Author Archives for Ann Kammerer
The U.S. public has long relied on the American Heart Association’s recommendations for how to prevent heart attack and stroke. Given the AHA’s influence, we believe the organization should avoid financial ties to corporations with commercial interests in cardiovascular health. However, the AHA and its leadership accept large sums of money from individuals and corporations, including those in the pharmaceutical industry that have a financial interest in public-health recommendations. Here are a few select examples:
- Dr. Robert Eckel, former AHA president and co-author of certain cholesterol-related AHA guidelines, received nearly $33K in industry payments in 2014. Over $14K came from drug maker Sanofi Aventis. Experts say that company’s new cholesterol-lowering drug, Praluent, and others like it could cost U.S. payers and patients more than $100 billion per year.
- Dr. Mark Creager, the current AHA president, received over $30,000 in 2013 and 2014 combined from pharmaceutical companies Novartis and AstraZeneca.
- The AHA received over $15 million from pharmaceutical, medical device, and health insurance companies in the 2013-14 fiscal year, including nearly $3.3 million from Pfizer.
The AHA’s guidelines influence how doctors across the country advise their patients. In the process, the guidelines affect how billions of dollars will be spent. Shouldn’t these recommendations be free of industry influence?
The American Heart Association should take the following steps to shore up the public trust that is so essential to its success:
- Prohibit directors, guideline authors, or other AHA leaders from accepting payments from any companies in the pharmaceutical, health insurance, food service, or food manufacturing industries.
- Preclude directors and other leadership positions from being held by representatives of any company in the pharmaceutical, health insurance, food service, or food manufacturing industries.
- Convene a panel of independent experts who do not receive income from these industries to review the 2013 ACC/AHA cholesterol guideline and risk calculator.
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Today we walk for our loved ones and their right to unbiased medical advice. @American_Heart stop taking drug-company money! #HeartWalk
Tweet: Tell the @American_Heart to stop taking drug-company money. Because we deserve unbiased medical advice! http://bit.ly/1JVg5hd #HeartWalk
If you are a current or former employee, representative, or volunteer of the American Heart Association who has concerns about the charity’s financial relationships, please consider confidentially providing any potentially relevant information by sending us an email. Your input could help ensure that the AHA is as transparent and effective as it can be.
By Randi Weingarten, Lee Saunders and D. Taylor
(Via The Hill) For five years, Republicans lobbed every criticism imaginable at the Affordable Care Act, while Democrats defended it against every critique. Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in what is likely the final major legal challenge to healthcare reform, it’s time for leaders of both parties to put politics aside and start the real work of ensuring the law fulfills its promise.
Members of our respective unions have fought long and hard for high-quality, affordable health coverage for their families, often at the expense of wage increases. We support the ACA as a major step toward ensuring all Americans have that same security. But like Medicare and Medicaid before it, the ACA needs tweaks to really deliver for working families.
So we’re glad presidential candidates are looking not only at the benefits of ACA but also at the aspects that need fixing. And we’re glad that fixing the ACA is becoming a bipartisan issue. Congressional coalitions led by Reps. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) and Frank Guinta (R-N.H.) are taking on one of the clearest of the ACA’s flaws: a 40 percent excise tax on health benefits above $10,200 for individuals and $27,500 for families.
The 40 percent tax creates a huge incentive for employers to cut costs by cutting benefits and shifting costs onto workers. Even though the tax won’t go into effect until 2018, employers already are slashing benefits in anticipation of it, forcing millions of families to become seriously underinsured. This is possibly the ACA’s most dangerous trend.
Read the rest of the article.
(Via Huffington Post)-As part of a pledge to protect the middle class, Hillary Clinton is taking a second look at aspects of the ACA that hurt working men and women. That’s good news, and the only responsible position for politicians interested in providing more and better healthcare at lower cost.
Unfortunately, fixing the flaws in the ACA will require Secretary Clinton to confront Democrats and former colleagues like Jared Bernstein, who was a top economic advisor in the Obama White House, and MIT’s notorious Jonathan Gruber, who consulted with the White House on the ACA.
