95% RESPONDENTS OF AFL-CIO SURVEY SAY AMERICA MUST OVERHAUL HEALTH CARE SYSTEM

Results from the 2008 Health Care for America Survey sponsored by the AFL-CIO are now in in which over 26,000 people took the survey between mid-January and early March, findings include:

• 1/3 of respondents report skipping medical care because of cost, and 1/4 had serious problems paying for the care they needed
• 95% of respondents said America’s health care system needs fundamental change or to be completely rebuilt
• 79% said health care is a very important voting issue, and 97% said they plan to vote in the November elections

Link to results from selected states OR view complete survey results and other useful analysis at www.aflcio.org/issues/healthcare/survey

Tax Cap Would Harm Schoolkids

Proposal would take a toll on the quality of education, thwart ability to draw the best to help boost economy
BY BRUCE VENTIMIGLIA

(originally posted March 18, 2008)

Bruce Ventimiglia is chief executive of Saratoga Capital Management in Garden City and co-chair of the Business and Labor Coalition of New York.

A new governor takes the reins in Albany today, and property tax reform should be at the top of his to-do list. Few would argue against the need for such reform in the Empire State. New Yorkers, after all, pay among the highest property taxes in the nation, and skyrocketing costs have been a driving force in the state’s continued exodus of residents and businesses.

While it’s encouraging to see efforts to address this serious problem, a plan by the former governor to cap property-tax increases would have the effect of limiting revenue available for schools – and therefore could ultimately cause far more harm than good.

Defects Go Unfixed for Years in Dozens of Dams, New York Comptroller Finds

By Anthony DePalma

New York State’s oversight of thousands of dams has been so deficient in recent years that serious problems in dozens of dams holding back billions of gallons of water have gone years without being fixed, according to a report released on Tuesday by the New York State comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli.

The deficiencies of one dam in the report, on Rainbow Lake in the Adirondacks, were first noted 36 years ago but have not yet been corrected, the report said.

Millions of Jobs of a Different Collar

By Steven Greenhouse

EVERYONE knows what blue-collar and white-collar jobs are, but now a job of another hue — green — has entered the lexicon.

Presidential candidates talk about the promise of “green collar” jobs — an economy with millions of workers installing solar panels, weatherizing homes, brewing biofuels, building hybrid cars and erecting giant wind turbines. Labor unions view these new jobs as replacements for positions lost to overseas manufacturing and outsourcing. Urban groups view training in green jobs as a route out of poverty. And environmentalists say they are crucial to combating climate change.

BALCONY Co-Sponsors Rochester Health Care Forum Set for April 4th.

BALCONY, the Business and Labor Coalition of New York, is co-sponsoring with MANY and the American Cancer Society a business and labor roundtable discussion on health care in the workforce and on how the current health insurance coverage might be changed to include all New Yorkers. The forum will take place on April 4, 2008 from 8 to 11 A.M. at the Rochester Institute of Technology and will feature business and labor leaders from the upstate communities surrounding Rochester, Syracuse, and Buffalo. Among the forum topics that will be discussed are the impact of high health care costs and uninsured rates on area business and labor and an evaluation of the current health care reform proposals that New York State is considering. The forum is being organized by Mainstream New York, and the other co-sponsors along with BALCONY are the American Cancer Society, the National Federation of International Business, the New York State United Teachers, and the Rochester Business Alliance.

Contact Bill Bastuk of Mainstream New York for further details. His phone is (585) 503-6826 and his e-mail address is wbastuk@rochester.rr.com.

Health Care Access Forum in Westchester and Putnam Counties set for April 3rd

BALCONY, the Business and Labor Coalition of New York, joins the American Cancer Society in a roundtable discussion on health care access and expanded insurance coverage for Westchester and Putnam counties on April 3, 2008. The forum will be held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in White Plains, New York from 8 to 10:30 A.M. and will feature an evaluation of the various access proposals by Elisabeth Benjamin, the Director for Health Care Restructuring Initiatives for the Community Service Society. A discussion of the issues surrounding health care access will ensue, led by Peter Slocum of the American Cancer Society, Karen Magee of the Westchester Putnam AFL-CIO Central Labor Coalition, and Lou Gordon, Coordinator of BALCONY. Lois Bronz, a Westchester County legislator, and Vincent Tamagna, a Putnam County legislator, will provide the local county perspectives. This event is hosted by Advanced Oncology Associates, the American Cancer Society, BALCONY, County Dental, the Sarah Newman Center/Jewish Home Lifecare, the Visiting Nurse Services of Westchester, the Westchester Community Association, and the Westchester/Putnam AFL-CIO.

