of the global union body, the International Trade Union Confederation has 307 national affiliates representing 168 million workers in 154 countries and territories. Her view of workers, labor laws and unions peeks through a much larger lens than ours.

Sharan points out that in her country, Australia, and many European countries legally guaranteed health benefits, vacation and sick time, pensions and other benefits make them immune from employer slicing and dicing. What these laws may not cover, strong union contracts can. Does that hamper the free market? Nope. Many of those countries are in the same top wage tiers as America. Difference is, the wage gaps are smaller and hard work brings guaranteed just rewards that can’t be stolen.

A few of these solutions might be worth a look if we can just get out of our collective Chop-O-Matic box. Real action is needed to make our system more balanced. But then again – maybe the status quo isn’t that bad. Hey, if any boss can set up nap rooms or let staff use the company Mercedes, maybe that’ll catch on and a wave of corporate generosity can swell across America boosting benefits for all workers.

Hmmm. Corporate generosity or laws and contracts? It’s hard to figure out which is better.

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor.
Send me your comments at unionleo@aol.com or
discuss the issues at www.ctatwork.blogspot.com

2009-10-02T13:22:00.000-07:00

JournalInquirer.com
We need a governor who does something
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, October 1, 2009 12:11 PM EDT

“If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” It’s an old adage of unknown origin which, when Googled, gets attributed to Alexander Hamilton, Ginger Rogers, Malcolm X, and Dr. Phil. I can’t quite find a connection among them but I do have a connection for us: We’ve been duped.

If you look at the polls most of the public really thinks Gov. Jodi Rell stands for something. She stands for smaller government. She stands for lower taxes. She looks out for those in need. The governor wants people to have jobs and health care, and kids to get a good education.
No wonder Rell’s so popular. She stands for all the right things.

But a closer look tells us that when all is said and done, the governor has said more and done less.

This year, as Connecticut stared down the barrel of a $9 billion deficit, Rell stood for balancing the budget without raising taxes. She knew she couldn’t do that. So she stood strong, all right — first with a fabricated budget that was a couple billion short, then with vetoes and blustery fights that mostly protected the suffering wealthy.

In September she huffed and puffed and allowed the long-delayed budget package to pass without her signature but with a sternly issued threat to wield her line-item veto pen. The line-item act was all bluster and bluffing.But it was classic Rell. She stands up for the elderly and the poor, then in that budget labels as “pork” programs that reduce the more than $100 million in costs associated with injuries suffered by the elderly and provide funding for a local food bank that spends every dime it gets in starvation prevention. “Pork?”

Here’s more classic Rell: Her strong stand this year against raising taxes was projected as if she had a philosophical commitment to the cause etched in her bones. Yet in 2007 she was the one who proposed the half- percent income tax increase across the board.Rell stands for smaller government as she attempts to reduce the rolls of public-service workers that grew under her watch and that of her mentor, John Rowland. Her proposal to lower the numbers fostered a retirement incentive that she knew would save a few bucks now but shift greater costs to the pension plan and actually expand the cost of government without elevating public services.

She stands for jobs and wants our state to grow and get people to work. Prior to the economic collapse, Connecticut already ranked near the bottom in job creation.The recently released economic development strategic plan is loaded with references about the necessity and desire to make our state a jobs magnet, but there’s nothing in the “how to” section to back up the “we stand for” claim.

Rell stood squarely in opposition to same-sex marriage. Then, when a bill was passed, she became the only governor to sign off on civil unions without a court order.

She’s a staunch advocate for early childhood education in a state that’s an early childhood laggard when compared to most others.

How about truck safety? Transportation? Smart growth? Property tax reform? The list is huge — and bereft of accomplishment.

There’s a pattern here: Our governor stands for everything and falls short on the doing part.

This technique is not new. It’s a page out of the cynical Rowland playbook: If you can fool most of the people most of the time your poll numbers stay high, no one asks questions, and you get re-elected. Rell may not be headed to jail like her predecessor, but you get the idea.

Rell’s Betty Crocker act worked for a while. But now, five years into her game, the poll numbers aren’t standing up as people are asking questions about her leadership and why Connecticut is falling further behind.Jobs, education, health care, our overall quality of life — all of it is suffering under the rudderless leadership of the Good Ship Jodi-pop.

Our economic future and our children’s lives are hanging in the balance. Maybe it’s time for a governor who actually stands for doing something.As the ever-quotable Dr. Phil would say, “It’s time to get real.”

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor

2009-09-24T19:36:00.000-07:00

JournalInquirer.com

Health insurance and reform: a marriage made in heaven?
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, September 24, 2009 12:08 PM EDT

I do.

You can count on hearing couples at wedding ceremonies say those two simple words.

Those same couples are less likely to repeat those words when asked if they have a health plan that takes care of them when they’re sick — or if they even have a health plan at all.

A relatively nondescript census report released last week described the status of health-care coverage for America’s families. The number of people without health insurance grew to 46.3 million in 2008, up a mere 600,000 from the year before. Here in Connecticut 17,000 newly uninsured were added to the rolls, bringing us to a total of 343,000 — 44,000 of whom are children.

Census data also shows a scary trend of fewer people getting health insurance from private coverage or employer-based coverage, as the number of people covered by private health insurance decreased by a million in 2008.

As those numbers keep ticking up it won’t be long before it’s your turn to sacrifice your health or life savings at the altar of the health-insurance gods. And all the fighting, political posturing, and delay geared to protect the wealth of big pharmaceutical and health company CEOs and investors is producing more polarization than solutions.

We really need a plan fast before it’s too late. So, who has one?

I do.

I’m a justice of the peace and I asked a few of my peers if they have run across couples who have become more motivated to get married for a health plan. While no one performed a ceremony for couples who exercised their “I do’s” solely for coverage, there are instances when people changed their life plans and marriage timing because a future spouse became uncovered through job loss, a canceled plan, or unaffordable premiums. Some found out they were suddenly on the parent track before the wedding track and the quickest path to coverage was down the aisle.

Younger workers statistically have less health care and are waiting longer to marry. Well, skip the government option and get on with the nuptials. We have 46 million uninsured and a couple hundred million with health plans — should be a bunch of matches made in health-care heaven.

Need an insurance plan? Marry your old college roommate or high school flame. Think of the economic boost with startups for health plan dating services — healthbeau.com or matecoverage.biz. Don’t do it for love. Do it for a plan.

More covered lives. More happy parents (and JPs). And it will boost the economy. It’s all there.

Well, maybe not.

There just might be a few too many bad moral and ethical consequences. But so is hanging those 46 million uninsured Americans — along with the 14,000 who join them every day — out to dry while we fight over who should win or lose in the big money health game.

Of course, it’s not a good plan, but right up there with co-ops, starting over, or deregulating the health care free market.

What’s left? Right now we live in a system that is owned and operated by an insurance monopoly that labels costs for your care as “medical losses.” Death panels and rationed care — courtesy of the insurance cartel that raises prices at will, or reduces, denies, or cancels coverage — are part of the bad system we need to toss.

It’s a sad day in America when options to protect health, family, and life run out, as is the case for increasing numbers of health-care victims. If we can agree that marriage without commitment is doomed to failure, both practically and morally, then we also should agree that spending our families into bankruptcy for insurance coverage that fails us is equally doomed to moral and practical failure.

Who wants couples to get married for the right reasons and live happily ever after? Who wants to see them protected by an economical health-care system that saves lives, is affordable with good options and choices, embraces prevention, covers medical care when needed, and doesn’t bankrupt wedded bliss or future families (Obama’s plan)?

