The great new religious battle over the proposed new federal rule requiring contraception coverage for women actually boils down to the basic precept that worker rights apply across all of society, including within religious institutions. But it also reveals the political machinations of the right, the suspect motives of the Catholic bishops and another crucial weakness in the much heralded Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act passed by the Democrats and signed by President Obama two years ago.

First, it is striking how America’s all-male Catholic hierarchy has seemingly colluded with Republicans in miraculously conceiving this issue as a potential “wedge” issue to mobilize blue-collar Catholics against President Obama and the Democrats.

Second, it is almost amusing to see bishops, now pretending to launch a last-ditch effort to prevent a sudden and unique incursion by the Obama administration against the freedom to practice their religion. The Catholic hierarchy has decisively “lost the war at home “ already, as Gail Collins notes, but is choosing to pick a political fight. The majority of Catholic women use birth control. Federal rules required contraception's inclusion for more than a decade, as Daily Kos reports:

In December 2000, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that companies that provided prescription drugs to their employees but didn't provide birth control were in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prevents discrimination on the basis of sex. That opinion, which the George W. Bush administration did nothing to alter or withdraw when it took office the next month, is still in effect today.

With more than half the states also requiring insurers to include contraception in women’s health care packages, Catholic universities, schools and hospitals are obligated to provide birth-control services to their employees. (Most states have an exemption for churches.)

But at least cruel proposed measures are consistent

Despite the recent good news—the unemployment rate and new jobless claims are down, economic and job growth are up, the nation's 12.8 million unemployed people face two threats from Congress in the next couple of weeks.

First, the House-Senate conference committee may simply fail to reach agreement on full-year renewal of federal extensions of unemployment insurance—along with a continuation of payroll tax deductions, provisions to avoid a cut in doctors' reimbursement under Medicare, and a means of offsetting the costs of those policies.

If there is no agreement by the end of the month, roughly 4.5 million long-term unemployed people could lose their modest partial income replacement between March and June. And the still fragile but budding economic recovery would lose one of its most effective supports. "If we don't renew this extension, nearly 5 million people in this country will lose their last lifeline," says Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.). "We have to act."

The second threat—almost as bad—is that Congress could approve renewal of extended unemployment with many of the provisions in the House Republican bill, a package of punitive restraints and barriers that the nonprofit National Employment Law Project (NELP) calls "ill-advised and cruel."

Budget austerity trims library staff and hours, as Mayor Emanuel and AFSCME trade accusations

Sara Doe was hired as a page at a Chicago library in 2007, and immediately fell in love with the job. Earning $11.18 an hour without benefits for shelving books, directing customers and other basic tasks might not be glamorous work, she told In These Times, but she loved the human interaction and the chance to spend time in libraries, which since she was a kid have been "like museums for me"—oases of calm and knowledge.

Doe’s mother worked in a city library, and since her parents were divorced, Doe considered the library her "third home" and has fond memories of stamping due dates in books. But this year visiting the library has been a somewhat painful experience since December 31 was her last day on the job at the northwest side library where she had worked since fall 2009. She was one of 181 library staff laid off because of city budget cuts that hit the library system particularly hard. Along with the layoffs, libraries are now closed on Mondays, cutting total weekly hours from 48 to 40.

After an intense campaign by the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 31, some library staff were called back to work and Monday afternoon hours were restored, bringing the weekly total to 44 hours. But more than 100 library staff including all the pages are still out of work.

This story originally appeared at Alternet.

Behind the sleek face of the iPad is an ugly backstory that has revealed once more the horrors of globalization. The buzz about Apple’s sordid business practices is courtesy of the New York Times series on the “iEconomy. In some ways it’s well reported but adds little new to what critics of the Taiwan-based Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, have been saying for years. The series' biggest impact may be discomfiting Apple fanatics who as they read the articles realize that the iPad they are holding is assembled from child labor, toxic shop floors, involuntary overtime, suicidal working conditions, and preventable accidents that kill and maim workers.

It turns out the story is much worse. Researchers with the Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) say that legions of vocational and university students, some as young as 16, are forced to take months'-long “internships” in Foxconn’s mainland China factories assembling Apple products. The details of the internship program paint a far more disturbing picture than the Times does of how Foxconn, “the Chinese hell factory,” treats its workers, relying on public humiliation, military discipline, forced labor and physical abuse as management tools to hold down costs and extract maximum profits for Apple.

To supply enough employees for Foxconn, the 60th largest corporation globally, government officials are serving as lead recruiters at the cost of pushing teenage students into harsh work environments. The scale is astonishing with the Henan provincial government having announced in both 2010 and 2011 that it would send 100,000 vocational and university students to work at Foxconn, according to SACOM.

Ross Perlin, author of Intern Nation, told AlterNet that “Foxconn is conspiring with government officials and universities in China to run what may be the world's single largest internship program – and one of the most exploitative. Students at vocational schools – including those whose studies have nothing to do with consumer electronics – are literally forced to move far from home to work for Foxconn, threatened that otherwise they won't be allowed to graduate. Assembling our iPhones and Kindles for meager wages, they work under the same conditions, or worse, as other workers in the Foxconn sweatshops.” 

Ontario's loss is new 'right-to-work' state's gain—but Hoosiers won't make as much as northern neighbors

After locking out 465 members of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) Local 27 in London, Ontario, Caterpillar decided last Friday to close its 62-year-old locomotive facility there and move production to newly “right-to-work” Indiana, where American workers will work for half of what Canadian workers would make. Caterpillar's decision to close the plant  after workers refused to agree to major wage concessions has provoked outrage across Canada in light of the fact that Illinois-based Caterpillar made a record $4.8 billion in profits in 2011.