If interested in attending, please RSVP by Friday, March 28, 2008. All RSVPs should be directed to Lillian Jones of the American Cancer Society. Her e-mail address is Lillian.Jones@cancer.org, and her phone is (914) 397-8811 and Fax is (914) 949-4279.

Poll: Strong support for congestion plan

According to a Quinnipiac University poll, 60% of New York voters–and 67% of city residents–support the Mayor’s congestion pricing plan.

By Andrew Buck

Overturning the conventional wisdom, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan has strong support from New Yorkers across the region—as long as the funds raised through the congestion tax benefit New York mass transit.

Businesses Say New York’s Clout Is Emigrating, With Visa Policies to Blame

By Patrick McGeehan and Nina Bernstein

New York officials have long taken pride in the city’s status as a global gateway. But lately, senior executives of some of the country’s biggest corporations, like Alcoa, have been complaining that American immigration policies are thwarting New York’s ability to compete with other world capitals.

Every big employer in the city, it seems, can cite an example of high-paying jobs that had to be relocated to foreign cities because the people chosen to fill them could not gain entry to the United States.

Partnership for NYC Report: U.S. Immigration Policy Threatens New York Business

Partnership for New York City Finds That Inaction on H1-B Visas Driving Business Abroad

According to a new report by the Partnership for New York City, political deadlock in Washington D.C. on immigration is hurting the American economy and negatively impacting New York City’s global competitiveness. In the report, Winning the Race for Global Talent, the Partnership found that whole functions of companies and professional service firms are being relocated overseas to places where there is easy and immediate access to world talent.

The most serious problem for New York business is the current cap on professional visas, known as H-1Bs. There is a national cap of 65,000 H-1B visas annually (with a further 20,000 slots available to graduates of U.S. educational programs). Individual employers currently apply for an allocation of H-1Bs beginning on April 1 of each year. Demand, however, dwarfs the available supply. In 2007, more than 150,000 applications were received on the first day alone.

The Partnership found that of the ten thousand plus employers applying for H-1B visas in New York City most are small businesses that require foreign talent to connect them to global markets. In 2006, only 11% of the H-1B visas granted in New York City went to employees of the city’s Fortune 1000 companies.

As part of its research, the Partnership also conducted an unprecedented survey of international companies in its membership that have headquarters or major operations in New York. It found that thousands of jobs are being lost or relocated due to current federal visa and immigration policies. One bank reported that its New York offices lost 100 new hires in 2007 because appropriate visas were not available.

“Unfortunately, the debate over border security and the millions of foreigners residing in the U.S. illegally threatens to distract from what should be unifying causes ― American competitiveness, economic growth and job creation,” said Kathryn Wylde, President & CEO of the Partnership for New York City. “In an increasingly global economy, having a mobile workforce becomes that much more critical. The intention of imposing a cap on H1-B visas was to discourage employers from hiring foreign workers instead of qualified domestic workers, but in 2006, new H-1B professionals comprised just 0.07% of the total U.S. labor force, suggesting that this is not a significant source of displacement. And, in fact, in one striking example from the Partnership’s survey, one H-1B visa holder helped keep 900 jobs in the United States.”

According to one response to the survey from a financial services company, “U.S. work visa restrictions impair our ability to recruit and hire the best talent in a highly competitive global market. The restrictions put U.S. firms at a disadvantage compared to non-U.S. firms with employees predominantly based in overseas locations. We believe that these restrictions, if not relaxed, will diminish New York’s status as the world’s financial capital and hinder NY-based companies’ ability to compete globally.”

The New York Tri-State area has the largest concentration of H-1B visas in the country, with 21.04% of the total. The second largest concentration of H-1Bs is in California (18.22%). The top 20 users of H-1B visas in New York City include banks and investment firms and their technology suppliers as well as two top universities (Columbia and New York University) and two major medical centers (Mount Sinai and Memorial Sloan-Kettering).

Other types of visas that are critical to business needs are the L-1 visa, designed to allow employers to transfer employees from other countries to U. S. offices, and short-term B-1 visas. Companies are reporting significant delays in processing L-1 visas and long wait times and frequent denials of B-1 visas.

Said one survey respondent, “Our company’s ability to relocate existing staff into the U.S. for certain positions is severely hampered by the time required to obtain proper immigration permits and restrictions places on family members or accompanying partners. Therefore, in a very competitive industry, our available talent pool is significantly reduced. This is a primary reason why London is becoming a more competitive financial center at New York’s expense. It is simply much easier to build a team and manage talent mobility abroad than in the U.S.”

