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Kudos to Arizona Union Leader |
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Rebekah Friend, executive director of the Arizona AFL-CIO, was named one of the state’s Leaders of the Year in Public Policy by the Arizona Capitol Times, the influential, insiders’ newspaper that has been covering Arizona government, politics and legislation since 1946.
The paper says Friend and the other honorees are
…outstanding examples of leadership in the public policy arena. These individuals and organizations contribute a great deal to our community, making Arizona a better place to work and live.
Friend, a member of the Electrical Workers (IBEW), served as the state federation’s president from 2003 until being named executive director in January.
She was the chair person of the state’s Minimum Wage Coalition that successfully shepherded Prop. 202 from signature gathering to ballot and on to victory. The initiative raised the state’s minimum wage to $6.75 an hour with an annual cost of living adjustment. Even with a Republican majority in the state legislature, Friend developed legislation that won approval and improves the state’s unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation programs.
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All Unions in our country, must demand from our Government to enforce the immigration laws. Illegal aliens and our trade policy are taken jobs from Americans, the American worker is becoming an economic slave, because the low wages that employers now want to pay.
The manufacturing sector and its workers were hardest hit by the growth of Wal-Mart’s imports. Wal-Mart’s increased trade deficit with China eliminated 133,000 manufacturing jobs, 68% of those jobs lost from Wal-Mart’s imports. Jobs in the manufacturing sector pay higher wages and provide better benefits than most other industries, especially for workers with less than a college education.
Jobs lost to outsourcing in the US, while more than 400,000 jobs were sent offshore from January 2000 to August 2006. This only means that more companies in the US find the idea of outsourcing jobs wiser to improve their bottom line and profits. That is why there are a large number of total jobs lost to outsourcing.
Jobs lost to Illegal aliens, Harvard Professor George Borjas has reported that illegal aliens displaced American workers at a cost in excess of $133 billion dollars in 2005. No one cannot convince me that if you paid a decent wage to American workers, that they would not take many of these jobs. Drywall hangers, for example, used to make $18, $20 an hour; now the going rate is $8 to $10 an hour. These are jobs that Americans cannot afford to work in because they cannot afford to live in sub-standard living conditions.
Juan Reynoso