When you think about it, you probably do.

I do.

Leo Canty is a labor and political activist. He lives in Windsor

2009-09-17T13:25:00.000-07:00

JournalInquirer.com
Young workers feel the pinch, but have vision for future
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, September 17, 2009 12:08 PM EDT
America used to be the land of a brighter future. That may still hold true for those at the top, but a growing population is expressing doubt about their possibilities — those in our workforce who are younger than 35.
In 1999 more than 77 percent of these young workers felt hopeful and confident that over their next five years on the job they would achieve economic and financial goals. The same demographic today dropped 22 points on the hopeful scale. Only 20 percent of that workforce had worries about their prospects 10 years ago. Now, their future is a troubling concern for 41 percent of the group.
That should be a cause of concern for all of us. What will America be like if its youth gives up?
These results come from a Peter D. Hart Research poll initiated by the AFL-CIO and its community affiliate, Working America. Among the findings:
• Young workers are having trouble getting ahead financially.• They are significantly less
covered by health insurance or retirement plans.• Most are earning less than $30,000 a year.
• The majority, 58 percent, don’t have enough savings to pay bills for more than 2 months.
Consequently they are deferring further education, starting families later, and 35 percent of them live at home.
Our nation has been through many waves of worry and discontent. Most of what sparked organized labor’s initiatives to push for better wages, hours, and working conditions arose from the initiative of those who were ready to fight for an opportunity for a better future.The poll showed signs of hope though. Young workers have a clear vision for reinvigorating the economy with job creation. Health care and education are top issues for our future leaders. And, they are highly skeptical of corporate America and blame greedy Wall Street, banks, and corporate CEOs for their stress.
Right now, as everyone is stressed by the economy and asking what the future holds, the national AFL-CIO is ending its convention in Pittsburgh. Unions representing more than 11 million workers mapped an economic recovery strategy that puts people back to work, creates good-paying jobs, guarantees health care, and invests in infrastructure to rebuild programs that have been laid to waste as a consequence of the biggest money grab and subsequent economic failure since the Great Depression.
A key part of the agenda includes boosting union membership. The Employee Free Choice Act will guarantee an employee’s right to choose whether or not to be in a union without being intimidated or harassed by pressure or threats from the boss.Most Americans are in a union — or would like to be in one, if they could. Obviously the unionized group is smaller now, but the people who want a union have a good clue about how much better their middle-class lives would be with a union contract. They have figured out, just like worried young workers, that trusting the boss with your economic future is not the wisest move.
Union workers are: 52 percent more likely to have job-provided health care; almost three times more likely to have recession-proof defined benefit pensions; 50 percent more likely to have paid personal time off and average about 15 days of paid vacation per year than the nonunion workforce. Pay is better for everyone, and women and minorities are less disadvantaged when a fair, inclusive, and responsive collective-bargaining process sets the standardsAll these things used to be in the American dream but are now fading recollections and what younger workers can only wish for.
More people are beginning to see the wisdom in advancing a system where the middle class is rebuilt with unions playing a key role in creating a more secure economic future.AFL-CIO unions are mapping the plan to organize around important social and economic issues. Young workers are becoming engaged in labor, community, and political organizations to move an agenda for a better future.
President Barack Obama, when he addressed the AFL-CIO, said, “When hardworking Americans succeed — that’s when organized labor succeeds. And when organized labor succeeds — that’s when our middle class succeeds. And when our middle class succeeds — that’s when the United States of America succeeds.”
They all get it. All that’s left is to get it done.

Leo Canty a labor and political activist who lives in Windsor.

2009-09-11T13:57:00.000-07:00

JournalInquirer.com
When it is time to strike
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Friday, September 11, 2009 11:38 AM EDT

Having a job and a paycheck is pretty important to most people – especially now. With unemployment numbers rising and opportunities for better jobs declining most people just seem to be hunkering down and riding out the storm. Count your blessings if you have a job even if it’s wearing you out, or you hate the boss or your wages or benefits are being cut. Just suck it up and think about the alternatives. How would you support the house, the car and the kids? What about health insurance, or the pension plan, if you have one? No job means scary times and destroyed lives so leaving or losing a job is serious business.

So why on earth would anyone put his job on the line? Ask Jennifer Briscoe. She’s on strike at the South Windsor Rehabilitation and Nursing Center, and out of a job, for now, along with many of her co- workers at the center. They have opted to put their jobs, and their paychecks and families on the line because they decided that sucking it up was much worse than taking action and fighting for fairness.

Unlike most workers, they have that choice to fight back if they choose to. They have a union — Teamsters local 671.This union and its members are no strangers to standing up for fairness and equity when it comes to fighting for working families. They know that in times like these workers are most at risk to lose hard fought gains in wages, benefits and other job protections. More than ever, everyone’s wages and benefits are at risk. For unionized workers bargaining for a contract to stem the tide of take backs is more challenging than ever.

The workers, many of whom have worked there for many years, have lived through rough times in the nursing home industry and changes of ownership. The Center used to be part of the Haven Health Care chain, and was sold to Connecticut Health Facilities Inc., after Haven spiraled into bankruptcy last year. The new company promised to uphold the union agreements and did, until the contracts expired and everything was up for negotiations.

Briscoe and many of her co-workers average around $14-15 an hour caring for the clients at the nursing home. Their now-expired contract included health insurance a modest pension plan and other fair and reasonable items that union contracts normally include. The problem is, the union members definition of fair is different from the owners who have for instance proposed a 300 percent increase, for some more than $50 a week increase, in health insurance premiums and changes in the pension plan that the workers negotiated in their last contract. The company offered raises as part of the deal but the members know that the total puts them in the race for the bottom as the raises would not make up for the net loss on the deal. They would be working harder and longer for so much less and they decided they couldn’t just suck it up so they went on strike.

Employer retrenchment on wages and benefits is all too common, and according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data the impact is hitting especially hard on women and people of color in lower wage environments, coincidentally the same demographic as the South Windsor Center. And it’s taking a toll on those struggling most to make ends meet. Many of the workers are just one step beyond the need for public assistance programs and don’t want to use the programs but they may need to if smaller paychecks diminish their ability to pay the bills.

These workers are in a fight. It is one that they don’t want but feel they must make. They have decided it’s worse to accept the employer’s deal than to stand up and fight it – no matter the outcome. They have truly demonstrated their resolve to push for real economic justice at work.

Leo Canty a labor and political activist who lives in Windsor.

2009-09-03T12:43:00.000-07:00

JournalInquirer.com

A day to commemorate labor spirit
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, September 3, 2009 12:09 PM EDT

Here’s a fun fact for the coming Labor Day weekend: America was started in a union hall.

The ancestors of the modern day carpenters union, all of whom belonged to a local Philadelphia guild called the Carpenters’ Company, finished construction of Carpenters’ Hall in 1774. It was a finely crafted and impressive building, constructed by talented, organized, and skilled trades people who fully understood the value and power of working together to help each other prosper and care for family.

Carpenters guild members toiled like everyone else as King George and the British profiteers were putting the squeeze on colonists at the dawn of the American Revolution. Leaders of the colonies needed a meeting to share their discontent and develop a plan to stop the oppression. The call went out for the First Continental Congress; delegates chose Carpenters’ Hall for what would be the historic gathering, where delegates passed a series of resolutions letting the king and Parliament know they could not trample on the colonists’ rights and put the eventual Revolution in play.