The Partnership recommends a series of actions that need to be taken quickly to help American cities and companies compete on a level playing field with other international employment centers and maximize U.S. job creation:

Allowing the H-1B visa cap to respond to market demand;

Enacting an exemption from the H-1B cap for students with higher degrees in Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM);

Extending the term of Optional Practical Training visas from 12 months to 29 months;

Increasing the Employment-Based Green Card cap from 140,000 currently to 290,000;

Supporting visa policies which facilitate normal international business operations, including the continuation of L-1 visa “blanket” petitions for companies with U.S. subsidiaries or affiliates with combined sales of $25 million+ or a U.S. workforce of at least 1000 employees;

Establishing guidelines and procedures for expedited and/or pre-clearance of temporary business visa applications (B-1 Visas) and the implementation of policies to expedite the processing of business/professional visas for temporary workers.

“The Partnership for New York City stands ready to help address the issue of professional and travel visas, as well as play a constructive role in moving the larger, more contentious immigration debate towards reasonable ground ― including a path to citizenship for millions who have acted responsibly while living and working in the U.S.,” said Kathryn Wylde.

Read the complete report: Report

Ten Reasons We Don’t Have the Economy We Thought We Had

by James Parrott

It makes sense. The news that insurance losses from sub-prime mortgages exceed the losses stemming from Hurricane Katrina gives us an appropriate name for the mess we find ourselves in: an economic Katrina. We always believed that our government would protect us from such a disaster, but boy, were we wrong.

Heeding the call of the current Business Week, “Waking up to the Recession,” let’s rub the sleep out of our eyes and count the ways today’s economy is not the one we thought we had. For this task, the economist in us will need all 10 of our fingers.

1. The Federal Reserve dropped the ball big time.
George Bush’s friend “Brownie” (former Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown) must have been in charge of the Federal Reserve. Under chairman Alan Greenspan, our nation’s “non-political” guardian of the financial system stood by while banks and other lenders jettisoned any sense of prudence and “irrational exuberance” overtook the housing market. The Federal Reserve acted as though it believed that deregulation meant no regulation. Its officials watched in awe while Wall Street bankers developed ever- exotic financial instruments – ABSs, CDOs, CLOs, CDSs and who knows what else – allowing financiers to trade risks back and forth for more fees. These investments built a sub-prime pyramid on a foundation of ever-rising housing prices.

Other “innovative” forms of money-changing proliferated as long as the pyramid went on pyramiding and banks were willing to lend to super-leveraged hedge fund speculators. Whatever we might have expected of “regulators” like the Bush administration’s Securities and Exchange Commission, we had thought that the Federal Reserve itself would do financial fire prevention and not just financial fire fighting.

2. Outlandish Wall Street bonuses really aren’t good for New York
New Yorkers used to cheer every year that holiday bonuses on Wall Street broke the old record. The conventional wisdom had it that more spending by bankers would slosh around the local economy, and city and state treasuries would be flush with tax receipts to pay for schools, the subway and public hospitals. Now, though, we have learned that big bonus payouts can mean the economy is about to go off a cliff because bankers and brokers do not get those bonuses for helping the American economy create good jobs, new companies or new products. Instead, they rake in those bonuses for finding new ways to generate fees and feed unsustainable speculation.

3. The “You’re On Your Own” economy does not apply to giant banks.
In his book, “All Together Now, Common Sense for a Fair Economy,” economist Jared Bernstein described how in the YOYO economy, you’re on your own to sink or swim. When you fall down or get knocked down, don’t expect government to help you get back on your feet. This left millions of middle class workers who lost manufacturing jobs, their health insurance and pensions to fend for themselves. But now we see that if a giant bank (think Bear Stearns) falls on hard times (after its ultra-high stake bets went bad), the government rolls out the plushest safety net you could imagine. It spares no expense — and does not even ask the bankers who made those bad wagers to return their multi-million dollar emoluments.

4. Credit card debt is no substitute for broad-based wage gains.
Consumer spending drives the U.S. economy, accounting for over two thirds of Gross Domestic Product (the national economic yardstick). Used to be, the economy grew and workers’ wages grew, allowing families to put food on the table and a roof over their heads, and still have some money left over to save for vacation, college or retirement. For most workers, wages are no higher today after adjusting for inflation than they were in 2000. To maintain consumption, American families have resorted to trillions of dollars of home equity debt and credit card borrowing. It didn’t feel like that would be sustainable for long, and it wasn’t.

5. Low unemployment wasn’t all good news.
A low unemployment rate once meant that most people had jobs, and if you lost yours, you could find another within a reasonable period of time. That is no longer the case. Now, it means that many people have simply given up. In New York State, for example, enough adult men, particularly black men, dropped out of the labor force in this decade to account for about a percentage point decline in the unemployment rate. They dropped out because the prospects of getting a decent job were almost nil. Also, more of those officially unemployed have been out of work for longer than six months than at the start of previous recessions.

