ProgressOhio

Cleveland, Ohio - The Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS) has notified Hugo Boss' parent firm Permira Advisors that the retirement system "now has concerns about future involvement" with Permira. In total, OPERS has invested €110 million in Permira, an amount equivalent to about $149 million today. In 2006, OPERS invested €60 million, or $81 million, in Permira IV, the name of the particular investment fund that includes Germany-based Hugo Boss.

Workers, as well as public and labor officials, contend that Hugo Boss did not bargain in good faith in trying to keep the plant open. Nearly 400 jobs are at stake; the Brooklyn, Ohio, plant is supposed to close in April.

OPERS is now demanding that the company re-engage public officials, who have already offered financial incentives to keep the suit-making factory in business.

Workers United, the union representing the plant's workers, is approaching other public employee retirement systems - including funds in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Texas and California - and is urging them to re-evaluate investments in Permira.

On February 25, OPERS chairman Ken Thomas and CEO Chris DeRose wrote to Permira and demanded a response by March 11. The letter reads, in part:

"The OPERS Board noted that the investment performance of Permira IV has underperformed our expectations and is inconsistent with the reputation of your institution. Due to the poor performance of the fund and representations to the Board that VFG, Italy (Hugo Boss) did not bargain in good faith with state and local community partners, the Board now has concerns about future involvement with your institution. In the interest of improving the overall performance of Permira IV, OPERS urges you to reengage both local and state officials to evaluate profitable alternatives to the closure of this facility."

Click Here to read the entire letter.

That's why Danny Glover is asking stars not to wear Hugo Boss on the red carpet -- and show their solidarity with workers with a pin on their lapels.

Read his letter and take action by contacting the celebrities yourself.

We'll make sure the petition gets into the hands of stars walking the red carpet.

This Thursday in Columbus, working families will march to the Ohio Statehouse to demand our politicians listen to us, not Wall Street.

Click here to let us know you'll join us

We demand that Wall Street firms like Citigroup and Lehman Brothers be held accountable for the millions of jobs they have destroyed. They must never be allowed to do this again.

President Obama's taken good steps but we need him to do more to create jobs for Main Street, and to stand up to the bank lobbyists who got us into this mess in the first place.

WHAT: March for Main Street Jobs, Not Wall Street Greed
WHEN: Thursday, February 25th. The march will start at 1:30 pm. The rally will end by 2:30 pm.
WHERE: The march will start at Main and High Street, go up High Street to the State House, and end with a short rally in front of the State House
SPONSORS: Working America, Ohio AFL-CIO, Central Ohio Labor Council, Columbus Area  Jobs with Justice, and Progress Ohio
RSVP: Click here to let us know you're coming

Senator Sherrod Brown stands up for the workers at the Hugo Boss plant in Cleveland.

In the middle of negotiations to save the plant, Hugo Boss announced it was closing shop and sending their jobs overseas.

Stand up with Senator Brown as he stands up for Hugo Boss workers!

Tell Chief Operating Officer Andreas Stockert to keep the Cleveland plant open and hard-working Americans on the job!

Andreas_Stockert@HugoBoss.com
212-940-0600

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MORAINE, Ohio - The documentary about the closing of a General Motors Co. plant in southwest Ohio has earned an Academy Award nomination.

Oscar nominations announced Tuesday included one for "The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant," for best documentary short.

The 40-minute film was produced by Yellow Springs, Ohio, filmmakers Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert. It premiered last Aug. 19 in Dayton, attended by hundreds of the autoworkers who lost their jobs when the sport utility vehicle plant in Moraine closed.

The closing of the Moraine plant meant the direct loss of more than 1,000 jobs and, by one estimate given in the film, up to 10,000 jobs in the community as a whole. Globalization and the destruction of American industrial life are inevitably the film’s themes, but as the final day approaches, what people most want to talk about is pride in their workplace — the three-quarter-mile-long building still inspires awe in those who have worked there for decades — and the loss of the family they have found on the factory floor.

Preview the Film:

One year ago today, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act became the first major act of Congress signed into law by President Barack Obama.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act restored employees rights to challenge pay discrimination. In the year since the law took effect, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reviewed over 1,100 cases where people were denied wage compensation, and some 4,800 charges alleging wage discrimination were filed with the Commission. Numerous court cases have cited the law in an effort to win compensation for back-earnings. 

Watch It:

Women are still treated unfairly in the workplace. Wage disparity persists, and women still earn, on average, only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. If the wage gap was eliminated, annual family incomes would increase by $4,000--and the poverty rate would be cut in half. Paycheck fairness for our country's working women would in of itself act as an economic stimulus package.