CAW members, who have already been blockading a completed locomotive from leaving the London plant, have vowed to continue blocking any products from leaving there as they attempt to extract a better severance from the company. The CAW local is also considering occupying the plant. “The CAW has occupied workplaces when employers have shown disrespect,” Canadian Auto Workers Union President Ken Lewenza told Bloomberg. “It’s a tool. It’s an option.”

As I reported last week, under the Investment Canada Act, foreign companies taking over Canadian companies must demonstrate a "net benefit" to Canada. Critics claim that the government allowed a foreign-owned company (Caterpillar) to buy a Canadian company without having any intention of providing any “net benefit” to Canada.

MILWAUKEE—If one more dime gets added to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s already-overflowing campaign war chest, it may cause the Governor's Mansion in Madison to collapse under its weight.

Walker has been running around the nation to gather cash from corporate and right-wing sources, raising an astonishing $12.2 million in his effort to fend off a statewide recall election demanded by 1.1 million residents.

But Walker not only faces voters furious over his role in revoking public employee union rights. Later this week, the governor will be meeting with Milwaukee County District Attorney to answer questions about his role as Milwaukee county executive from 2002 to 2010. It's part of a John Doe probe that has already produced the arrest of four former Walker staffers, including longtime close associate Tim Russell. Walker has hired two lawyers in preparation.

Progressives are piecing together evidence about Walker's operation as Milwaukee county executive and wondering if the current investigation will explode into a major "Walkergate" scandal. 

SAN FRANCISCO—Raul Zapata never had a chance. When the carpenter and construction worker eased down the 12-foot trench he was working in on January 28, a chunk of earth shook loose, pushing him into a cement wall. More piles of dirt fell on top of him, suffocating him.

He didn’t know about the stop-work order issued three days earlier by the city of Milpitas, Calif., located near San Jose in the Bay Area. Neither did the foreman. Neither did his co-workers.

Inspectors issued the order after they determined that the foundation for the 5,800 square-foot home needed strengthening, and that a soil inspector needed to check out the site. Keyvan Irannejad, Milpitas' chief building official, told the Mercury News, "They just ignored our stop-work notice."

The area was so unstable Zapata’s body could not be pulled out until two days later. Zapata, a husband and father of three children, had been on the job just two weeks.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Tuesday, Senate Democrats averted another Federal Aviation Administration shutdown by passing a "compromise" funding bill that will fund the agency through 2014 and modernizes the country's air traffic control system. The FAA partially shutdown last summer when negotiations over the bill delayed its passage.

It passed 75 to 20—and has incensed union leaders, who condemn its provisions making it harder to organize workers in the airline and rail industries.

On the surface, the compromise bill passed by Senate Democrats doesn't appear to hurt union organizing efforts since it requires 50 percent of airline or railway workers to  sign a petition for a union election, instead of the current 35 percent. Many union organizers often file for elections when 65-70 percent of workers have called for an election, in order to ensure victory.

But here's the catch: The bill would require organizers to gather signatures from 50 percent of all employees in a potential bargaining unit, including those who have been laid off during the past 10 years. In other words, it redefines the word "employee," raising the threshhold pro-union workers must reach if they want to hold a unionization election.

Watch Communication Workers of America President Larry Cohen's fiery remarks above. 

The fundamental injustice of the tax system grows clearer as tax day looms ominously over working people and a few horde more and more of the nation’s wealth. Short of a total collapse of capitalism, the primary redistributive remedy for this would be progressive taxation. But our tax policy gets it exactly backward, and its about to get a bit worse. And as with so many wars of attrition against the working class, this one begins by shafting disenfranchised communities, especially immigrants.

While the rich are rolling in tax giveaways, a few credits actually give poor folks a break. One of these, the refundable child tax credit (CTC), applies to middle-class and poor parents alike and was claimed by some 21 million taxpayers in 2011, “which averaged about $676 per child and totaled $26.1 billion,” according to Politico. For poor families, the CTC, together with its big sister the Earned Income Tax Credit, provides a lifeline to keep them from plunging below the poverty line.

Now some lawmakers advocate cutting off the child tax credit for tax filers who lack of Social Security number. The move is unabashedly aimed at making life harder for undocumented workers, even taxpaying ones, specifically by punishing their children.

Obama administration argued decision 'would critically undermine' Americans With Disabilities Act

In a unanimous ruling last month, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld for the first time a “ministerial exception” limiting the rights of some employees under the Americans with Disabilities Act. In the case, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a church-run elementary school asserted that such an exception protected its decision to fire "called teacher" Cheryl Perich following her medical leave and threat to file an ADA lawsuit. Prominent organizations weighed in on both sides: The US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the American Jewish Committee, and the Muslim-American Public Affairs Council were among those filing briefs backing Hosanna-Tabor; the NAACP, People for the American Way, and the Anti-Defamation League backed Perich.

Perich's conflict with the Lutheran Church and School began in January 2005, when she told her principal that she was ready to return to work following a medical leave for narcolepsy. The principal questioned whether Perich was healthy enough to work, and told her that she had already been replaced. The church’s congregation, which is vested with decision-making powers, offered to pay a portion of Perich’s health insurance costs if she would voluntarily resign.

Perich declined the offer, and instead showed up at the school on the first day her medical leave was over, declaring she wouldn’t leave without a note documenting that she had shown up ready to work. According to the Supreme Court, when her principal told Perich the school was likely to fire her, “Perich responded that she had spoken with an attorney and intended to assert her legal rights.” A letter from the School Board Chairman to Perich charged that her “insubordination and disruptive behavior,” and “threatening to take legal action” had “damaged, beyond repair, [her] working relationship” with Hosanna-Tabor. Perich’s status as a “called teacher” was withdrawn in a congregational vote, and the school fired her.