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Workers plan to attend and testify at investigative City Council hearing tonight
BOSTON, MA—Employees of the Wyndham Boston Beacon Hill Hotel at 5 Blossom Street announced a one-day strike this morning effective 7am.
Workers at the hotel said they were not given adequate supplies or protective equipment to handle potentially infectious materials, including medical waste. The hotel advertises to area hospitals including Massachusetts General Hospital, which maintains an 8-bed sleep study at the hotel. MGH patients stay in the hotel while receiving treatment at the hospital.
Workers filed a complaint to OSHA in May, causing the agency to open an inspection that is ongoing.
Striking workers plan to attend and testify at a Boston City Council hearing tonight to share disturbing details of continued failure by hotel management to sufficiently protect staff while cleaning body fluids and materials that can cause transmission of disease.
“I am striking today because my employer has put me in danger,” said housekeeper Aura Berciano-Reyes. “I don’t want to risk my child becoming ill because I am not protected at work.”
Striking hotel workers will be available for interview today and will testify at the City Council hearing at 5pm at City Hall.
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Contact: Tiffany Ten Eyck, 313-515-1807, [email protected]
Aissata Bocoum (Wyndham New Yorker)
On Thursday, June 4th HTC members voted, by an enormous majority, to approve a 7 year extension to the Industry Wide Agreement which will cover over 23,000 workers, securing an unprecedented 11 years of guaranteed wage increases and healthcare.
3,436 members voted by secret ballot in the Gertrude Lane Auditorium of the Union’s offices in Manhattan. In the final count, 98.7% voted to approve the contract extension.
Voting began at 7am, with members from the 119 Hotel Association Bargaining Group hotels coming individually and in groups to cast their votes. Tonia Johnson-Williams, Room Attendant at the Gregory, said, “I’ve come to vote because it’s important to show support for the Union,” and added, “I’m excited about the wage increases!”
With the extension ratified, IWA increases under the current contract, the last of which is on July 1, 2018, continue unchanged. Then, starting on July 1, 2019 (the day after the current IWA expires), and each July 1st thereafter, through and including 2025, non-tipped workers will receive a raise of $1.00 per hour and tipped workers will receive a raise of $0.50 per hour. This means that by the end of the contract, a Room Attendant will earn $39.87 per hour — over $72,500 per year. A Bellperson will earn $24.05 per hour — over $50,000 per year. Additionally, the contract extension will see employer contributions to the pension fund increased by 9.5% by the end of the extension to ensure that our pension fund remains healthy.
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In late May, workers at Baltimore’s BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport visited Frankfurt, Germany. They have asked Fraport AG — parent company of BWI’s concessions developer AirMall USA — to address the poor quality of jobs and working conditions the airport’s food and retail concessions program. Frustrated with lack of action since Fraport acquired AirMall nearly a year ago, workers decided to travel to Frankfurt in order to encourage solutions to the dispute.
In addition to meeting with elected officials, media and other Fraport stakeholders, workers and UNITE HERE representatives were joined by supporters from ver.di, the union representing Fraport’s employees in Germany, for a public event the day of Fraport’s General Assembly.
German Press Coverage:
US-Protest gegen Fraport, taz
Fraport fliegt aufs Ausland, FrankfurterRundschau
Video: Gewinne und kritik für Fraport, RTL-Hessen
German website: flughafenBWI.org
As the City of Los Angeles moves to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour, it is also cracking down on one company that it says has failed to comply with an existing city living wage. In a letter to Flying Food Group CEO David Cotton, the City advises that 271 employees at the company’s Imperial Highway kitchen have not been paid in accordance to the LA Living Wage Ordinance, dating from May 1, 2010 to the present. As reported in the LA Times,
The letter ordered the back wages paid within ten days of the company receiving the letter and threatened to end all contracts with the city and ban the company from holding a city lease or license for up to three years if the company did not comply. (“Airline food company ordered to pay living wages to employees,” LA Times, May 26, 2015)
According to a survey of Flying Food Group workers conducted by UNITE HERE over the past year, the median wage of respondents is just $10.04 per hour – nearly $6.00 per hour below the $15.84 per hour required under the LWO for workers without company-provided benefits.
