Labor Union Blog

The United States needs a new economic strategy to replace the failed model of the past 30 years–one that focuses on developing a workforce with world class skills and world class rights and trade policies that serve the interests of the American people, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told the City Club of Cleveland today. 

But we cannot talk about any meaningful workforce strategy without confronting our own “contradictions, hypocrisy and history on immigration,” he said. In a dynamic global economy in the 21st century,  

we simply cannot afford to have millions of hard-working people without legal protections, without meaningful access to higher education, shut off from the high-wage, high-productivity economy. 

It is just too costly to waste all that talent and strength and drive.

(Trumka will be live on “America’s Workforce” radio show on WERE Radio 1490 AM at 4 p.m. EDT. Click here to hear the broadcast.)

The labor movement and a broad coalition of faith-based and immigrants’ rights groups  worked with former Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall to put together a comprehensive immigration reform plan, Trumka said. (You can find the plan here.)

As President of the AFL-CIO, my message to working people is that we all are bound together by our lives as workers, our dreams for our families, and our hopes for this country’s future. 

The labor movement stands for giving all workers in America the right to dream the American Dream. 

And so when we talk about making the American Dream real, the labor movement stands for making it real for all of us who do the work of our country.      

All of us–no matter what we look like, who we choose to love, or where we come from. 

 Surely there we can find common ground.

Immigration reform is not just an economic issue, he added. The way we as a nation treat the immigrants among us is also about who we are as a nation. He pointed out that we are a nation of immigrants, chronicling how his parents fled poverty and war from different corners of Europe. 

When I was a kid, there was an ugly name for every one of us in all twelve languages spoken in Nemacolin, Pennsylvania-wop and hunkie and polack and kike.

We were the last hired and first fired, the people who did the hardest and most dangerous work, the people whose pay got shorted because we didn’t know the language and were afraid to complain. 

 And yet, he said, today he hears working people, including some in his own family say that immigrants are taking our jobs, ruining our country. But workers should know better, he said:    

When I hear that kind of talk, I want to say, did an immigrant move your plant overseas? Did an immigrant take away your pension?  Or cut your health care? 

He added that the union movement grew not because of workers’ differences, but because of their common concerns. Today, the union movement needs to build on those same principles, he said:

Our strategy must help us be the kind of country we want our children to thrive in-the country our history tells us we can be. 

Despite promises that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would create good jobs in Mexico and the United States, Trumka said, the reality is that inequality has grown and workers’ rights have eroded in both countries and illegal immigration flows have tripled.

At the center of our failed immigration policy, Trumka said, is the fact that many U.S. employers actually like the current state of the immigration system-”a system where immigrants are both plentiful and undocumented-afraid and available.” 

Our immigration system makes a mockery of the American dream. The people doing the hardest work for the least money have no legal protections, no ability to send their children to college, no real right to form a union, no economic or legal security.

You can read Trumka’s full speech here

Nevada Republican U.S. Senate nominee Sharron Angle made many extremist statements during her primary campaign, and some of the most egregious involve her goal to eliminate Social Security and Medicare and privatize those two vital senior safety nets.

During a May 2010 debate on the public affairs show “Face to Face with John Ralston” Angle said, “We need to phase Medicare and Social Security out in favor of something privatized.” She repeated these views around the state.

Now that she must appeal to a much broader and far less extreme electorate than the right-wing Republican base in her race against Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D), Angle has become much less vocal about her plans to eliminate Social Security and Medicare.

But the Nevada chapter of the Alliance for Retired Americans is making sure Nevadans hear how she stands for gutting the nation’s senior safety net.

Wednesday in Las Vegas and yesterday in Sparks, the Alliance held “Red Alert” meetings to mobilize seniors and ensure Angle’s radical agenda stays in the spotlight. Says Nevada Alliance President Scott Watts:

Seniors think Sharron Angle’s ideas are risky and dangerous. Just imagine what would have happened if we had privatized Social Security. Given over $10 trillion in asset values that have disappeared in the stock market recently, it is clear that letting Wall Street gamble with the program and your retirement security is not the way to go.

He says that Angle’s plan to eliminate Social Security for future retirees means

our children and grandchildren would fend for themselves in a retirement system completely dependent upon the whims of the free market… Clearly we cannot trust Wall Street gamblers with our retirement security.

With some 16,000 members in Nevada, Watts says the Alliance will ask each of its members to educate 10 of their fellow retirees on these important issues and will also  phonebank, send direct mail, and canvasses members to spread the word.

We will be educating Nevadans of all ages on the sharp contrast between Sharron Angle and Harry Reid on Social Security and other vital issues of our time.

