This is the first video made by a former union buster.

With U.S. unemployment at the highest level in more than a quarter century, six Republican governors would rather play politics with the lives of their citizens than help them make ends meet.

President Obama’s economic recovery plan provides $25 more per week and extends benefits for those who are jobless and struggling to feed their families. But as Karen Nussbaum, director of Working America, the AFL-CIO community affiliate, writes on Huffington Post:

If you live in Alabama, Alaska, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina or Texas, you are laid off and left out.

When AIG defrauded investors and the government, employees there took home millions in bonuses. Elsewhere, people are living unemployment check to unemployment check through no fault of their own, laid off because everyone is tightening their belts and job growth is nonexistent. Shoring up the unemployment insurance safety net is fundamental fairness.

Rumored Republican presidential candidates Sarah Palin of Alaska and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana both refused the unemployment funds—maybe a harbinger of the type of president they would make? 

Millions of Americans need unemployment benefits to live. Nussbaum writes about several, including Marvin Bohn of Ohio, who was laid off after 42 years in the food service industry when Antioch College shut its doors last year. He has diabetes and heart disease, a pacemaker and a defibrillator, and needs 11 medications, but he couldn’t afford to continue his health coverage on the $329 a week he gets from unemployment insurance. He has run through his savings, paying his medical bills out of pocket, and he has not yet found another job.

On Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the new monthly unemployment figures and the numbers are expected to be even worse than the February’s 8.1 percent unemployment rate. As Nussbaum writes:

Meanwhile, the much looked-for help the federal government has offered will be available only to those Americans whose governors aren’t trying to score political points. It’s time to remember it isn’t just big corporations that are hurting in this economy. Let’s let these Republican governors know they need to help make America work for working Americans.

 Read Nussbaum’s entire article here.

Students will rally nationwide for workers’ freedom to form unions this week.

This week, Jobs with Justice’s Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) kicks off a week of action in support of the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act and the freedom to form unions and bargain cooperatively to create a strong economy.

As part of SLAP’s week of action, held each year to honor Martin Luther King Jr. and Farm Workers founder César Chávez, students in 28 states and the District of Columbia are getting involved in the campaign for the Employee Free Choice Act. In coordination with the student week of action, Jobs with Justice will hold a “Resistance and Recovery” week of events.

You can find out about student actions in your area here.

United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) also is getting involved with the fight for Employee Free Choice. Over the past week, USAS has held regional conferences for students concerned with workers’ rights. As part of the USAS Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference, students from around Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and the District of Columbia on March 27 attended a rally at Penn State University to demand passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. This past weekend, hundreds of students attended the Southeast Regional Conference in Decatur, Ga.

The enthusiasm of thousands of students around the country is yet another critical element in passing the Employee Free Choice Act.

George Halvorson

With the federal government poised to invest billions of dollars in health information technology as part of comprehensive health care reform, the AFL-CIO joined with Kaiser Permanente and the Alliance for Health Reform to show how the efficient use of new information systems and involvement of all caregivers—doctors, pharmacists, nurses and others—in health decisions can lead to better health care. In fact, Kaiser says its pilot program is using technology in new ways to cut cardiac deaths by 73 percent.

During a briefing Friday in Washington, D.C., Kaiser Permanente CEO George Halvorson pointed out how the company’s practitioners in Colorado used Kaiser’s trademarked health information system to deliver better care to cardiac patients. The Collaborative Cardiac Care Service program uses integrated nursing and pharmacy teams that work collaboratively with heart disease patients and their doctors. The team is connected by technology that helps them deliver care. Activities such as lifestyle modification, medication management, patient education, laboratory results monitoring and management of adverse events are all coordinated through the program, which helps guide the patient through both short- and long-term care decisions.

“Technology itself cannot solve the health care crisis,” Halvorson said:

Our Colorado region achieved quality care results by aligning people and technology in the most efficient care delivery system. It was not newer or more expensive treatments, but an integrated approach to deliver the right care at the right time. Maximizing information for the clinician means optimizing care for the patient. As Congress and the president engage on health care reform, we must focus on the need to change the way we deliver care.

As AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said, “Front-line health care workers will be the lynchpin in transforming health care in this country.”

Kaiser Permanente’s success in using technology has underscored that the integration and optimization of a health IT system are dependent on people. Both effective computer systems and skilled clinicians are needed to truly change the way care is delivered and achieve quality outcomes.

This team approach substantially improved the heart attack survival rate for Kaiser patients in Colorado. The program achieved the following results, Kaiser said in a press release:

• Patients have an 88 percent reduced risk of dying of a cardiac-related cause when enrolled within 90 days of a heart attack, compared to those not in the program;
• The number of patients meeting their cholesterol goal went from 26 percent to 73 percent; and
• The number of patients screened for cholesterol went from 55 percent to 97 percent.

Research indicates that fewer than 20 percent of coronary artery disease patients are expected to survive 10 years after their first heart attack. It is estimated that Kaiser’s coordinated care program prevents more than 135 deaths and 260 costly emergency interventions annually.