For all of these reasons (and more), we must strengthen laws against wage discrimination. But don't just take my word for it --hear what Lilly Ledbetter herself thinks we can do to keep women in the workforce from being discriminated against:

"We need to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act....The bill would empower women to negotiate for equal pay, create stronger incentives for employers to follow the law, and strengthen federal outreach and enforcement efforts. It would also strengthen penalties for equal pay violations.

[...] "One of the most important aspects of the Paycheck Fairness Act is a provision that would prohibit retaliation against workers who ask about employers' wage practices or disclose their own wages to co-workers. This would have been particularly helpful to me, because Goodyear prohibited my colleagues and me from talking about our wages. This policy delayed my discovery of the pay inequities between my male counterparts and me by -- literally -- decades."

It's high past the time for women to have the same rights, the same opportunities and the same freedom to pursue their dreams as men do. If we don't get this legislation passed, our daughters could end up having to fight for fair treatment and pay in the workplace--just like their mothers and grandmothers.

The Paycheck Fairness Act is now pending in the Senate.  Senator Sherrod Brown  is a co-sponsor of the Paycheck Fairness Act (S. 182).  Take action now and tell George Voinovich to support the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Beachwood: Hugo Boss workers protest near Nordstrom store

BEACHWOOD -- In the bitter cold, Hugo Boss workers urged Nordstrom customers and managers to call upon Hugo Boss not to close its Brooklyn, Ohio plant.

On the fashion runways of Europe, clothing manufacturer Hugo Boss is constantly trying to maintain a sleek, edgy look.

But with wind chills in the single digits on the snowy sidewalk outside Beachwood Place, there was nothing sleek or edgy about the look of the protesters.

"Keep Cleveland working," the crowd chanted and encouraged passing motorists to honk their horns in support.

With the nearby mall security guards on high alert, the demonstrators said they want Nordstrom customers to know what the German Hugo Boss company is doing to their Cleveland workers.

Lydia Perez has been making suits for Hugo Boss in Brooklyn for the last 14 years. "Finding another job is going to be hard," said Perez.

She added, "and I'm going to hate to leave."

When asked why not take less money and keep her job, Perez responded, "No, no, we can't afford it. I mean I got kids."

Co-worker Anthony Senart agreed. "Can you feed your family for 8 dollars an hour? It would be hard," said Senart.

His eyes glistening in the cold wind, he said, "We work hard and we make high quality suits. Hugo Boss profits off of us. So why do we deserve a pay cut? We make the company money."

Watch It:

Tomorrow in Baltimore, Maryland, President Obama will announce details of the Small Business Jobs and Wages Tax Cut, one of his new proposals to create good jobs in America. 

In last night’s State of the Union Address, President Obama outlined a series of ways he will fight to create good paying jobs and continue our economic recovery.

One of these proposals, the Small Business Jobs and Wages Tax Cut, will put more Americans back to work by giving businesses – particularly small business – a tax cut for new hiring. 

The new proposal will also provide tax incentives for businesses to expand wages for their employees.

Through the Small Business Jobs and Wages Tax Cut:

• Businesses will receive a $5,000 tax credit for every net new employee that they employ in 2010.  The total amount of the credit for any one firm will be capped at $500,000, to ensure that the majority of the benefit is targeted at small businesses.  Start –ups will be eligible for half of the tax credit.

• Small businesses that increase wages or hours for their existing employees will be reimbursed for the Social Security payroll taxes they pay on real increases in their payrolls.  This bonus would be based on Social Security payrolls, so it would not apply to wage increases above the current taxable maximum of $106,800.

• Firms will be able to claim the credit on a quarterly basis, which gets money out to businesses quickly and provides and early incentive to hire and increase payrolls.

The proposal is estimated to cost $33 billion.

President Obama holds a town hall meeting in Elyria, OH and vows to continuing fighting for issues for the middle class including health reform

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Union leaders vow to fight closing of Hugo Boss plant in Brooklyn, Ohio

The union that represents workers at the Hugo Boss plant here will fight the company’s decision — announced Tuesday — to close the plant.

That’s what Bruce Raynor, president of Workers United, Service Employees International Union, told the Sun Post Tuesday afternoon.

Raynor said Hugo Boss — a clothing manufacturer headquartered in Metzingen, Germany — plans to send Brooklyn jobs overseas.

"This is a sweatshop company putting American workers on the street to exploit workers in poor countries and send the profits back to Germany," Raynor said.

