When Republican House leaders forced a shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) last week, they not only forced the layoff of 4,000 FAA workers, they also put at risk nearly 90,000 construction jobs at airports around the country.

FAA funding expired after midnight Friday because Republicans blocked temporary funding in an effort to overturn a new rule making union elections among rail and airline workers more democratic.

With a long-term FAA funding bill stalled, Congress could have passed temporary spending authority, as it has 20 times in the past without controversy. But  like their tactics on debt ceiling negotiations, Republicans  are demanding their way at any cost.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called on Republicans “to stop playing ideological games” and to:

get down to the serious business of creating jobs, instead of laying off FAA aviation experts and tens of thousands of construction workers, who are already experiencing close to 20 percent unemployment rates nationally. Adding insult to injury, just as the government reaches its debt limit, this disruption of the FAA means that aviation taxes—totaling up to $200 million a week—that normally fund our aviation infrastructure may instead end up in the airlines’ pockets.

Says AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department (TTD) President Edward Wytkind:

Here we go again. House Republican leaders are playing political games at the expense of vital services and thousands of good jobs….Unfortunately in this game there are no winners. Republican leaders are holding hostage a simple funding extension of vital air safety programs, forcing furloughs on 4,000 FAA employees, jeopardizing thousands of construction jobs as airport projects are at risk and even sticking it to rural America by threatening their air service.

The FAA partial shutdown means no one is collecting the tax on airline tickets, costing the federal government $200 million a week.

It also means airport improvement construction jobs will be lost in every state and FAA aviation experts furloughed in 35 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. In Florida, for example, a total of 3,088 jobs are shut down or at risk, in Illinois it’s 3,286 and in Ohio it’s 1,358.

The laid off FAA workers include engineers, scientists, research analysts, administrative assistants, computer specialists, program managers and analysts, environmental protection specialists and community planners.

Says AFSCME President Gerald McEntee:

FAA employees should not have their livelihoods jeopardized because a few politicians want to play political games.  The FAA employees we represent are hardworking public servants who are committed to maintaining what is undeniably the most efficient aviation system in the world.  Congress should pass a short-term extension at once and recommit themselves to passing a long-term bill that does not take away the rights of working men and women.

The union election rule in question, adopted last year by the National Mediation Board (NMB), says air and rail union elections should be decided by a majority of votes cast. Previously, each worker who did not cast a vote in an air or rail  representation election was automatically counted as a “No” vote. If the old rule were applied to Congress, not a single sitting member would have been elected.

Larry Cohen, Communications Workers of America (CWA) president, says:

It’s a sad day when extremists would rather shut down the FAA and force the layoff of thousands of workers than allow airline workers to vote in a union election under the same standards used in every other American election.

This blog originally appeared in Afl-CioNow Blog on July 25, 2011. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Mike Hall is a former West Virginia newspaper reporter, staff writer for the United Mine Workers Journal and managing editor of the Seafarers Log. He has written for several federation publications, focusing on legislation and politics, especially grassroots mobilization and workplace safety. When his collar was still blue, he carried union cards from the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, American Flint Glass Workers and Teamsters for jobs in a chemical plant, a mining equipment manufacturing plant and a warehouse. He has also worked as roadie for a small-time country-rock band, sold his blood plasma and played an occasional game of poker to help pay the rent.

CHICAGO—The Hyatt hotel chain turned up the heat on striking and picketing workers—literally—here Thursday, as 10 hanging heat lamps normally used in winter were turned on workers picketing outside the downtown Park Hyatt. This occurred on one of the year’s hottest days—with a heat index well above 100 degrees and the temperature over 80 degrees, with high humidity even early in the morning—part of a lethal nationwide heat wave.

CBS reported:

Combined with the outdoor air temperature, Linda Long says it was hotter than the Hyatt kitchen she’s worked in for eleven years. “They put the heat lamps on us, like we were nothing,” Long said. “If the heat didn’t kill us, the heat lamps would.”

Workers at Hyatts in nine cities nationwide were holding a one-day strike and picket to draw attention to contract negotiations, which have been stalled for 22 months, and what workers and union leaders call atrocious treatment of housekeepers, including sub-par wages, subcontracting out of work, and the speed at which housekeepers are expected to clean rooms.

