Lots to Say

by Tula Connell, Mar 31, 2006

Here are some of the latest comments we’ve received at AFL-CIO Now.

Got news? Send it to us at: blognews@aflcio.org.

At Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Emily Napalo is among students who refuse to give up their struggle to ensure the university’s low-wage workers are paid a living wage.

Together with members of the area’s union community, students are rallying on campus today to insist management keep its promises to enable workers to form a union. Napalo sends us a release from the Georgetown Living Wage Coalition that sums up the situation:

After almost four years of struggling with Georgetown administrators over the issue of the living wage and working closely with campus wage-earning employees, the Living Wage Coalition had no choice but to take the drastic action of a hunger strike in spring 2005. After nine days on strike Georgetown University agreed to the “Just Employment Policy.” Now, almost a year later, those promises have not been met: Georgetown workers are not receiving the wage and benefits promised to them, and the university has done nothing to ensure workers’ right to organize a union through the card-check process.

Students are outraged that Georgetown, a Jesuit university, is not living up to its mission of social justice for those in need.

In short:

It is time to hold this Catholic institution accountable.

A note from Lori Elmer regarding a March 16 AFL-CIO media release about the North
Carolina Migrant Farmworkers’ landmark victory with the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC). Says Elmer:

This press release fails to mention that the primary attorney working on the case was Carol Brooke, of the North Carolina Justice Center. Without the efforts of the N.C. Justice Center, and particularly Ms. Brooke, the victory would never have occurred.

Thanks for taking time to point that out.

Sherry Breeden, acting political director at the West Virginia AFL-CIO, is proud of the accomplishment achieved by a coalition of union and community groups in working with lawmakers to pass an increase in the state’s minimum wage for several thousand workers.

The West Virginia AFL-CIO, our union brothers and sisters and other various groups and coalitions joined together to become “One Voice” in regard to contacting our legislature, therefore we were able to get our voices heard.

I am proud to say that West Virginia’s Legislature has made a positive step in helping our state’s workers by passing a bill to raise the minimum wage in our state.

Way to Go WEST VIRGINIA!!

Congratulations to Sister Breeden and all the hard-working union activists in West Virginia.

In Kentucky, Paul Hosse, member of the National Writers Union/UAW Local 1981, reports he has been named by Gov. Ernie Fletcher as labor representative to the board of the Bluegrass State Skills Corp.

Hosse says the Bluegrass State Skills Corp. promotes and improves employment and training opportunities for Kentucky’s residents by creating partnerships with businesses and industries through training grants and investment credits in various skills training programs.

Kudos to Brother Hosse, who describes himself as a litigation manager, part-time writer and longtime political and community activist in Louisville. He hosts the political commentary blog, Another Opinion.

Rodney Whiddon in Texas sends us information on the book Inequality Matters: The Growing Economic Divide in America and Its Poisonous Consequence, by James Lardner and David A. Smith, which makes the point that America is becoming more a nation of haves and have nots.

Writes Whiddon:

In 1983, the richest had 1,500 times the wealth of the bottom 40 percent; in 2001 the top 1 percent had 4,400 times the wealth of the bottom 40 percent. Where is this going??As journalist Bill Moyers puts it: “What has been happening to working people is not the result of Adam Smith’s invisible hand but the direct consequence of corporate money, intellectual activism, the rise of literalist religious orthodoxy opposed to any civil and human rights that threaten its paternalism and a string of political decisions favoring the interests of wealthy elites who have bought the political system right out from under us.”

Whiddon points to an article about the book in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and concludes that

Inequality Matters is a must-read for everyone who hopes to see equality of opportunity restored to its rightful place among the American dream’s most cherished features.

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