How fitting, then, that the flame that ignited the fire in pursuit of social and economic justice for a nation was lit in a union hall.

A century later, the carpenters and other unions in Philadelphia and other cities were building their own modern-day framework for economic justice and social progress. Part of that framework included a vision to launch a special day of recognition for the toils and achievements of ordinary working people. America had made great strides economically since the Revolution, and the beginning forces of organized labor sought to ensure that due recognition was given to America’s workers.Carpenters union leader Peter McGuire from Philadelphia and Matthew Maguire, a machinist who led the New York City Central Labor Union, are credited with launching the concept of a national observance of Labor Day. The official recorded event took place Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City, when some 20,000 working people marched to demand an eight-hour workday and other labor law reforms.

The idea caught on and marches, celebrations, and other observances began to spread to other states as workers fought to win higher wages, workplace rights, and better working conditions at a time when there were no laws to support them.

In 1893, as unions began to gain more power and recognition, New York City workers took an unpaid day off and marched around Union Square in support of a national Labor Day, drawing attention to organized efforts to improve wages and workers rights.A year later, 12,000 federal troops were called into Pullman, Ill., to break up a huge strike against the greedy Pullman railway company.Frustrated, angry workers resisted and the situation ended with two workers shot and killed by U.S. deputy marshals.

In what most historians call an election-year attempt to appease workers after the federal crackdown, six days after the strike was broken President Grover Cleveland signed legislation making the first Monday in September a federal holiday, Labor Day. Cleveland lost the election, but many states went ahead and affirmed the holiday in their law books. Connecticut’s law passed in 1889.

Beyond the institution of the holiday, labor has played a significant role as one of the leading catalysts for change this nation has ever seen. Major social and economic changes — ending child labor, a 40-hour week, weekends and paid holidays, pensions, health care, sick and vacation time, safe workplaces — are benefits everyone takes for granted and gets to enjoy.None of these benefits was achieved without a fight. Many struggles and sacrifices were made — and lives given — to provide fair and just rewards in exchange for one’s work.

Today’s unions know — just as those in the Carpenters’ Company did — that at times it’s as difficult to hold on to a good standard of living as it is to improve upon it. But that’s never been a reason to stop trying.The spirit of unity and purpose, and the desire to change things for the better, that suffused Carpenters’ Hall in 1774 is alive and well in today’s union halls — and we all get to feel it at picnics and parades on Monday.

Happy Labor Day.

Leo Canty is executive secretary of the Connecticut AFL-CIO and chairman of the board of the Connecticut Health Foundation. He lives in Windsor.

2009-08-28T16:58:00.000-07:00

JournalInquirer.com

Taking the good with the bad on economic recovery
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, August 27, 2009 12:00 PM EDT

Good news first: Every day more economists — financial experts, along with re-upped Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke — say the worst part of this bad economy is over. Those claims are based on slowing rates of job losses, excess inventories, consumer confidence — and probably some unscientific observations like the thickness of the wooly bear caterpillar’s fur.Wall Street activities such as stock buying, bonus payments, and TARP futures trading seem to be rising with every happy news story. Good economic news breeds good opportunity for everyone with money. Growing fast profits on the upside is helping to regain the lost net from the previous downside. Hooray!

Now the bad news: The good news is being enjoyed by those most of us can only read about.

Sure, your meager 401(k) is growing a bit, but there’s a lot of lost ground to cover before you’re in full recovery. And the even worse news is that the indicators that move the markets aren’t necessarily the ones that help you pay your bills or boost your pension if you’re retired, as in a 0 percent Social Security cost of living adjustment for the next two years.

As the economy shifts into global mode, the upside of recovery will take on a new form.

In a recent New York Times blog post, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman drew a great set of incredibly boring but telling charts to show the impact of global economic change on the recovery. The bottom line: When America has invested more in itself — after the 1981-82 recession, for instance — jobs have grown rapidly as the economy recovered. More people have found work, which in turn generated more income, more spending, more production, and then more jobs. By 1984 employment reached pre-recession levels. That was fast.

Today, with so much of the capital and so many jobs spread out around the world, recovery rates will be slowed. The country may end up with fewer jobs than pre-recession, as companies search for profits with workforce replacements elsewhere.When companies do begin to add jobs, Americans may not be the ones invited to fill them. When fewer jobs are available, there’s less income, less purchasing, slower growth, and a snail’s-pace recovery.

We’re living that experience now in East Hartford, as the big contest unfolds between Pratt & Whitney, which seeks to boost its post-recession profits, and the Machinists union, which is fighting to ramp up job recovery here. As the recovery continues, competition between jobs and profits will escalate.

Pratt/United Technologies can operate anywhere in the world. Capital and plants can move faster than ever to Georgia or Singapore or Japan. The quest to provide investors bigger returns drives decision-making — especially after this lag period. And conditions are ripening for better returns. Layoffs and off-shoring the workforce make analysts happy as they calculate stronger earnings potentials. As for the workforce: Buy up the stock market because the job market won’t be the place to be.

American workers could just fold and accept Third World wages to be real competitors. Thailand’s average wage is $5.29 a day. Business and industry have been successfully ratcheting down wage rates in recent years.

But that’s not what America’s all about.

The better option is to create a more level playing field with smart incentives to get the profit chasers chasing profits right here in this country, and meaningful disincentives to prevent business from abandoning the American workforce. Stronger state and national commitments are needed to actively create more jobs and drive more investment in infrastructure that supports old and new industry and technology. Aerospace, fuel cells, biotech, and green products and systems are a few areas to pursue. Retool by building better mass transit, bridges, and structures that will revitalize worn-down cities. Add value to the workforce with more cost-effective health care and pension plans that work.

These are worthy investments that can help generate good news and better outcomes for American jobs and the workforce after the next economic downturn.But first we need to get through this downturn.

Paul Krugman and the wooly caterpillar suggest that as this slow cycle rolls out we may live through a few good reasons to chase those better options.

I’m not sure if that’s good news or bad.

Leo Canty is executive secretary of the Connecticut AFL-CIO and chairman of the board of the Connecticut Health Foundation. He lives in Windsor.

2009-08-13T13:13:00.000-07:00

JournalInquirer.com
It’s a case of blood money
CT@Work
Published: Thursday, August 13, 2009 11:57 AM EDT
Leo Canty

There is no question this tough economy has been extra tough on the workforce. Businesses everywhere are struggling to stay afloat and keep their profit margins from turning red. After all, if corporations can’t make ends meet, there won’t be any jobs out there for workers.
One time-tested strategy to keep those jobs around is to make cuts. Cuts in jobs, pay, and benefits all help these corporations to maintain the steady stream of profits to which they’ve grown accustomed. And most importantly, those cuts insure that executive pay, stock options, and bonuses won’t have to be sacrificed.Even nonprofits understand the importance of making cuts to protect executives and the company line.

Case in point: the American Red Cross. Blood is big business, as in $3 billion a year big. With her $565,000 paycheck, Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern understands how big. The Red Cross supplies almost 50 percent of the blood in our nation. Sure, it takes thousands of nurses, phlebotomists, drivers, lab techs, and other professionals to keep that blood supply flowing — including 225 blood collection workers at Connecticut Blood Services Region in Farmington. But let’s face it: In order to keep business booming, cuts have to be made.The Red Cross has borrowed from other “successful” business models. They’ve taken to moving donors in and out faster than the McDonald’s drive-through and extended the hours of the blood drives so they can fit more donors in.But the most important cost savings has been to cut people. Do you really need nurses on site in case someone has a bad reaction? Why have two people doing the job when one person can just work twice as fast? Couple that with cuts to pay and benefits for this reduced workforce and now you’re boosting profits. Oh, and forget about testing the blood — it slows down production. Besides, the FDA fines, totaling $21 million in the last five years for poor blood safety, cost less than skipping the tests.More blood, more cash, bigger bonuses.