The Chicago Tribune quoted a 42-year-old bellman about the heat lamps. He said only bellmen, engineers and select other employees can turn the lamps on, and it could not have been an accident.

This is one of the hottest days of the summer. Work at that door every single day and only in winter time do those need to be turned on. Somebody did it on purpose. It’s ridiculous.

Hyatt workers also held a one-day strike and picket last month, as Candice Bernd reported for Working In These Times:

After months of bargaining, Unite Here Local 1 has won a 3-year contractual agreement with Hilton and Starwood hotel companies this year. While Hyatt has indicated support for a contract that would match some of the settlements of Hilton and Starwood for union employees, the company continues to refuse a fair bargaining process for workers at nonunion hotels, remaining the last of the three largest hotel chains to do so. Another sticking point for Hyatt is the subcontracting out of new work.

The chain is owned by the influential Pritzker family. Chicago blogger Michael Klonsky (an occasional In These Times contributor) writes:

Heiress Penny Sue Pritzker chairs Obama’s national campaign finance committee. She is also big player in Democratic Party politics as well as in the world of anti-union, corporate school reform and was recently appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to a seat on the Chicago school board.

In a statement Hyatt said the heat lamps went on by accident and were turned off about an hour later after they were notified. Workers said they suspected that’s because media had been alerted. Klonsky reported the heat lamps seemed to energize the picketers, who chanted “You can’t smoke us out.”

This seemingly inhuman and probably illegal response seemed to have had just the opposite effect. Picketers began chanting, “Hyatt can’t take the heat, but we can!” The lamps were left on until word got out and media began to show up.

The day of action Thursday came three weeks after a report by rabbis that described the Hyatt working conditions as “not kosher” and hundreds of religious leaders picketed with workers at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago. The UNITE HERE unionwebsite says: “Hyatt Hotel Housekeepers suffer abuse. Our injury rates are high, our wages are low, and our immigrant sisters are exploited and cheated by Hyatt’s housekeeping subcontractors.”

The Chicago Tribune reported the company’s official response to Thursday’s picket:

In cities from Chicago to Waikiki and here at Park Hyatt, we have offered union leaders contract proposals that match wage and benefit packages identical to what Unite Here has accepted from other hotel companies. Yet, union leaders have rejected every one of these proposals.

This Blog originally appeared In These Times on July 22, 2011. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Kari Lydersen is an In These Times contributing editor, is a Chicago-based journalist whose works has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Reader and The Progressive, among other publications. Her most recent book is Revolt on Goose Island. In 2011, she was awarded a Studs Terkel Community Media Award for her work. She can be reached at kari.lydersen@gmail.com.

Ah, the good old days. It’s 1977 and the Labor Department’s Quality of Work study found that 34 percent of men say that they’re experiencing some kind of work and home life stress. About one in three.

Fast forward to 2008 (okay, it’s 2011, but the Labor Department sometimes gets too much labor on it’s plate to produce reports in a timely fashion. Don’t get me started on the stress they’re experiencing) and the same question gets agreement from 49 percent of men with families. Just about half.

Where does this stress come from? Not many surprises here. 60 percent of me who have a spouse who also works report substantial conflicts in the demands of work and family, as do men with young kids (55 percent) and men who work the longest hours (60 percent of those working more than 50 hours a week, versus 39 percent of those working 40-49 hours/week).

There are many reasons for this: wages have remained essentially flat for almost 40 years, long hours, working not only your job but the job of laid off coworkers, greater job insecurity and boundaries between work and home life that are breaking down. Heck, just writing this list is stressing me out.

Okay, my take is that this is all a good thing.

Men should assume more stress from their home life. Take more responsibility. In my significant relationships I did 80% of the cooking, cleaning and taking care of the kids. I think that men should contribute in all these areas.

Because participating in family life does bring stress. But it also brings joy and meaning. So this is one of those areas where stress is not 100% bad. It can complicate your life but it also enriches your life at the same time.

Why should women have all the joys and stress from home? Dive in there fella.

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

Okay, this one is a blinding glimpse of the obvious, we have bias against people who are overweight. That’s the boring part. But it gets interesting when it comes to how the bias is different for men and women.

A study by a University of Florida professor found that thinner women had a higher salary. And so did heavier men.

