Archive for July, 2008
Obama Speaks with Union Members: ‘We Can Turn Around America’
 |
|
Sen. Barack Obama took part in a nationwide conference call with union members this afternoon, and he’s ready to work with the union movement to win this fall and turn around America.
More than 2,500 union leaders, activists and members across the country got a chance to hear Obama talk about the challenges facing the country, and the values and principles that inspire his campaign.
Everywhere I go I hear the same story. Wages are falling, good jobs are disappearing, families are losing their homes and prices on everything from fuel to food are going up and up.
Obama reflected on his experience as a church-based community organizer, working in neighborhoods crippled by closing steel mills. Working with unions, churches, and local government, he fought for job training programs to help turn those neighborhoods around. That’s the fight he wants to continue in the White House.
Big Oil’s Big Profits Padding the Pockets of McCain Campaign
Once again, Exxon Mobil made U.S. corporate profit history, pulling in $11.68 billion in second quarter income, the highest quarterly profit rate of any U.S. company in history.
It must be gratifying for Sen. John McCain to know that his sudden flip-flop to support Big Oil’s long-held dream of offshore drilling is tapping into some of the deepest pockets on the planet. Because right after he reversed his long-standing opposition to oil drilling, he hit a gusher of campaign funds from the oil and gas industry, according to The Washington Post:
 |
|
Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month—three-quarters of which came after his June 16 speech calling for an end to the ban—compared with $116,000 in March, $283,000 in April and $208,000 in May.
L.A. City Council Joins Car Washers’ Fight For Justice
The campaign by car wash employees for fair wages and decent work in the Los Angeles area gained a major boost yesterday when the Los Angeles City Council unanimously passed a resolution strongly endorsing efforts of car wash workers to secure just wages, safe working conditions and the freedom to organize a union.
In recent months, the mostly immigrant car wash workers throughout Los Angeles have formed the Carwash Workers Organizing Committee (CWOC) of the United Steelworkers (USW) to raise their standard of living, secure basic workplace protections and address the serious environmental and safety hazards in their industry.
House Hearing: Income Inequality Threatens Middle Class, Our Democracy
By almost all measures, economic inequality is growing. But strengthening workers’ ability to join unions can play a key role in shrinking the gap and rebuilding the nation’s middle class, experts told a House panel today.
Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, opened the hearing on “The Growing Income Gap in America,” saying “inequality between the top income earners and those in the middle class has been growing rapidly in the last three decades.” Woolsey and several of the experts pointed out that income inequality in the United States is at the highest level since 1928 and the beginning of the Great Depression.
7 Years After 9/11, First Responders Still Lack Medical Treatment
 |
|
Medical and health and safety experts today urged Congress to approve new legislation to establish a permanent monitoring, research and health care program for the responders and people who lived and worked near Ground Zero who were exposed to the same mix of pulverized glass and concrete, asbestos, lead and burning jet fuel.
Peg Seminario, AFL-CIO health and safety director, told the House Subcommittee on Health:
The exposures were made much worse by EPA’s pronouncements that the environment was safe and OSHA’s failure to enforce workplace safety and health requirements during the entire 10-month period of rescue, recovery and clean-up operations at the WTC site.
Smith Rumors a Sign of McCain’s Anti-Worker Policies
 |
|
The biggest parlor game among journalists and politicos this summer has been guessing who the presidential candidates will pick as their running mates. Fred Smith emerged as one possible running mate, a selection floated by Sen. John McCain’s campaign that reveals McCain’s disturbing disregard for workers.
Marc Ambinder, a political journalist, reported that McCain campaign sources have been dropping Smith’s name for a potential role in a McCain administration—possibly even McCain’s running mate.
Smith is the CEO of FedEx and a notorious opponent of workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain. He’s an expert at using loopholes in federal law to block workers from forming unions.
Book Talk: All Workers Want Respect, Freedom to Do Their Jobs
There was a time when workers who did good work on the job and were loyal to their employers were rewarded with a lifetime job, decent wage, health care and a secure retirement.
Not anymore.
Today, the social contract between employers and workers is so broken, Gen Y no longer expects to have those kinds of jobs, says author David Kusnet. A visiting fellow at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and former chief speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, Kusnet discussed his new book, Love the Work, Hate the Job: Why America’s Best Workers Are More Unhappy Than Ever, today at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C.
Begich, Kilroy, Udall Speak Out for Employee Free Choice
 |
||||
|
Around the country, union members will make the critical difference in electing pro-working family members of Congress. The AFL-CIO’s Labor 2008 program is a strong national effort to reach out to millions of union members through person-to-person contact, and these union voters will be the ones who ensure pro-worker policies get implemented in Congress.
Here are three strong candidates who understand the connection between a strong union movement and progressive policies that help all working families. Mark Begich running for a Senate seat in Alaska, Mary Jo Kilroy up for a House seat in the Columbus, Ohio, area and Colorado Rep. Mark Udall seeking election to the Senate.
Answering the Rumors About Obama
|
|
Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign for president is based on working-family values and important issues like health care, jobs and fair trade. Naturally, the right-wing rumor machine has been hard at work to change the subject, by making outlandish claims aimed at dividing and distracting us. The AFL-CIO is working hard to counter the rumors and lies leveled at Obama and keep the election focused on working people’s lives.
In a new mailer we’re sending to thousands of union households in key states, the AFL-CIO is taking on the rumors directly, giving straight answers to the questions people have about Obama. The mailers are attracting positive media attention, and bloggers are praising them as, as the Jed Report puts it, “the most effective anti-smear message of the campaign.”
In his most recent Out Front column, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney takes a look at five of the most persistent manufactured rumors about Obama.
Labor 2008 and the Chocolate Factory
 |
||||
|
||||
Frank Snyder, AFL-CIO state director in Pennsylvania, reports on the latest Labor 2008 political mobilization actions in the Keystone State.
It was a busy time at 5 a.m., outside the gates of the Wilbur Chocolate plant in Lititz, Pa., recently. Workers—members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Local 464—were leaving from the third shift and entering the plant for the first shift.
There to greet them with leaflets on Barack Obama’s record of supporting working families were fellow BCTGM Local 464 members Jake Long and Bob Huffman. Even at that early hour, the chocolate factory workers showed a great deal of interest in the information and political discussion.