It comes as no surprise the Red Cross is borrowing another page from Corporate America’s anti-union playbook. In regions across the country, including Connecticut, it is refusing to enter into a fair agreement with the very workers who protect the quality and integrity of the blood supply. Red Cross is practically daring the workers to strike, no doubt in the hopes of replacing those pesky union workers who actually care about safe blood with a lower paid, more compliant, and more transient workforce. Think Wal-Mart, but instead call it Blood-Mart.

Now, what would Clara Barton do? She founded the Red Cross and the first local chapter was opened up in Dansville, N.Y., on Aug. 22, 1881. I can’t imagine that a founder planting seeds to grow a caring, kind, humanitarian, organization would cherish an enterprise that beat up its workers and offered volunteer donors the same love that vampires give mortals. Maybe Red Cross management should get a session with Dr Phil. He is, after all, a member of the “Celebrity Cabinet” and might find a humanitarian reason to get the sociopathic managers into therapy. Might even be a good show for TV, so the rest of the corporate bums that do the same thing might learn something.

In the meantime, Red Cross blood-collection workers in Connecticut see this awful corporate behavior continuing. It is making an impact not only on workers, but donors and volunteers. The workers have a union and are pulling together on this front, actively fighting back. They believe donors deserve safe, protected blood drives. No patient receiving Red Cross blood should worry about the quality. They have to fight for a safe environment for their co-workers and a fair wage and benefit plan. They donate their own blood for the cause and are pushing to rebuild the spotty reputation of the uncaring, greedy management.

So they are picketing and kicking up some dust and fighting the boss. Good for them. Good for us. Someone has to stand up to this profits and bonuses vs. people at work contest. There’s too much management-first style management going around already. The last thing we need is to have every employer out for blood.

Leo Canty is executive secretary of the Connecticut AFL-CIO and chairman of the board of the Connecticut Health Foundation. He lives in Windsor.

2009-08-06T21:12:00.000-07:00

JournalInquirer.com

The health-insurance industry’s state of denials
CT@Work
Published: Thursday, August 6, 2009 12:08 PM EDT
Leo Canty
How do you prepare for this kind of fight for your life — a knockdown, drag-out contest that’s all too common between subscribers and their health-insurance company? The scrapping comes into play when care or payment is denied or an insurance policy cancelled, leaving the sick and dying in an awful predicament.

Those who still have their medical plans think they are reasonably set if they need to see the doctor or get treatment. After all, you and your boss pay big bucks on health-care premiums, so you expect to get the care when you need it … right? Think again, because your opponent in the other corner, the health-care industry, is struggling to keep up with losses as costs rise and consume profits. But the driving formula — premiums paid minus health-care costs equals profit — affords few options.

If companies charge more for premiums, business is lost. Dropping the profits chases investors away. CEO compensation reductions may save a few million but more is needed. And there are efficiencies and cost cutting. In that option an increasingly common practice is claims denial. By some estimates 10 to 15 percent of claims are being denied for a wide range of issues — wrong information, paperwork snafus, treatments that are deemed ineffective, and many others.But a fellow named Wendell Potter has a different angle. “Insurers have every incentive to deny coverage,” Potter says. “Every dollar they don’t pay out to a claim is a dollar they can add to their profits, and Wall Street investors demand they pay out less every year.”

Potter is a Connecticut resident and former CIGNA communications executive who is speaking out about what he’s seen and previously defended in health-care industry practices. In his revealing PBS “Bill Moyers Journal” interview last month Potter also said, “You don’t think about individual people. You think about the numbers, and whether or not you’re going to meet Wall Street’s expectations.”

So let the health vs. wealth battles begin.

The industry is active and hard at work in this game, but most people aren’t prepared unless you’re among those in training. They are the ones quitting the cigarettes, booze, fatty foods, and sleeping eight hours after a daily two-mile jog. To those who think that regimen sounds more painful than being beaten up by Dr. No and the uh-uh team at the HMO claims denial department, call this number: 1-866-466-4446. It’s the Office of the Health Care Advocate.

Health insurance is complicated, and even more so when one loses coverage. Those finding themselves in this state of denial have an advocate that can help win in memo-to-memo health-care combat. Gov. Jodi Rell and the captains of health-care business and industry know the value of this phone call. They supported a plan to cut the budget for the phone, and all the staff — in the name of shrinking the size of government, of course.

Kevin Lembo and the Office of the Health Care Advocate announced this week big claims about the effectiveness of their efforts. Last year, their $1 million in advocacy tax dollars returned $5.2 million in savings as denied claims were reversed, getting coverage for the unprepared, sick, and dying customers of HMOs and insurance companies.

“We won 85 percent of the cases,” Lembo says. Since the win rate is so high, and many people are not prepared to get in the fight, it seems like there just might be a pretty large pile of profit to lose if this fight for your life stuff catches on. But that wouldn’t be a reason to shut down the program … would it? They’ve only saved $2.1 million as of July 1 for this year.

So far Lembo is on the job and his phone is still working. But who knows what the budget slicing and dicing may finally produce. If Rell and the Big Insurance profit protectors really support cost-cutting measures, then they would praise the million-dollar investment that returned $5 million in savings. If the plan is to make sure the health-care industry remains fully able to respond to the investors’ call, they will send Lembo packing.

There seems to be a common thread running through Rell’s treatment for Lembo’s office, and the recently vetoed Sustinet and pooling bills. As much as Rell and her investor friends love a fight, they hate a level playing field. You can’t deny that.

Leo Canty is executive secretary of the Connecticut AFL-CIO and chairman of the board of the Connecticut Health Foundation. He lives in Windsor.

2009-07-30T12:02:00.000-07:00

JournalInquirer.com

Foul play abounds in testing economic times
CT@Work
Published: Thursday, July 30, 2009 12:08 PM EDT
Leo Canty

When David Ortiz ("Big Papi") smacks the ball in Fenway Park, it’s usually easy to tell whether it’s fair or foul. On the rare occasion when a ball kisses the line or flies high over the Pesky Pole, the umpire makes the call and the game moves on. If only everything was as easy as baseball.For instance, how would an umpire call some of the plays in these economic times?

Anthem is looking to dramatically raise its rates, forcing working families to pay 20 percent to 30 percent or more to have the same coverage — or less — than they have now. Older members may have to pony up an additional 50 percent or more for premiums. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and others suspect Anthem may be looking for ways to price those who need and use health care out of the plan. Anthem’s 2008 profits totaled $225 million and it appears they’re swinging away to increase their bottom line for ’09.

The ump says, “Over the line.

”Wannabe business and industry umpires often cry foul whenever minimum-wage increases are proposed. Last week the federal base rose to $7.25 an hour. Connecticut’s minimum wage is $8 an hour, or $16,640 a year. That amounts to about $750 more per year than 2007. In East Hartford, a typical single wage-earner needs more than $20,000 a year to live a simple life. So you put in your time and work your eight hours a day, 40 a week. Oh, and forget about paid time off and benefits — there’s no such thing. For thousands of workers in this income bracket the reward is a paycheck that can’t pay the bills, living-wage initiatives notwithstanding. That low-wage economy is growing faster than we ship jobs off shore. So who benefits from a low-wage workforce? Ask Wal-Mart and its shareholders. They had $13.4 billion in profits last year.

