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Pelosi: Congress Committed to Passing Employee Free Choice |
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Congress is “committed to passing the Employee Free Choice Act” and President Obama is “ready to sign it into law,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi today told more than 3,000 union members and leaders from 13 unions at the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD) in Washington, D.C.
According to The Hill blog, Pelosi told delegates to the BCTD’s 2009 Legislative Conference:
Our work in Congress is based on two truths: America’s economy is only as strong as America’s middle class; America’s middle class is only as strong as America’s unions.
Other prominent administration officials and congressional leaders set to address the conference include Vice President Joe Biden (via videotape), Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), who is chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
This morning, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said the Obama administration will work closely with workers and their unions to ensure the nation’s job safety laws, wage protections and workers’ rights are enforced. She drew a roar from the crowd when she told delegates,
You can rest assured, there is a new sheriff in town.
Also, Ed Schultz, progressive radio talker and host of the MSNBC’s The Ed Show, will speak to the delegates tomorrow about media coverage of working families and the union movement. In addition, Schultz plans to feature the conference and the work of the BCTD on an upcoming show.
An Ed Shultz film crew will accompany union leaders and members tomorrow when they visit their representatives and senators on Capitol Hill to press for key working family issues, including:
- The Employee Free Choice Act;
- The Davis-Bacon Act, the federal prevailing wage law that ensures contractors on state projects don’t exploit workers by paying low wages to win state contracts;
- Health care reform;
- Clean energy/climate change legislation; and
- Immigration reform.
BCTD conference participants will attend workshops on legislative issues and political action before heading to Capitol Hill.
We will bring you more on the conference this week, and click here for BCTD’s daily video updates.
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If there was ever a time for the Employee Free Choice Act, that time is now. Not only is it nearly impossible to form a union without fear and intimidation by employers, but union-busting has grown into a $4 billion a year business in the U.S. alone.
Companies that previously had good relationships with their union employees have been emboldened by weak labor laws. One of those is the McGraw-Hill Companies. Read more at:
http://nabetcwa54.org
It’s easy for Ms. Pelosi to make promises she knows she won’t have to keep. It doesn’t matter if the House passes the EFCA since her sister in the Senate, corporate Democrat Dianne Feinstein, won’t vote for it and it will die a slow death. If Pelosi was serious, she’d be publicly condemning Feinstein for her betrayal of the unions who endorsed and funded her election campaigns.
Thankfully, we have Bernie Sanders, who proves that an independent socialist can be elected and be effective. Now labor needs to find a strong independent in California to challenge the sell-out Big Business Democrat Feinstein.
A rose by any other name is still a rose…
That, however, is not true of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).
After it is watered-down at the behest of republicans, blue dog democrats, and other anti-worker, anti-union, pro-corporate bootlickers, and after its heart has been removed, it will not even resemble the “rose” embodied in the original version of the EFCA.
Congress is “committed to passing the Employee Free Choice Act”? Yeah? Well I’m not going to hold my breath.
We’ll wind up with a gutted EFCA. Some pie cards will thereafter declare victory in defeat. That’s what they’ve been doing for yerars!
Man, oh, man….labor needs to return to its roots. We need to march, rally, picket, and lay down our tools to win justice. And when suits and ties tell us to slow down we need to tell them, “lead, follow, or get out of the way”.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said “Congress is “committed to passing the Employee Free Choice Act” and President Obama is “ready to sign it into law,”
I hope this is one time when she is not lying or can remember what she said. Yes Yes, we do need the Employee Free Choice Act for the preservation of Working Families instead of giving preference to radicals.
These men are right,the rank and file that pays for everything the AFL-CIO does will get screwed again,because our so called leaders couldn’t lead a swarm of flies to a pile of you know what.Until we as a labor body seriously try to get a thrid party going we will be lied to by both the Democrats and the Republicans.If you haven’t noticed there has been very little change in Washington but the partisanship continues full bore.Brothers and sisters leave these fools and become an Independent,let the Parties see we have had enough of the BS a growing thrid party is all these fools understand.I’ve already done so, and I know many others have, but we need everyone to do it,you might even write your so called Reps and tell them why your leaving.