That was interesting enough. But the reason why thinner men earned less was fascinating. Thinner men are often seen as a pushover or nervous.

I didn’t see that one coming.

And I’ve heard that overweight women are seen as lacking discipline. Isn’t it amazing that we can judge the same thing, being overweight, so dramatically different for men and women?

We all know that men earn up to 25% more than women and that this gap has held relatively consistent through the years.

Here is my question, with all of us getting fatter, will this pay differential just keep growing along with our butts?

Call me old school, but I think that bias not only does exist, it should exist at work. But our bias should be focused on the quality of our contributions and not on the size of our bodies.

This sounds to some of you as naive and to others as utopian. But I see it differently. For anyone who is able to see past these biases, there are a large number of high performers who most people are overlooking, heavier women and thinner men.

Get behind these overlooked workers and you’ll pound the competition.

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

Twenty-one years ago, on June 15, hundreds of low-wage janitors marched in Los Angeles, demanding better working conditions.

The march turned into a bloody scene when police on horseback surrounded the janitors and their supporters, beating them back with clubs. It sparked a movement. The Justice for Janitors campaign was born and janitors won their first ever union contract.

Yesterday, nearly 1,000 janitors again rallied in Los Angeles to demand fair wages and a better quality of life.

They were part of the national Justice for Janitors Day, protesting an economy many consider unbalanced and unjust as the working class is squeezed to a breaking point. And it seems the gains made over the years that lifted janitors out of poverty have since dwindled, with wages not keeping up with the cost of living and affordable health care becoming just a memory.

One worker held up a sign: “What’s Dignity?: New shoes for my daughter. A birthday party for my son.”

“The middle class in this country is under the gun,” said Martha Martinez, a janitor employed by ABM, a facility services corporation, at the Century City Towers in Los Angeles. “While big corporations are getting all the money, a lot of people don’t have jobs. And even more people are working for a living but not making a living.”

Union organizer Mike Chavez said that the paid wages are so low that ”janitors struggle to meet the basic needs of their families.”

Some workers, according to Chavez, earn as little as $312 per week after taxes.

Other rallies were held in Chicago, Seattle and Denver and similar events were held across the globe in Germany, Australia, Ireland and the Netherlands.

Janitors are fighting on all fronts. According to a June 2011 report by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, unregulated temp agencies are hiring janitors and other blue-collar workers at low wages, often in dangerous environments and without benefits.

The Boston Globe states that, “Some are paid less than minimum wage and often do not receive due overtime pay because both the agency and the employer split 40-plus-hour work weeks into two paychecks.”

The Massachusetts House is looking at a measure that would regulate temp agencies.

Back in the Bay Area at Stanford University, it’s a story whose theme many readers are probably familiar with: workers are employed by one janitorial subcontractor (ABM) then traded to a new subcontractor hired by the employer, in this case, UGL UNICCO, whom the university said would provide “superior services.”

In many cases that means another subcontractor submits a lower bid. As has played out in various supermarket labor fights, the new contractor cuts the staffing and the remaining cleaners are forced to work longer hours with less help. Most recently, this dynamic led several janitorial workers to go on a hunger strike in Minneapolis, as reported in this May 27 post.

Under the agreement at Stanford between UGL and the SEIU (which represent 225,000 janitors nationwide), UGL was obligated to offer all ABM workers the opportunity to keep their jobs as long as they submitted to background checks to verify their identity and check their criminal history.

In a letter from UGL, according to The Stanford Daily, the purpose of the checks was to verify employees’ legal right to work in the U.S. While UGL could have used an I-9 form, which does not ask for a social security form, the company chose to use “no-match” letters, which are issued if the social security numbers on W2 forms don’t match up to Social Security Administration records.

The Student Labor Action Coalition, a student advocacy group calling for UGL to rehire all former ABM janitors, requested the university to step in. They submitted a letter to Stanford and UGL with 2,000 signatures that read:

“Workers should retain their employment and the wages and benefits associated with their seniority rights through a subcontracting transition.”

The letter states that as many as 70 workers are at risk of being unjustly fired or losing their seniority and benefits.

UGL denies this and says “only” 29 workers will be affected, claiming they are not the longest working or highest paid, and that none have worked at the university for more than 15 years.