That’s foul.

Pratt and Whitney is talking about layoffs, and rumors abound about relocating its headquarters. The pursuit of profit is paramount, so business practices such as axing workers, shipping jobs to Singapore, cutting benefits, and the like are fair play in the eyes of corporate giants. Owners, operators, and shareholders are first in line for distribution of the wealth.Workers, their families, our cities and towns, and the government that shelled out corporate welfare to subsidize the industry are left with the scraps — if there are any. Poor Pratt: It posted a first- and second-quarter profit that was down $903 million from the $1 billion profit over the same period last year.

It’s just not “fair.”

The disparity between the haves and have-nots is as easy to see as a Josh Beckett strikeout. And there are a lot more people living closer to the down side of this economy — pushed there by those who have the most and want more. Too many people need public services to support themselves. Now they are left with little else. The game now is not about how we can help, but if we should help, and who should pay in a fair way?

Connecticut’s wage earners with the best batting average — the 80,000 families earning more than $1 million a year — chip in about a third of the state income taxes collected. The remaining 1.2 million households pay the rest. Not fair, cry the wealthy umps and their defenders. But take a closer look: Those in the low-income bracket have a 12-percent commitment of their paychecks to help pay for state and local services. The top-tier earners effectively contribute 4.5 percent. Oh, and high-income families are not being chased out of their health-care plan, struggling to pay the rent, or worrying about their job heading to Singapore. In perspective, progressive tax proposals are all softball pitches.

The calls revolving around people’s lives and the economy may not be as easy to make as baseball’s but, with so much at stake, we shouldn’t be playing games with them.

Leo Canty is executive secretary of the Connecticut AFL-CIO and chairman of the board of the Connecticut Health Foundation. He lives in Windsor.

2009-07-23T13:03:00.000-07:00

JournalInquirer.com

Taking the time to care
CT@Work
By Leo Canty

Published: Thursday, July 23, 2009 12:07 PM EDT

Over the course of almost everyone’s life there are role reversals. The first 20 or so years mom and dad take care of you. The next two decades you are mom or dad. Then you take care of mom and dad, and finally you’re the mom or dad needing care. Mixed in there are the job, staycations, sports, milestones, and a lot of schedule juggling. Families need time to be families, and all too often that time — especially when it’s time needed for care — competes with the work schedule.

It would be great if our lives were mapped out so emergency kid-care is only needed after 5 p.m. Or ER visits and subsequent rehab would only require weekend duty. In the idyllic world, no care commitment would take more than a few hours and wouldn’t disrupt the sleep cycle or work schedule. Right ….

Rearing children, helping mom and dad transition from active to retired lives, or caring for someone with a debilitating illness can be a 24/7 energy-draining commitment. It’s in our nature, culture, and being to be predisposed to put loved ones first, above all else. It’s a priority issue for most everyone. Polls suggest it’s so important that workers would trade pay for more work-time flexibility, so they would have the time for family care. That said, one would think the structure around the rest of our world would be more family friendly. But it’s not. Time is money, and time away impacts the business bottom line.

Even though family care is a priority for the workforce, employers have a natural resistance to accommodating a caring schedule.Some of that resistance was tempered 16 years ago as Congress passed the Family Medical Leave Act. Sen. Chris Dodd led the charge to make sure employers guaranteed time off so family members could care for loved ones. While FMLA allows up to 12 weeks off in a 12-month period, there is significant noncompliance and resistance. And that is leave without pay. Few can afford to take it.

In a report issued by the University of California-Berkeley Labor Center, titled “Family-Friendly Workplaces: Do Unions Make A Difference?” authors Jenifer MacGillvary and Nesty Firestein concluded that nearly half of covered establishments ignore one or more FMLA provisions, including the maternity-leave provision. In addition, not all workers are aware of or understand time-off rights. Adding to the strain: Unpaid leaves, even for those who take them, can severely impact family cash flow. As a nation, our collective desire for family care doesn’t quite match up with the necessity to care.

That study also looks at the family-friendly workplace and asks if there is a difference between union and nonunion environments. Not surprisingly, there is: A unionized workplace dramatically helps working families.The report concludes that unions increase compliance with FMLA, ensure paid sick leave for employees and their children, provide for flexibility in schedules, and have more families covered by health insurance — by big margins. For instance, companies with any unionized employees are 1.7 times more likely to comply with FMLA than nonunion companies. Almost half of unionized hourly workers have access to paid leave, versus 29 percent of those without union representation. The report can be found at http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/.

Unfortunately, gains in improving family-friendly workplaces take effort, since most employers tend not to simply hand that kind of benefit over, even though it’s the right thing to do. Union members, like everyone else, put a high priority for family time and have worked hard to assure it.But tough economic times and fewer union contracts are taking a toll on family leaves. One can only hope that when it’s our turn to be on the receiving side of the care, someone is there. It would be tragic if the time to care is put in reverse.

2009-07-16T17:27:00.000-07:00

JournalInquirer.com
Going to the well once too often
CT@Work
By Leo Canty

Published: Thursday, July 16, 2009 12:08 PM EDT
You don’t know the value of water ’til the well is dry. So goes the lament in an old English proverb. Back then, when wells went dry it wasn’t because folks went out of their way to empty them — and then scramble to find a fix for the lack of water. For our state, or at least those in charge of emptying the wells of public services, the pumps are working hard to pump the water out, then pump it back in. Quite the plan.
Reports about the impact state employee retirements are having on the delivery of services are common of late. College faculty leave, class sizes go up, it takes five or more years to get a four-year degree. Vo-tech school teachers have left in droves and the scramble is on to shuffle classes and teachers to fill the void. Not good news for kids looking to build future careers in skilled trades.
More than 3,800 state employees left as of July 1 — the governor’s idea for pumping out inefficiency. It was more than expected and a surprise to many. While DOT, social services, revenue services, public health, and other agencies are scrambling from the impact of retirement incentives, as their well of talent and production evaporates, some are cheering the emptier offices and equating this workforce reduction to a shrinking of government.But some who actually understand the importance of government and public services realize that sending people out the door, especially when they have necessary, coveted skills and talents, will create more problems than it solves.
Some reductions do produce short-term savings, but the long-term negative impact can be huge. When government lacks the person-power and institutional knowledge to get the job done, it’s a recipe for disaster.
Now the champions of business and industry may cheer on the destruction of state services. But they’re not the ones out in eastern Connecticut who need LifeStar, or the parents of children in need, or the middle-class family that found out the hard way how little help there is in a bad economy. They don’t juggle jobs and scarce classes at community college while losing ground. They aren’t the ones kicked out of the “competitive” health plan with nowhere to go. To them, the service structure is not necessary.
Blogger Thomas Hooker, from CT Local Politics, recently published some research on public service staffing levels and posted these conclusions: According to data in the U.S. Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstract of the United States, Connecticut employed 62,000 full-time equivalent employees in 2006, the latest year for which it listed data. That translated into 17.8 state employees per 1,000 population. The figure ranks Connecticut not tops in the nation, but 23rd.Similar numbers show municipalities are also less staffed than most states, meaning either we are more efficient or actually dropping the ball when it comes to real service delivery for people in need — even more when service needs are greater.
If we keep reducing staff, Connecticut government should come with a warning: Don’t fail — there’s little to back you up!
Both Govs. John Rowland and Jodi Rell got a splash for the symbolic acts of reducing government by emptying out our shallow well. But then to avoid an even bigger splash of negativity, if delivery systems failed: Roads went unplowed, criminals hit the streets again, parks closed, both governors pumped the staff back in.It’s no surprise to those on the front line that this was necessary. They know the political sham of headline-grabbing reductions followed by quiet refills is an easy trick.
Reduce and refill. It’s a bad plan, but one that has helped build polling numbers for the last two governors. The former governor went to jail, ending his cycle. We need to stop the cycle again. And not by emptying the well. People’s lives are at stake.

