Barbara Byrd reports back from Bali
Labor must ramp up efforts to combat global warming
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
Barbara Byrd may soon be attend-
ing your union meeting to deliver an
urgent message.
Byrd, secretary-treasurer of the
Oregon AFL-CIO, is the Portland co-
ordinator for the Labor Education and
Research Center (LERC) of the Uni-
versity of Oregon’s. She spent Dec. 3-
14 in Bali, Indonesia, as an official
observer at a United Nations climate
change summit.
Byrd returned to Oregon evangel-
ized: Global warming is real, and the
union movement needs to step up and
show leadership by helping to craft
the world’s response to it.
“The need to really ramp up la-
bor’s engagement is so clear to me
now in a way it never was before,”
Byrd told the NW Labor Press. “We
need to be there to talk about protec-
tions for workers who might lose their
jobs, and about creating new jobs that
are good jobs. We [in labor] bring a
moral dimension to this discussion,
having to do with equity — who loses
and who benefits in dealing with cli-
mate change.”
There’s no time to waste, Byrd
said. The scientific case, by now, is
overwhelming. Even the Bush Ad-
ministration has acknowledged that
global warming is happening. At the
Bali summit, the United Nations’ In-
tergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) presented its most re-
cent conclusions after reviewing hun-
dreds of studies. Global evidence of a
warming trend is unequivocal, the
IPCC reported, from increases in av-
erage air and ocean temperatures to
widespread melting of snow and ice
to rising average sea levels. And hu-
man activity, the IPCC concluded, is
the driving force contributing to the
warming.
In Bali, Byrd met foreign trade
unionists who told her that global
warming’s impacts are already here.
Pictured above is most of the U.S. contingent to the United Nations Dec. 3-14 summit on climate change in Bali,
Indonesia. Oregon AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer Barbara Byrd is in the middle row at the far right. In front of her
is Bob Baugh, executive director of the Industrial Union Council of the national AFL-CIO. Others pictured include
union leaders from the United Mine Workers, Boilermakers, Service Employees, Communications Workers, and
Steel Workers, plus Sean Sweeney of the Cornell University Global Labor Institute.
Agricultural land is turning into
desert. Floods are uprooting commu-
nities. Massive forest fires are de-
stroying people’s livelihoods. And
disappearing Arctic ice is disrupting
fishing industries.
“The folks I met from Malaysia
and South Africa and Argentina and
Brazil, they’re not sheltered from the
impact,” Byrd said. “They’re experi-
encing it big time. We haven’t felt it
because we’re a rich country and can
adapt. But we will.”
Fortunately, according to the IPCC
report, humanity already has tech-
nologies to combat global warming.
The Bali meeting was the kickoff of a
new round of negotiations over the in-
ternational response to global warm-
ing. The negotiations are supposed to
produce a successor agreement to the
1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires
in 2012. Under the Kyoto Protocol,
36 of the world’s rich countries com-
mitted to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions, while 137 poor countries
committed to monitor and report
emissions. The United States and
Kazakhstan are the only countries not
to have ratified the Kyoto agreement.
The negotiations begun at Bali are
expected to be concluded next year at
a meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark.
According to the road map agreed to
in Bali, poor nations would also com-
mit to reduce greenhouse gas emis-
sions in the new agreement, and rich
nations would help them do so with
aid, investment, and transfer of new
technologies.
The Bali meeting was the first time
the world’s trade union movement has
had a role in climate talks: The Inter-
national Trade Union Confederation
(ITUC ) was given status as an offi-
cial observer, and brought 90 trade
unionists from 25 countries.
Byrd was part of the 20-member
U.S. contingent, which was led by
Bob Baugh, a former Oregon AFL-
CIO secretary-treasurer. Baugh now
is executive director of the national
AFL-CIO’s Industrial Union Council,
and chair of the labor federation’s
one-year-old Energy Task Force.