This Blog Originally Appeared in These Working Times on June 16, 2011. Reprinted with Permission.

About the Author: R.M. Arrieta was born and raised in Los Angeles. She has worked at three daily newspapers and two television stations and is a former editor of the Bay Area’s independent community bilingual biweekly El Tecolote. She currently lives in San Francisco, where she is a freelance journalist writing for a variety of outlets. She can be reached at rmarrieta@inthesetimes.com

Recently I worked at a job with a wonderful woman. She had been a administrative assistant all of her career. So when I asked her to create a data base for our sales calls, she immediately turned it into a clerical function.

She created an Excel spreadsheet that had a lot of columns that was chock full of tons of details about every client and potential client. There was only one problem, it was like a file cabinet, it stored everything. It was unwieldy and almost defied you to explore our best prospects or do any real analysis of our sales opportunities.

I sat down with her and discussed my concerns about what she’d done. I struggled to find a word to describe the limitations. Finally it came to me, the data base wasn’t strategic. It needed a lot of work to become a tool that was nimble and flexible enough to guide our sales process.

This reminds me of a conversation that I had with a friend this weekend. She is bright, creative and very talented. But it appears that she is going through the motions when it comes to her career. It feels like she is filling a file cabinet with all the contacts and ideas for everything that she feels she should be doing with her career. But her entire search process seemed to lack a strategic element.

Most of us are raised to fill a box on an organizational chart. We have expertise and experience that allows us to do a heck of a lot more than fill a box on a chart. But that’s what we do, we gather data on the job possibilities that are out there for us.

But we need to be much more creative and directive in how we go about this process. Need I say, we need to be more clever in how we approach our job exploration.

Note I said job exploration, not job hunt. It’s really important that we sort out where we want to go before we start looking at jobs.

A job shouldn’t be just the way you pay your bills or pass the majority or the hours that you’re awake each day. I believe that a job should be your gift to the world. Really. It should be a unique contribution of your talents that only you can provide.

Sounds great. But it’s also difficult to dig deep enough within yourself to sort out why you are here. What your purpose is. But it is well worth the effort.

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

Think you know about LGBT employment protections? Take this quiz and see how much you know. A new poll from the Center for American Progress shows that 9 out of 10 voters think there is a federal law protecting LGBT people from workplace discrimination. They’re wrong. The poll found that 73 percent of voters do support such protections, including strong support from Catholics (74 percent), senior citizens (61 percent), and even people with unfavorable attitudes toward gay people (50 percent). Unfortunately, in most states the protections don’t exist, and levels of discrimination and harassment are high.

As many as 43 percent of LGB people and a staggering 90 percent of transgender people have experienced workplace mistreatment. Another column from CAP shares some of the personal stories of individuals who had these negative experiences and the consequences that come with, such as the fact that gay men earn 10-32 percent less than their heterosexual peers (PDF). Meanwhile, transgender individuals are twice as likely to be unemployed and four times as likely to be living in poverty (PDF).

If support for protections is so strong and people think they already exist, it’s peculiar that employment protection bills face such challenges in getting passed. The federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act has been introduced for decades now without passing. Just last week, non-discrimination protections in Connecticut got a very transphobic pushback. Equality opponents raise alarm over these bills, focusing on nuanced details and promoting untrue fears. This new polling suggests that the number of people actually concerned about offering these protections is near-negligible. Legislators need to begin listening to the stories of those truthfully affected by discrimination instead of the absurd cries of a small pocket of extremists.

This Blog originally appeared in Think Progress on June 2, 2011. Reprinted with Permission.

About the Author: Zack Ford is an LGBT researcher/blogger for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Prior to joining ThinkProgress, Zack blogged for two years at ZackFordBlogs.com with occasional cross-posts at Pam’s House Blend. He also co-hosts a popular LGBT-issues podcast called Queer and Queerer with activist and performance artist Peterson Toscano. Zack has a bachelor’s in Music Education from Ithaca College, where we served as student body president, a Master’s in Higher Education Student Affairs from Iowa State University, and also helped found the Central Pennsylvania LGBT Aging Network. Zack holds a B.M. in music education from Ithaca College and an M.Ed. in higher education (student affairs) from Iowa State University, but he’s originally (and proudly) from rural central Pennsylvania.

