Alexander Ryking

In 2009, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) introduced a bill called the Healthy Families Act that would require businesses that have at least 15 employees to offer some paid sick time to their employees. Although it gained an impressive 125 co-sponsors, it never made any progress in the Democratic Party-controlled House of Representatives, let alone the Senate.

A quick look at the interests backing and opposing the bill explains why. After the bill was introduced, a number of labor unions, faith groups, and non-profit organizations declared themselves in support. But on the other side of the issue was virtually every titan in corporate lobbying — ranging from the powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the American Hotel and Lodging Association to the National Retail Federation. That’s right, these businesses all worked to ensure that the waitress handling your food could be sick with the flu…

If we’re ever going to catch up to 145 countries that require some sort of paid sick leave, we’re going to have to tackle money in our politics first.

The revolt here on the banks of the Madeira River, the Amazon’s largest tributary, flared after sunset. At the simmering end of a 26-day strike by 17,000 workers last month, a faction of laborers who were furious over wages and living conditions began setting fire to the construction site at the Jirau Dam.

Throughout the night, they burned more than 30 structures to the ground and looted company stores, capturing the mayhem on their own cellphone cameras, before firefighters extinguished the blazes. The authorities in Brasília flew in hundreds of troops from an elite force to quell the unrest.

Men in camouflage fatigues still patrol the sprawling work site, reflecting a dilemma for Brazil’s leaders. Even as they move to tap one of the world’s last great reserves of hydroelectric power, the Amazon basin, strikes and worker uprisings at the biggest projects are producing delays and cost overruns.

“No one burns anything if they’re satisfied,” said Altair Donizete de Oliveira, a union leader here in Brazil’s western frontier. He listed salaries, cramped living quarters and requests for more home visits among the grievances that were contributing to the festering tension among the laborers, who number in the tens of thousands at various work sites in the Amazon.

Mitt Romney’s campaign is pushing the message this morning that President Obama is in the pocket of Big Labor…

Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee is pushing the message this morning that Obama blocked the Keystone Pipeline, a project that was fervently supported by Big Labor…

If the RNC is going to devote its resources to refuting Romney’s attacks on Obama, maybe it should at least put a few hours between them.

Auto sales are growing so fast that Detroit can barely keep up.

Three years after the U.S. auto industry nearly collapsed, sales of cars and trucks are surging. Sales could exceed 14 million this year, above last year’s 12.8 million.

The result: Carmakers are adding shifts and hiring thousands of workers around the country. Carmakers and parts companies added more than 38,000 jobs last year, reaching a total of 717,000. And automakers have announced plans to add another 13,000 this year, mostly on night shifts.

One of the biggest requests that labor had made of Congressional Dems was this: Don’t sell out unions when the long-term Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization is renegotiated with House Republicans. Unions saw this as a top prioritiy for 2012.

Well, now the verdict is in: Over a dozen unions — including a number of AFL-CIO affiliates, like the Communications Workers of America and the International Association of Machinists; and possibly the SEIU — are preparing to unleash a new letter blasting Senate Dem leaders for reaching a bad deal with Republicans on this core priority, claiming it could compromise their ability to organize in the future. They will demand that Dems pull out of the deal and insist that Dems push the GOP harder for a “clean” reauthorization that doesn’t rewrite labor law.

One labor official told me that the deal has led to “significant union discontent” with the Senate Dem leadership, which may not bode well for Dem-labor relations heading into an election year…

This could create a headache for Congressional Dem leaders at a moment when they’re trying to unite the party behind a populist, pro-labor message heading into this year’s elections.