Flying Food Group workers at LAX prepare, pack and deliver thousands of meals daily for passengers of major airlines including Air France-KLM, China Airlines, Etihad, Virgin Australia, Japan Air, and others. In recent months, they have actively called on the company to pay them the living wage, rallying at the airport and giving testimony in front of Airport Board of Commissioners.
Earlier this year, nine workers filed a class action lawsuit against the company, alleging that, in refusing to pay the living wage, it had “engaged in widespread and flagrant violations” of the municipal law.
“Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon and which cuts without wounding and enables the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our Union is among the most militant in America.
Our members are people of all colors and immigrants from around the world. They’re brave people who left everything behind—whether escaping segregation in the Deep South; political persecution in Cuba and Central America; war in Africa; economic degradation in Haiti, the Philippines and Mexico; or old factory towns destroyed in our countries.
We are fighters. We are a union of people who fight for every inch of progress and against all forms of repression. We led the historic Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride. We were the first to endorse an African American candidate for President. We were the Union to demand African American hiring in our Union Contracts and an end to bigotry against our sisters and brothers in the LGBT community.
Police violence against unarmed African American men only reminds us of the images of Selma. And mass incarceration of men and youth of color exposes the travesty of the current criminal justice system.
But violence in response to violence is both unacceptable and counter-productive. It always leads to loss of those who are oppressed and reinforces the view of the oppressor.
We must all be reminded that militancy does not mean violence. And non-violence does not mean weakness.
Most of our Union’s leaders have taken to the streets, been arrested, but always held their ground: hands and fists raised in protest, but never in acts of violence.
We have an unfulfilled obligation to teach young and justifiably angry women and men how they can practice our kind of militant non-violence. Because we win. It works.
I am calling on our Union’s leaders throughout the United States and Canada to reach out in the communities we represent and share with all who want to learn from us and form a more just society.
Our Union stands strong in the face of injustice and exclusion and racism and sexism. Black lives matter. Immigrants’ lives matter. LGBTQ lives matter. Women’s lives matter. Workers’ lives matter. This has been our defining purpose as a Union all along: to fight for basic human rights and human dignity. And we must be more strongly committed to this fight than ever.
Fraternally,
D. Taylor
Each year on April 28, unions like ours pause to observe Workers Memorial Day. We honor the hard work and sacrifice of those who have been injured, made sick or killed on the job and we reaffirm our commitment to fight for safe and healthy workplaces.
A 2006 UNITE HERE report found that many hotel housekeepers experience debilitating pain and injuries after years of making beds and scrubbing toilets. Another academic report published by in 2010 found that the incidence of these injuries can vary by gender and ethnicity, reporting that Latina housekeepers in the study had almost double the risk of injury of white housekeepers doing the same job.1 And hazards of housekeeping work may only get worse as hotel companies implement room changes including heavier mattresses, more linens, and other room amenities.
Employees who report injuries or hazards can face harsh discipline or termination. The consequence is that workers underreport injury and illness and continue to endure life-threatening working conditions. It’s no wonder that, 50,000 workers die from occupational diseases caused by prolonged exposures to toxic chemicals and other health hazards annually.
UNITE HERE has steadily fought back back against employers that put workers in peril and cost lives. But much more work needs to be done.
“No one should have to risk their health at work. But the reality is that too many employers are placing profits over people and workers suffer,” says D. Taylor, the President of UNITE HERE. “By organizing and winning strong union contracts, housekeepers and other workers in the hospitality industry have made great strides to ensure their work is safe and sustainable, and we will continue that work until the dangers facing every worker, from the airport and hotel to farm and factories, are eliminated.”
Read more about Workers Memorial Day here and share this graphic to let the world know that you support workers.
1 “Occupational injury disparities in the US hotel industry,” Susan Buchanan, Pamela Vossenas, Niklas Krause, et.al., American Journal of Industrial Medicine, Vol. 53, Issue 2, pp 116-125, February 2010.