6. Sub-prime lending did not give us record home ownership.
In recent years, economic Panglossians touted what they thought was record home ownership, citing it as proof that a rising tide lifts all boats. Instead, we have had a Tsunami of sub-prime lending. It has created a situation where the equity that American homeowners have in their houses is the lowest since records began being kept in the 1940s, With tens of thousands of mortgage foreclosures already underway or on the way, let’s check the homeownership rate in New York City in two or three years.

7. Government spending, it turns out, is pretty useful.
Under the last four presidents, “government spending” usually has been treated like some kind of Evil Empire to oppose or at least rail against. Even the one Democrat among them, Bill Clinton, abandoned his campaign’s “Invest in People” agenda that called for expanding infrastructure and other “putting people first” government spending to concentrate on reducing the deficit.

So what happens when the economy suddenly turns south? Politicians embrace a big boost in federal spending to cushion the downturn. This year probably will see another round or two of federal stimulus spending because there’s no quick economic rebound in sight. It seems we need government spending after all. And if we had a more thoughtful system of government-funded investment in our physical and social infrastructure , complete with safety nets for people and not just giant banks, our economy wouldn’t be so vulnerable to a Wall Street meltdown in the first place.

8. A college education might not get you a good job after all.
“Get a college education, get ahead.” That’s so “20th century.” Now, we know that for most kids who are not from wealthy families, the only thing a college education definitely will get you is a mountain of student loan debt. The global economy is sending millions of white-collar jobs overseas. The Labor Department projects that, even 10 years from now, two thirds of the jobs in our economy will not require a four-year college degree. Since 2002, the real median wage for New York workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher fell by 6 percent. Getting a college education is still a good idea, but somebody needs to think about how we get more good jobs in this economy. The challenge is how can policy makers use a combination of carrots and sticks to get businesses to create more demanding and better paying jobs.

9. Having succeeded in keeping wages down, the White House is doing all it can to push prices up.
The Bush administration would not let the 200,000 new employees at the post-9/11 Transportation Security Agency join a union, and it tried to scuttle even minimal labor standards in the Gulf Coast reconstruction effort.

At the same time, though, the administration has made a number of moves sending prices, particularly energy prices, ever higher. It turned over federal energy policy to the oil companies and blocked better fuel efficiency standards. The Iraq war has helped keep the oil-rich Mideast unsettled and oil supplies down, both ingredients for $110 a barrel oil. Its efforts to promote biofuels, like ethanol, have helped push grain prices to record levels. Thanks to this, we have much higher energy and food prices to go along with the recession.

10. Ever-higher trade deficits do matter.
Many Americans have wondered whether importing a lot more than we export really is a good thing if it means that American workers lose their jobs and, as a result, communities across the country lose their people. Nonetheless, as major leaders in both political parties touted the benefits of “free trade,” many other Americans thought this was the necessary price to pay for a global economy.

Now more people are beginning to question the free trade faith. Not only did the U.S. lose 3 million manufacturing jobs from 1998 to 2003, but we didn’t get any of them back in the recovery from 2003 to 2007 (in fact, we lost almost another million during that “recovery” period). That never happened before.

People see that the sky-high prices they pay at the gas station are going to finance the world’s tallest buildings and world-class museums in tiny undemocratic, oil-exporting Mideast kingdoms. People worry about the safety of toys they buy for their kids, the food they feed their pets and the medicine they take themselves. At the same time, the country spends so much more on things we import than the rest of the world spends on U.S. exports that mountains of U.S. dollars are piling up in China and oil-exporting countries. So when Wall Street banks needed fresh infusions of capital to stay afloat, the only places to which they could turn was countries from which we buy our imported oil and manufactured goods. It’s no wonder more and more Americans are asking to see (not to mention share in) the benefits from the global economy.

The Wall Street recession (a.k.a. this economic Katrina) may really be a “teaching moment,” as they say. It does seem like the economy we thought we had doesn’t exist, or at least doesn’t exist anymore. At least we should know that when bonuses start to shoot up again on Wall Street, it’s time to start worrying.

By the way, it’s unofficially official now: The economy is in recession. Not only do 71 percent of the economic forecasters in the Wall Street Journal’s survey say that, but economist Martin Feldstein declared it a recession last week. He is one of the handful of members (and the most publicly prominent) of the group at the non-governmental National Bureau of Economic Research that officially makes that call, when they get around to it.