Leo Canty is executive secretary of the Connecticut AFL-CIO and chairman of the board of the Connecticut Health Foundation. He lives in Windsor.

2009-07-09T09:13:00.000-07:00

Journal Inquirer.com
Calling for time out
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
Published: Thursday, July 9, 2009 12:07 PM EDT

When it comes to time off, there are those cynics who say that a rainy day of fishing is better than a sunny day at work. So if their fishing “stay-cation” was scheduled for the last couple of weeks they should be happy. Non-fishing fans went back to work, to enjoy good commuting weather and hope the schedule might work out better next year. Of course, weather doesn’t matter at all for the 1-in-4 workers who have no paid vacations whatsoever — their “stay-cations” were on the job.It’s a curious thing that vacation rules across America and the rest of the world vary so much.
Americans are truly fortunate to have a robust economy (well, except for now) that provides handsome riches and comforts in trade for one’s hard work. Our free-market drives the standard for wages and benefits; if we work really hard, get the production going, make a lot of money for the company, then we share the success and reap the rewards, right? There is, in theory, a payoff for effort — you put in your 40 or 60 hours a week, then are “rewarded” for doing your work.
That’s the theory. It’s not always the reality.There is another free-market paradigm: “faster, harder and longer — for less.” In recent years the paid time off for the American workforce has actually diminished. Could this be related to the increases in profits, shareholder returns, and CEO compensation? After all, the free market seeks the most work for the least cost, and paid time off hampers profits, especially for the over-class to which we supposedly all aspire.
But, oh, curse those socialist countries! You know the paradigm-flipping ones I’m talking about, like France. The slouches in the workforce there put in 35 hours a week. Their silly labor laws mandate 30 paid vacation days. Some union contracts and competitive employers even add on another few weeks. Add to that paid holidays, sick time, and personal time. No wonder French workers’ productivity is lower than ours. Except when they are at work.French companies, shareholders, and corporate executives make so much less than American ones. It’s a darn shame when the wage gap gets reduced like that.And there’s Italy, Germany, Austria, Spain. These countries are so living in the past — like the 13th- and 14th-century workforces that spent well under 200 days a year at work.Our more modern American standard is 260-280 days. And, just to make sure people can spend even more time on the job, U.S. labor laws have no — non, nein — compulsory vacation days. We’re proud to be the only industrialized nation that does not impose paid vacation time or holidays … along with no national health care plan — a subject for another discussion.
But wait a minute. There is a movement afoot that could push us into the realm of socialistic slackerism. Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) has introduced legislation that would mandate a week of paid vacation every year, but only for employers with more than 100 workers on the payroll. Grayson was inspired on a recent trip to Disney, where he saw all these people not working and having fun. The congressman erroneously equates family R&R time with stress reduction and good health, both of which are productivity boosters.If Grayson’s idea finds its legs, millions of workers would be forced out of work for five days and be paid to stay home or do things they don’t get the chance to do while working — like hang out with the family or fish on rainy days.
The protests, however, are loud. Corporations recognize the lost opportunity to keep people working. Disrupting work schedules, they say, could add more stress to already overstressed lives. The free market will tumble and the world as we know it will end if vacations become universal and mandatory.The proposal, though, has a growing and dangerous supporting movement — renegade Internet groups like right2vacation.org are cropping up, pushing for this un-American initiative. Their polls say that 69 percent of Americans would like a week’s paid vacation, and the largest percentage of poll respondents actually want three weeks off.
Hmmm … a three-week vacation could mean that if it rains for two weeks, the non-fishing American worker might get to enjoy nice weather for one. Time out! We don’t want that to happen … do we?

Leo Canty is executive secretary of the Connecticut AFL-CIO and chairman of the board of the Connecticut Health Foundation. He lives in Windsor.

2009-07-08T12:31:00.000-07:00

Journal Inquirer.com
Posted July 2, 2009
You Kidding Me?
CT@Work
By Leo Canty

Here’s a surprise. Gov. Jodi Rell, guardian of Connecticut’s wealthy, Big Insurance and Big Business, and Michael Moore, the irreverent, left-leaning filmmaker, have something in common: their love of CEOs.
Stay with me on this one. Moore is in the final spin stages for his yet untitled new movie to be released October 2, at a theater near you. Last month Moore greeted unsuspecting big-screen viewers in a handful of cinemas asking for donations to help “Save our CEOs.” “The downturn in the economy has hurt many people. People who have had no choice but to go on government assistance, yet our welfare agencies can only do so much,” Moore pleaded. “That’s why I’m asking you to lend a hand. Won’t you please give generously? Now, I know what you’re thinking, ‘I already gave at the bailout’, and I know you did. But even if you’ve given in the past, give some more. It’ll make you feel . . . good.”
Our feel-good governor wants to help CEOs too. As Connecticut struggles in difficult economic times, she’s on the small screens, making appeals not to raise taxes. After all, Rell reasons, revenues from income and corporate taxes are down., “and people are losing their jobs and struggling to make ends meet.”

These passionate pleas for mercy are directed at the legislature to be kind to people like Ramani Ayer who will be out of work after December 31, 2009. His $9 million job as Chief Executive Officer at The Hartford Insurance Company will end then and his hard earned $36.2 million nest egg could be at risk.

Mr. Ayer is a victim of the economic downturn. His net worth, a few million less today, poor soul, has declined with the value of The Hartford’s stock – of which he was in charge. His 2007 pay was $23 million. Imagine dropping to only $9 million a year. Will the suffering never end? No wonder Rell is loathe to raise taxes on these poor, unfortunate CEOs. After all, they’re suffering hits just like the rest of us struggling to pay our bills, send our kids to college or pay for prescription drugs we need to survive into old age.
Ayer, like so many CEOs, deserves our sympathy and help. The Hartford, a $25-plus billion company, has been in the top 100 of the Fortune 500. Ayers has led the charge to do all those things good CEOs do to boost profits for shareholders and their own compensation – invested in mortgage securities, trimmed staff, passed on health care costs to employees, outsourced work and such. And he also stood in the long bailout lines holding his empty soup can, waiting his turn for a ladle full of bailout. Friday his effort were rewarded with a hot cup o’ TARP as The Hartford received $3.4 billion in relief from our corporate welfare department in DC.
Now Ayer is not alone in this dark den of economic misery. Rell claims we’re No. 1 in Fortune 500 companies per million population. There’s 11 of them along with another 17 in the Fortune next 500. All run by poor, distraught, pained CEOs who need our kind thoughts, prayers and tax breaks. They’ll be totally devastated if taxes are boosted ever so slightly to help pay for services that could benefit all of Connecticut’s residents, including the people they laid off to recoup their losses.
The AFL-CIO Executive Pay Watch claims Big Biz CEOs were paid, on average, $10.4 million in total compensation in 2008; down about 6% from 2007 - ouch. But, offsetting the pain a tad, their perks grew 12.5% to an average of $336,248—or about nine times the median salary of a full-time worker.
It has been a rough and tumble time for corporate chieftains. It must be difficult and draining to pare down the wait staff, maybe switch to generic croutons at the dinner table, or even skip the leather in the kid’s new Beamer. We should be grateful that the M. Jodi Rell is defending the castle against attacks on CEO pay.