We all know that networking is the answer, no matter what the question.

But networking isn’t making new friends on the bus. It’s connecting and re-connecting with people from your past who can vouch for what you can bring to an organization. Who can open doors for you, and would be willing to speak up on your behalf.

It sounds so easy. But trying to come up with the energy and a reason for people to meet with you is work. Hard work. But let me break it down for you.

Step one. Get your head in gear. People don’t want to meet with someone who is trailing blood into their office. You’ve got to get your swagger back. Or your sense of humor. Or your confidence. Whatever was the hallmark of you when you were working, needs to be cultivated now. This isn’t easy when you’ve been fired or let go. A.K.A. tossed under the bus. That’s why it takes thought, work and energy to get your “A” game back.

Step two. Think about where you’re going. There is a tendency to sprint after whatever moves after you’ve been laid off. That is a dangerous path, because your enthusiasm for pursuing a McJob will trail off. That’s why I’d always suggest something that you can be passionate about. At least then you’ll have the energy and commitment to pursue it with all your heart and soul.

Step three. Think about who you know. Sure Linkedin and Facebook suddenly surface lots of people from your past. Too many. So you’ve got to think about where you’re going and who might be able to help you to get there.

Step four. Contact them. Remember, you want to not come in as a desperate beggar, even when that’s exactly what you’re feeling like. No, you’ve got to put on your game face and convince them that you’re ready to hit the ground running. Even if you actually feel like you’re closer to hitting the ground after jumping from a six story building.

Step five. Ask for help. Yes, I did say that you want to be confident. But you also need to let people know that you need their help. To push them a bit.

One caveat. Some of your friends will let you down. Big time.

But the key thing to remember is that other friends will really have your back. My experience is that you’ll always be energized by more people than depressed. But some really key people will disappoint you. You just can’t let it drag you down.

Networking is the answer, but not when you use it like a shotgun. No this needs to be a rifle. A very carefully aimed rifle.

My a-ha: Let your friends help you.

Next Installment: From fired to CEO

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

If a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, getting back into the work game begins with re-writing your resume. Sure, networking is how you’ll find an opportunity, but resumes are the foundation of your networking.

A quick confession, I haven’t written a resume in fifteen years. Ever since I’d become an author, columnist and speaker, all I really needed was a paragraph or two describing my career highlights and my latest book, speech, etc. Then I’d send people a link to my speakers video and we would usually be off to the races.

Post-firing, I began my resume writing path where most of us do, with the template section of the word processing program on my computer. This made me feel like a visit to a crappy used clothing store. You know what I mean, where you’re palpably aware of every other person who’d ever worn the clothing that you were currently trying on.

Resume templates feel that way too, this isn’t something that will really capture you unique gifts, no it’s trying to fit a square peg of your experience into round hole of the damn template.

Anyone who is fired knows what happens next. Instead of looking at that blank template with the problem of trying to fit ten pounds of experience into a one pound package, you look at the blank page and wonder if you’ll ever be able to fill it up. You ask yourself, can I get by with a three-quarter page resume? The confidence challenges of being fired are interesting, they pop up at the most unexpected times.

This is probably the closest I’ve ever come to feeling like three-fifths of a person in my lifetime. But the cloud of being fired doesn’t lift off of you quickly, it lingers. And the resume process is an especially interesting part of pouring the salt into your wounds humiliation.

Instead of starting to make a list of all the things you’ve done, you tend to get stuck on how to describe that last job. How to cover it up. How to make it sound like something other than what it was. How to put up roadblocks between your resume and people who will want to call the guy who fired you. I had no idea that being fired would set off so many mental gymnastics.

But eventually the tide turned and the resume writing experience turned into a confidence builder. I was remembered of a lot of my past wins and I was able to craft a resume that helped me put my best foot forward.

Even though this process ended on a positive note, it had many moments of walking across ice that wasn’t fully frozen. You know that creaking sound that you hear as you take each step? That’s what the resume writing process was for me, a creaky discovery of my skills that unfolded over time.

My a-ha: Resume writing is the opposite of Spring, you go in like a lamb but leave the process like a lion.

Next installment: On the Dole

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.org. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.org