As observers, Byrd and other trade
unionists met with official govern-
ment delegates to lobby for workers
to be protected when actions are taken
to halt global warming, a principle
ITUC outlined in a “Green Jobs”
white paper.
Back from Bali, Byrd is working
on a presentation to take around to lo-
cal unions. Byrd said she wants to
make sure organized labor is part of
state and regional discussions on how
to respond to global warming. At its
2007 convention, the Oregon AFL-
CIO passed a resolution to create a
blue ribbon committee to study how
the state labor federation can best
contribute to the fight against climate
change. Byrd wants labor to be at the
table this year when state lawmakers
discuss global warming legislation to
be introduced at the 2009 Oregon
Legislature. Oregon is one of six
western states (and two Canadian
provinces) taking part in the Western
Climate Initiative, an effort to develop
a regional response to global warm-
ing. If there are state and local gov-
ernment subsidies for reducing green-
house gas emissions, Byrd wants to
make sure they favor employment of
local workers, and require payment a
living wage.
“There are [green] jobs being cre-
ated as we speak,” Byrd said. “They
are not necessarily good jobs. We
need to make sure they are good jobs.
And then we need to go out and or-
ganize them.”
More than 3 million seniors will fall into donut hole in 2008
By JAMES PARKS
N ATIONAL AFL-CIO
This will not be a happy New Year for mil-
lions of seniors. More seniors than ever are ex-
pected to fall into the Medicare Part D donut
hole in 2008, the coverage gap that requires
seniors to pay the full cost of their prescription
drugs, according to the Alliance for Retired
Americans.
Under the Medicare Part D rules pushed by
the Bush Administration and passed by Con-
gress in 2003, seniors are on the hook for pre-
scription expenses between the annual amounts
of $2,510 and $5,726 in 2008. This gap of
more than $3,200 has been dubbed the “donut
hole.” The total costs for seniors in the donut
hole, when you add in deductibles and co-pays,
will hit $4,050, about $200 more than in 2007,
PAGE 12
the Alliance says.
More than 3 million of the 24 million Part D
enrollees will have to pay the $4,050 in out-of-
pocket expenses before Medicare kicks back in
and provides catastrophic-care coverage, pay-
ing 95 percent of those prescription costs. But,
even if they don’t fall into the donut hole, sen-
iors are paying nearly 25 percent more in pre-
miums for their 2008 Medicare Part D pre-
scription coverage than they did in 2007,
according to a report by the Center for Eco-
nomic and Policy Research (CEPR).
Edward Coyle, executive director of the Al-
liance, sums up the situation facing seniors:
“Between rising premiums, fewer prescriptions
being covered and the growing donut hole, sen-
iors will pay more for their drugs on every
front next year.”
The CEPR study, “Changes in the Cost of
Medicare Prescription Drug Plans, 2007– 2008”
suggests the increased premium costs may be
the result of insurers offering low introductory
premiums when the program began in Jan-
uary 2006 to attract seniors and later springing
the higher costs on participants.
The average Part D premium increase will
drive costs up for the average single participant
by $57.70 a year to $293; for the average cou-
ple, the annual premium jumps from $470.60 a
year to $586.
The study warns: “If this rate of increase is
sustained for any substantial period of time,
then it will have a noticeable impact on living
standards.”
In August, the AFL-CIO noted that seniors
in the Part D program are more likely to pay at
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
least $300 a month for medicines than those in
other plans, according to a study published by
the journal, Health Affairs.
Medicare Part D is a voluntary prescription
drug program, and its benefits are provided
only through private plans, either stand-alone
prescription drug plans or Medicare Advantage
plans. Congress passed the Medicare drug leg-
islation by a slim margin — and several law-
makers likely would not have voted for the bill
had they been told the true cost, the AFL-CIO
said.
While the Bush Administration claimed the
legislation would cost $400 million over 10
years, Congress learned that Medicare’s chief
actuary had estimated the true cost of the pro-
gram at $534 billion.
JANUARY 18, 2008