Jodi Rell and Michael Moore, both publicly pleading to help our CEOs weather the economic storm battering all of us…only, with one little difference. Moore is kidding.

2009-07-08T12:26:00.000-07:00

Journal Inquirer . com

Just words or just words?
CT@Work
By Leo Canty

Published: Thursday, June 25, 2009 12:03 PM EDT

Shared sacrifice — asking citizens to collectively give so everyone can gain in the future — is a common call when times are tough.Like so many leaders on the national and state stage have done, Gov. Jodi Rell used these words in her January state of the state address and many times since during the struggle to close a $9 billion budget gap.
Are these calls for shared sacrifice just words plugged into a speech to add verbal drama or for poll-boosting appeal? Or are “fair” and “just” words for a moral calling — for everyone to help in meaningful ways?Talk of shared sacrifice can be a tricky thing — especially when it comes from the mouths of politicians. Bush-Cheney, along with congressional Republican leadership, exploited the post-9/11 condition to launch their version of shared sacrifice: tax breaks for the wealthy; military service (including multiple tours of duty) for heroes from poor and middle-class families; and high-priced mercenaries from Halliburton and Blackwater USA.
Contrast that with FDR’s call for unity and sacrifice. Volunteers from all walks of life came together in our darkest hours. Rich, poor, and even corporations shared in a fair way, with everyone chipping in to help, based on physical and economic ability. Food and supplies were rationed. The poor and working class gave what they had. The top tax rate rose to 91 percent for a short time, allowing the wealthy their proportionate sacrifice.In January, President Barack Obama asked for shared sacrifice to solve the myriad problems facing our nation — a bad economy, world conflict, lost revenue from tax breaks, cuts in services, and a deregulated Wall Street trampling on Main Street. The call is evolving while the president and Congress push to get our nation on a better track. History will judge how well the call was answered.Meantime, this state needs to move faster, for people need help now.The current budget is short. In fact, the gap is huge in the next biennium. Sacrifice and cooperation are indeed the keys to get out of the bad spot we’re in.Working families are giving every day — some willingly, some not. Layoffs are up. Foreclosures are up. Incidents of lost health care are increasing too. Take-home pay to cycle back into the economy? That’s down.And still, many of those who have suffered the most stand most ready to help.Corporations, on the other hand, led by the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, are buying ads saying, “Don’t tax us — just cut the services the other guy needs.” Cut the services of those who have already sacrificed the most. Cut the services that help the blind, disabled, children, and students. Even cut services that insure businesses comply with the rules.Since many corporations avoid paying their fair share through loopholes, you’d think the governor would at least ask them to chip in.The same goes for our wealthiest citizens. They have not been asked to sacrifice.Sure, some may have lost in their Wall Street bets, but in most cases there’s more than enough left in the bank to buy food, keep the house and the car, and still avoid a “staycation.”But, in fairness, none have actually refused to help. Rell has just refused to ask.FDR rightly said it was not a sacrifice for the industrialist — or the wage earner, the farmer, the shopkeeper, the trainman, or the doctor — to pay more taxes, to buy more bonds, to forgo extra profits, to work longer or harder at the task for which he is best fitted. Not if it is for the common good. Rather is it a privilege.Just five months ago, Rell said, “This will be a time of shared sacrifice. That which we would like to do will be set aside for that which we must do.”Rell still can invite corporations and the wealthy to help share in the sacrifices that the less-than privileged already have made for our state.Leo Canty is executive secretary of the Connecticut AFL-CIO and chairman of the board of the Connecticut Health Foundation. He lives in Windsor.

2009-07-08T12:22:00.000-07:00

JournalInquirer.com
Posted June 18, 2009
Change is in the air
CT@Work
By Leo Canty

Everyone.. wet your finger...now hold it in the air. Great, you can be one of the many local weather watchers as we all try to figure out which way the winds are blowing on health care. At the moment the media radar is focused on the bright skies and storms that are cropping up all around the country as the latest debate over the future of our health and health care system is unfolding. President Obama and Congress, with our own Chris Dodd in the lead, have launched the campaign to get the program moving. People are lining up on all sides of the issue. Meanwhile, Connecticut has a plan and approach that's winding its way to the Governor's desk for a likely veto in a nod to her pals in the Big Business and Big Insurance lobbies. More on that in a future column, but for now let it be known that health care advocates in Connecticut have a far-reaching vision that anticipates and paves the way for a sensible federal solution. The Obama plan includes some key components that we've been pushing here: affordable, accessible, universal care that covers everyone; developing the medical home with electronic record keeping; investing in prevention and screening; better funding medical education; stronger data and research and dissemination of up-to-date medical information to practitioners; one-stop shopping for health care with a government-run plan option. At the moment there is not universal approval for the plan. There are supporters and detractors all over the spectrum and they are speaking out, everywhere. The hardest things to figure out are what is real and factual, and what is fabricated along with who is really on board and who is blowing smoke. Because, along with the winds of change, there is also a rush of hot air (and I don't mean just Rush Limbaugh) that needs to be filtered. Supporter or not the reality of change is undeniable. In 2007, some 46 million Americans had no health care plan. During 2007 and 2008, another 45 million lost their health care for some period of time - that's 1 out of 4 people who found themselves in the scary health care free zone. And it’s been worsened by the economic meltdown. More than half of all personal bankruptcies are attributed to health care debts. Families with insurance pay for the uninsured who get costly care in inefficient ways. The so-called hidden health care tax amounts to almost $1000 for those on a family plan. But in this health care moment, it seems like we're standing outside and assessing the weather patterns. The sky is dark, the wind is whipping, rain and hail are falling. There's thunder and lightning, and we're just not sure if we should step out of the storm. The bright-sky folks see the opportunity to change and build a program that works for everyone. There are those who say the storm's not that bad, that we'll do fine with a few tweaks. Others suggest the weather here is not as bad as in the countries that practice dreaded socialized medicine. And on it goes. One thing for sure: the forecasts are predictable depending on the source. The AMA predicts a stormy outcome if Medicare rates became the norm and doctor’s incomes are reduced. Insurance companies, Big Pharma and McHospitals fear a more cost effective system and a possible government-run plan that competes with them or reins in costs. Big business just can't cost-compete with the non-profits because of ...well, profits, investor returns, executive salaries, stock options, jets and skyboxes, the cost of doing business. So, who’ll pay for those expensive Yankee and Red Sox tickets if your premiums don’t? Polls show most want a health care system that actually works – one that’s affordable and accessible, and provides coverage to every American regardless of their station in life and it’s not a bad thing to have government involved. But to get there one needs to find out the facts, check the sources, filter false forecasts of gloom and doom and decide what’s best for everyone’s future – then join the crowd of activists. Not easy but incredibly essential – it won’t happen by itself. My finger-in-the-wind prediction - this storm will pass, the skies will clear and we will get on track with a plan that will work for all of us – after a tough fight.