Watch a live webcast of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s important speech today to The City Club of Cleveland here at noon EDT. In the speech, Trumka will talk about the urgency of immigration reform and how it must be addressed as one of the first steps toward solving the nation’s economic crisis.

Make sure to hear Trumka live on “America’s Workforce” radio show on WERE Radio 1490 AM at 4:00 p.m. EDT. Click here to hear the broadcast.

Senate Republicans last night blocked a jobs bill that would have extended unemployment insurance (UI) for long-term jobless workers. Some 250,000 unemployed workers a week are losing their unemployment benefits because they can’t find jobs.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said the Republican’s action to

block unemployment benefits for the hardest-hit jobless Americans is an outrage–sadly, it’s simply the latest shame. All members, both Republicans and Democrats, must remember that come November, voters will be thinking about one thing—jobs.

Senate leaders scaled back the bill to win the 60 votes needed to end the Republican filibuster against the bill. The 56-40 vote included all Republicans present and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.)

The extended UI program expired May 31 after the Senate left town for the Memorial Day recess without acting on a House-passed jobs bill that would have kept the long-term unemployment benefits program alive. The U.S. unemployment rate is near 10 percent, at least 15 million people are out of work and 6.8 million people have been out of work for 27 weeks or more.

The Republicans’ strident opposition to the jobs bill is out of step with voters. According to a June 11-13 USA Today/Gallup poll, 60 percent of Americans say they would favor “additional government spending to create jobs and stimulate the economy.”

Not only did Senate Republicans turn their backs on jobless workers–they also protected Wall Street investors and big oil companies like BP. The bill would have closed tax loopholes that allow hedge fund and other investments managers to shelter income at lower tax rates than working families pay on their income. It also increased the liability taxes on oil companies. Sen. Richard  Durbin (D-Ill.) said Republicans

said “Yes” to the special interest groups they always stand by.

Further Senate action on the bill is not expected until next week.

UAW President Bob King, fourth from the right, Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO President Saundra Williams and Teamsters President James Hoffa lead a Good Jobs Now! rally in Detroit yesterday.

On his first day in office, UAW President Bob King sent a clear message that the union movement is ready and able to fight as long as necessary to gain economic and social justice for all.

After delivering his acceptance speech at the UAW convention in Detroit, King joined Teamsters President James Hoffa and Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO President Saundra Williams to lead a Good Jobs Now! march and rally in downtown Detroit. Delegates to the convention and other workers joined the march that filled a city block. 

The marchers demanded Wall Street pay for its role in creating the recession, which cost 11 million jobs America. They called on Big Bankers to end their opposition to financial reform and to begin to make loans available to homeowners to stop foreclosures, to communities, small businesses and others starved of credit.

King told the crowd that the union movement must return to its roots and fight for social justice as well as economic justice.

 If we don’t win social justice for everyone, we don’t win.

That echoed a statement he made a few hours before in his acceptance speech, in which he said:

Our call, I think, is to go back to our roots and take on the fight in America for civil rights, for labor rights, for First Amendment rights.

King said the union is putting together a strategy for the 2010 elections:

We all have disagreement with President Barack Obama. We have forgotten sometimes to put that in context and talk about all the good things he’s done.

He said workers should not let the Republican Party get away with blaming Obama and congressional Democrats for the economic crisis. The truth is, King said, when George W. Bush entered the White House, he was handed a $127 billion surplus by President Bill Clinton. When Obama took office, he was handed a trillion-dollar deficit.

Don’t let any Republican get away with saying Democrats caused this crisis. No president has been as accessible to unions representing workers [as Obama]. He saved General Motors and Chrysler from disaster. The Republicans had no problem giving hundreds of millions of dollars to bankers.

In special run-off elections this week, three more graduates of the New Jersey AFL-CIO’s Labor Candidates School posted victories. Since it was founded in 1997, 608 alumni of the unique program have won state or local offices, including New Jersey State Senate President Steve Sweeney, a member of Ironworkers Local 399.

The latest union-member/public officials are:

• Ray Greaves, Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 819, who was elected to ther Bayonne City Council.
• Marge Caldwell-Wilson, Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 1087, elected to the Trenton City Council.
• Tony Mack, Laborers (LIUNA) Local 595, elected Mayor of Trenton.

The school gives union members an opportunity to learn campaign basics, including fundraising, election law, and public speaking and media relations. Says New Jersey AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech:

We give them the basic skills and support, and the goal is to help them win in the lower races and have them move up. With every labor candidate victory, the voice of the New Jersey labor movement continues to grow stronger.

In the upcoming fall elections, 44 union members are on the ballot, 24 incumbents and 20 first-time challengers.