AFTRA President Roberta Reardon         The old landscape of daytime entertainment is changing. The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), which represents daytime performers, is stretching out to make sure there are jobs in the new emerging media.

Productivity rose 8.1 percent in the third quarter, the largest gain since 2003, as employers pile more on their staff. Meanwhile, pay is stagnating and worker stress increasing because of the larger workloads and the constant fear of being thrown out of a job to join the more than 15 million workers officially unemployed. A Los Angeles Times story points to how rising productivity, while good for the economy, is not benefiting America’s workers. According to Thomas A. Kochan, a professor of management at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, productivity gains are troubling because so far,

      A new report by AFSCME outlines best practices and makes recommendations on improving the governance of the nation’s public pension plans. AFSCME’s 1.6 million active and retired members participate in more than 150 public pension systems with assets totaling more than $1 trillion. Overall, state and local government pension plans cover 7.5 million retirees.

    Maura West and Michael Park star in the daytime drama “As The World Turns.”         For more than 50 years, millions of fans have followed the lives of the residents of the fictional town of Oakdale, Ill., on the CBS soap opera “As The World Turns.” But now the trail-blazing show is about to fade to black. The network announced last week the show will end its 54-year run next September. At the time of its final broadcast, the program will have aired for more than five decades and 13,000 episodes.

    Participating in a Blue Green Alliance panel in Copenhagen were, from left, Carl Pope of the Sierra Club, Amalgamated Transit Union Executive Vice President Ronald Heintzman, UWUA President Mike Langford, Blue Green Alliance Executive Director Dave Foster, Frances Beinecke of the Natural Resources Defense Council and AFT Vice President Dick Iannuzzi.         Utility Workers (UWUA) Secretary-Treasurer Gary Ruffner writes about how his union made its voice heard at the climate change talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, where 40 U.S. union members are part of a 400-member global union movement delegation led by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). Read our previous blogs on the climate change talks here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and  here.

The nation’s guest worker system is flawed and needs to be reformed. But sometimes, it’s hard to find hard information about the extent of the program. The AFL-CIO Department for Professional Employees (DPE) has obtained copies of previously unavailable U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) reports on the controversial H-1B guest worker program. The new materials are posted on DPE’s website in conjunction with the release of a new report on the ways employers “game” the H-1B visa system to lower wages and avoid unions.

Want to know the best times to travel to avoid delays during the holidays? Who better to ask than the nation’s air traffic controllers? In order to make holiday air travel less stressful, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) has set up a website, http://www.avoiddelays.com, that offers advice to the flying public.  From the best time to fly to the best airports to connect through and the top 10 worst times to fly, the site is helpful to those who have already booked a ticket and those who have not yet done so.

    Steven Horsford         Daniel Marschall, AFL-CIO Legislative and Policy Specialist for Workforce Issues, reports on union participation in this week’s meeting of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

    Port of Seattle Commissioner-elect Rob Holland expresses his support for Sea-Tac Airport TSO’s effort to form a union with AFGE.         Dozens of union members, elected officials and community supporters gathered at Seattle-Tacoma (Sea-Tac) Airport this week in solidarity with tens of thousands of transportation security officers (TSOs) who want to form a union with AFGE.