2009-07-08T12:19:00.000-07:00

Making the Economy Flow
CT@Work
By Leo Canty
June 11, 2009

We work, get paid, and spread our earnings in the communities where we live and labor. The earnings of working people infused in our local economy make up the life-blood that keeps the system flowing, just as our bodies need blood and oxygen infusion to keep us alive. Economists describe this flow of cash to be the hallmark of the virtuous economy. A fair share of the profits and productivity the workforce creates goes in the paychecks, and then circulates locally buying goods and services that keep the healthy system circulating in virtuous fashion.
Economists, accountants, politicians, and armchair quarterback pundits all have their views and econometric models describing what is good and bad for the economy, and what will ramp up or deflate oxygenation and the circulating cash flow. Some of us are looking at a common sense model.
The workforce, private and public, need to keep earning and spending to prevent any more loss of circulation and anything that can be done to dampen negative effects and improve the cash flow will help ramp up the cycle – more people earning, spending, building momentum to expand the workforce and grow.
State employees gave $700M in wage and benefit concessions in exchange for job security. It took some cash out of the system but kept people in jobs and helped keep the service delivery system intact to care for those most in need. All of that helps economic flow. Government plays a key role in Connecticut’s economy and if ratcheted down in these times would impact the state negatively. Layoffs, severe cuts, elimination of services, reduction of dollars into the system all stem the flow and must be prevented. The Obama Administration suggest this to be a difficult but necessary move now to prevent the nation and the state from reeling into depression.
In 1929 – the last big depletion of the circulatory system – support for a huge population in dire need did not exist. No unemployment, no social security, no Medicare or Medicaid just poor houses and misery. Better social and human services are in place now that must be maintained to support those in need. The 1920’s also grew a similar wage gap to 2008, where wealth was protected and hoarded drawing cash away from the economic circulatory system contributing to the failure at the time.
Right now it makes sense to find ways to get the cash flowing into the system from new, more viable sources to get a jump-start on the slowed flow. Middle and lower-income wage earners are already spending most of their paychecks locally buying food, rent, utilities, insurance, health care, paying debts and, once in a while, McD’s for dinner with little leftover. They are at work oxygenating Connecticut’s economy. Conversely, high wage earners have leftovers after all the bills are paid and aren’t adding to the circulation in the most helpful way, yet.
State employees were asked to help and they did. The governor has not asked anyone else. The rationale for not asking the wealthy and business because they have suffered enough can only be described as Machiavelli in lambs clothing.
Many of Connecticut’s current problems can be solved with a better more reliable, fair and equitable tax structure. The regressive property tax, a business deterrent, can be reduced and brought into balance with the rest of the system by substitution of a more progressive income tax and a business tax program that makes sense with fewer loopholes that gets everyone contributing in a fair way. At this time it would mean an increase in taxes at the high end – not where the middle and lower incomes are already putting their cash into the flow. It’s time for that.
This state is a tax haven for the wealthy and business- has been for a number of years. When the governor claims lower taxes makes the state more competitive for after the recession the question needs to be asked - competitive for what contest? The race for lower living standards than Arkansas?
Oxygenating the flow, bringing cash that is moving away from Connecticut into the state now so we can ramp up circulation and build a more stable base for 2012 and beyond works better. We need fresh blood and fresh air to turn things around.

2009-06-06T16:27:00.000-07:00

Journal Inquirer. com
Published: Thursday, June 4, 2009 12:09 PM EDT
Work: The elephant in the room
CT@Work
By Leo Canty

Work is a part of everyone’s life and, for some, work is life. A common question most people ask or are asked is “What do you do for a living?” We come home to the family dinner table and talk about our day at work. Friday happy hours — when the office staff leaves work to decompress — are filled with banter about work. Most of who we are, what we do, and where we go revolves around our work. Some love it and some hate it, while others wish they had a job so they could have an opinion. I can’t think of another topic that is so constantly plugged into conversations and our everyday lives.

You would think that a topic so deeply embedded in our lives might find its spot in the media. Maybe a column or section dedicated to working people and workplace issues. Perhaps a regular news report or update highlighting something about the only thing some of us do more than sleep. The media regularly covers business but that news is more about the businesses themselves, less about the people behind the scenes who get the job done. Many newspapers used to have labor or workplace reporters who knew about the issues and wrote stories every day. They covered unions and strikes and reported on all of the workforce data offered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But they, like retirement-income-producing pension plans, have become extinct. Radio doesn’t cover much on the workplace. And television has relegated work coverage to sitcoms like “The Office.”

The time has come for the news media to cover the work people do. As newspapers scramble to find ways to appeal to more readers, maybe it is a good idea to focus on a common element in America — our jobs and the decisions that affect them. So right here in this spot I’m going to try something that for the moment can only be described as “different.” I’m not exactly blazing a new trail. In reality, I’m just uncovering the overgrown and neglected trail on which some of the media used to trek. I will use this space to explore topics that have to do with your job, working peers, and work environment. Suggestions for topics are welcome. You may ask what gives me the credentials to pen a column focused on work. Maybe it’s that I’m a workaholic in recovery. Or that my involvement in the labor movement since 1978 has given me a perspective to offer. There’s a bit of experience I have as a political activist. Or maybe my involvement in philanthropy, or media and communications, might add insight to the mix. It’s been my goal to write a column like this for at least 20 years.

I have surely paid attention in Connecticut, around the nation, and even in a few other countries — observing working people and workplace issues and the ever-evolving dynamic as our close-to-home economy has shifted globally. As Yogi Berra used to say, “You can observe a lot by watching.” We can do a bit more here than watch or observe. We can burn some ink in this spot and explore some topics about Connecticut At Work and try to become concept pioneers on the pages of the Journal Inquirer, and hopefully engage you in the process. (By the way, I can’t think of a better newspaper to host this forum, given the JI’s history of swimming against the tide of corporate conglomerated media.) And while we’re busting boundaries we can act locally and also observe globally.

There is a big world of work that should be interesting to explore. What work and middle-class life successes and stresses can be found in Thailand or Sweden? Is it all that different for the Smiths and Joneses in developing nations? Or the so-called socialist ones? Let’s talk about it here. I hope it all sounds like an exciting adventure with some interesting or entertaining perspectives — and I hope it works for you.

Leo Canty is executive secretary of the Connecticut AFL-CIO and chairman of the board of the Connecticut Health Foundation. He lives in Windsor.

2009-06-06T16:14:00.000-07:00

Journal Inquirer.com

Posted June 3, 2009 / Journal Inquirer

Leo Canty to write JI column

Leo Canty, one of the leading figures in Connecticut’s labor movement, will begin writing an opinion column in the Journal Inquirer, starting tomorrow
Canty is a member of American Federation of Teachers Local 3837, University Health Professionals, and is the second vice president of AFT CT. He has served as the Connecticut AFL-CIO executive secretary since 1996, and is also a vice president of the Hartford Labor Council. Canty is chairman of the board of the Connecticut Health Foundation, a health philanthropy organization with $130 million in assets.
He is involved in telling workers stories through his award winning CT@Work - the labor movement’s only TV show. He lives in Windsor where he is Democratic town chairman.
Canty hopes his column can bring greater focus to work and the workplace. “The media regularly covers business,” he says, “but that news is more about the business themselves, less about the people who get the job done.”
Journal Inquirer publisher Elizabeth Ellis said she is pleased to welcome Canty’s column to the JI. “Our commitment, on the opinion pages is to offering a range of viewpoints and ideas, including ones we do not share.”
Canty’s column will be called “Connecticut at work.”

Connecticut@Work

JournalInquirer.com

A little can mean a whole lot

CT@WorkBy Eric Bailey

JournalInquirer.comStanding up for what’s right

CT@Work
By Eric Bailey

JournalInquirer.com
Standing up for what’s right