Raynor said overseas workers will earn less than $1 an hour working for Hugo Boss. He said the union will start a campaign to educate consumers on how the company operates.

"The union intends to resist this (Brooklyn plant) closing with everything at our disposal," Raynor said.

Hugo Boss spends millions on sports sponsorships like competitive sailing, tennis, golf, auto racing, and soccer.

And yet they'd like you to believe that they can no longer afford to employ suit manufacturing workers in the U.S.

Don't believe them.

Watch It:

Hugo Boss made more than $140 million in profits in the first nine months of 2009, according to the company's third-quarter report. The company paid shareholders more than $135 million in dividends last year, on top of a huge dividend of $637 million in 2008.

The amount Hugo Boss says it is trying to save by closing its U.S. suit manufacturing plant is only a few million dollars... a drop in the Hugo Boss bucket.

Tell Hugo Boss Chief Operating Officer Dr. Andreas Stockert to keep the company's U.S. suit manufacturing plant open and keep hard-working Americans on the job.

Andreas_Stockert@HugoBoss.com

212-940-0600

Received via email from our friends at Americans United For Change:

What happened in Massachusetts yesterday is a call to action, not a cause for retreat.

The people of Massachusetts voted for change and they are frustrated with the seeming lack thereof. They are hurting and they have not yet seen Congress come forward to ease their pain, punish those who caused this crisis or make sure it cannot happen again.

Unfortunately, they picked the wrong side to blame. Regardless of how you feel about the way the health insurance reform effort has played out, it's important to note that most Democrats in Congress, and certainly the White House, supported swift, bold and effective change. The majority of Democrats in the Senate, for example, support the public health insurance option. But they couldn't get it done because the minority Republicans blocked an up-or-down vote.

When it comes to financial reform, the Obama Administration and Senate Banking Committee Chair Chris Dodd proposed strong legislation to reign in the abuses of the big banks that led to this mess in the first place. The banking committee's Republican leader, Senator Richard Shelby said "no way, no how, not ever."  

You get the idea: Lack of change is not for lack of trying on the part of the majority of congressional Democrats. But despite being the majority, the Republicans have blocked them from voting.

Scott Brown is only going to make it harder to do what we need to do in America - like clean up Wall Street and provide good, affordable health care for all. He has shown on the campaign trail that he will stand firmly with his Republican colleagues in favor of the Bush-era policies and politics that got us into this mess in the first place.

And if that doesn't scare you into fighting even harder, I don't know what will.

Call your member of Congress at 202-225-3121 or write your Senators and Members of Congress through our website.

Tell them to fight hard against Wall Street, the insurance companies and those elected officials who carry their water.

In a fight taken directly to CEO Joe Hete by the ProgressOhio community, ABX has finally relented and decided to pay their former pilots the severance pay that they promised Congress in 2008 they would pay.

The Dayton Daily News reports:

More than 400 ABX Air pilots who were laid off by the cargo airline because of DHL’s job-slashing reduction of its U.S. operations and closure of its Wilmington freight hub are now receiving severance benefits, concluding a matter that had been an issue between the pilots’ union and management since 2008.

ABX Air and the pilots' union, Airline Professionals Association Teamsters Local 1224, reached agreement on the disbursement of $75 million that DHL paid to ABX in December 2009, according to Air Transport Services Group Inc., which owns ABX Air.

Under ABX’s agreement with the union, $31.4 million was contributed to the pilots’ defined benefit pension trust on Dec. 29 and $30.4 million in pilot severance benefits and related taxes were paid prior to Dec. 31, Air Transport Services Group said. The remaining $13.2 million in severance benefits is to be disbursed in the coming months, management said.

Read The Full Story at The Dayton Daily News.

See Also:

DHL HELL: Not Delivering on Their Promise to Ohio

DHL Cost Ohio a Thousand More Jobs This Week. Fight Back

CEO Behind DHL Pilot Situation Way Overpaid, Study Finds

How One CEO Ruined an Ohio Town

AEP gets stimulus grant for $150 million 'smart-grid' project

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

About 110,000 central Ohio customers of American Electric Power soon will have advanced-technology meters, giving them the ability to track when they use the most power and thus reduce their electricity bills.

It's all part of a $150 million demonstration project to install "smart-grid" technology for customers across a 150-square-mile swath of AEP's service area, an effort government and company officials say will reduce energy consumption, save money and create jobs.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, joined by several Democratic elected officials for a ceremony at the company's Dolan Technology Center in Groveport, announced yesterday that AEP has been awarded $75 million in federal stimulus funds to match the amount the company earmarked for the project.