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Trumka, Shuler, Holt Baker Hit the Road for Jobs, Fair Economy |
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The AFL-CIO’s new leadership team isn’t wasting a second. Hours after the close of the AFL-CIO 26th Constitutional Convention, they’re riding the momentum of this week’s high-energy union gathering with a listening tour across the country.
And they’re starting in Ohio, the center of recent political battles and heart of the tough questions the nation faces about our economic future. The team’s tour continues Sunday and Monday in Atlanta, including a rally outside Wachovia, where Trumka will condemn its predatory financial practices, such as foreclosures. On Monday night and Tuesday, the team travels to New York City where Trumka will issue a strong warning to Wall Street at a press conference outside the New York Stock Exchange.
Today, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler and Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker held an energetic rally in Cleveland before fanning out across the state to hear from workers and fire up the union movement for the battles ahead.
At the Great Lakes Science Center, Trumka said workers can and must take the lead in reversing the economic crisis that has hit the nation and particularly Ohio. All of us need to hold corporations accountable, not go back to an economy that’s rigged against workers, Trumka said.
The labor movement will do everything in its power to help create good jobs….That’s our most important goal. But when you buy into a community, you become part of the family. You have an obligation. Too many corporations today want to walk away from their communities, even companies that were nurtured right here in these same communities.
We need an economic system in this country that rewards work as well as it rewards investment. We need an economic system that gives everybody a fair opportunity to work hard and succeed.
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Trumka said the union movement stands firmly behind health care reform that includes a public option and the Employee Free Choice Act. These policies are critical to rebuilding an economy that works for all.
Shuler visited both Akron and Columbus this afternoon, while Holt Baker spoke in Cleveland and held a roundtable to listen to union members in Dayton.
In Akron, Shuler spoke to the concerns of younger workers, who are rightly concerned to be entering an economy that doesn’t seem to offer any hope of a better life. Said Shuler:
“For young people today, the question, “What are you going to do with your life?” is daunting enough, but this economy makes it even more difficult to answer.
“You worked hard to get through school, and now you can’t find a job. Or you were laid off from your job and haven’t been able to find a new one. There’s no training available. You can’t afford health care, so you don’t go to the doctor when you need to. It may be your story, or your friend’s story, or a friend of a friend’s story. But it’s time for that story to change.”
Shuler argued that not only do we need new investments in green jobs to turn this around, young people also need the freedom to join a union:
“Some young people might think of labor unions as part of your grandparent’s generation. But we are for all ages, and for all workers—full time, part-time, freelancers, professionals and skilled labor jobs alike.
“At the end of the day, we all want the same things. We want a piece of the American dream. The labor movement has been the key to the middle class for 60 years, and it still offers the hand you need to succeed.”
A report released this month by the AFL-CIO and Working America shows a stunning deterioration in the economic lives of young workers—those under age 35. According to the report, Young Workers: A Lost Decade, one-third of young workers cannot pay the bills and seven in 10 do not have enough money saved to cover two months of living expenses.
Our new leadership team is making outreach to young workers a focus of their efforts, and their actions already show they are ready to go, ready to fight for jobs, for health care reform and for a fairer, more prosperous future for everyone.
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No Schedule, I wonder if Riverside County and Los Angeles will be bypassed. Unemployment is now 15% here.
Break with the Democrats! Organize a Workers Party!
Mr. Trumka, the newly elected president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s suffering working people, as discussed here many times, are looking forward to hear from you what new programs and strategies are you bringing to working people.
“Feel good” speeches, raised fists, singing “Solidarity”, do not constitute a strategy or program to confront the many crises now faced by working people. What must be done to confront the new realities of working people? What strategies can be implemented to organize millions of working people, not only into unions, but also into new organizational forms (such as a new political party) to fight effectively on many fronts, for the economic interests of working people?
1. The passage of the resolution in support of “single payer” health insurance is a great step forward! I hope you communicate with all the politicians in every district you travel that the AFL-CIO, as do 70% of the people, full supports “single-payer”.
2. Give public notice that if the Democratic Party does not firmly support “single-payer” (forget the bankrupt “public” option of Obama’s corporate greed enhancing “health care reform”), the AFL-CIO must seriously consider to initiate the call for the creation of a new political party that ends support of the corporate controlled Democratic Party. (Forget the insane enemies of labor Republican Party.)
3. A new party that rejects corporate money, campaign contributions and corporate agendas to further impoverish the working people of the country.
4. In each local area where you travel, perhaps you could organize a local media group, that demands of local radio and television stations, prime air-time to have a daily news and information program that discusses the economic interests of working people.
All current mass media is totally biased towards the corporate interests, the stock market, unending wars for profit etc. If local stations refuse, there is a procedure to challenge the local FCC station licensee for not serving the local needs of the community, and under sufficient protest, their license could be withdrawn. This is especially true of NPR and PBS stations which are especially biased, but also Rupert Murdoch’s national networks which has nothing but Rush Limbaughs for news and commentary.
5. Globalization, that is capitalist globalization, has effectively minimized the value of simple trade unionism to secure the economic needs of working people.
Under conditions of the globalization of labor, and under a collapsed capitalist economy, simple economic struggle for better wages and working conditions, benefits, etc. must now be expanded into a national political struggle.
Today, most of the benefits and protections of working people, are actually secured through national legislation. Social Security, national minimum wage, OSHA standards, section 8 housing support, support for public education, Medicare, etc. are won and MUST NOW BE SECURED AND EXPANDED THROUGH POLITICAL STRUGGLE. That is through political parties.
But the DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS ONLY 10 PERCENT PRO LABOR, as it is now controlled by bribes (campaign contributions) and other influences (lucrative jobs and contracts after retirement), such that the corporate interests now can be said to completely dominate the Democratic Party.
But the contributions to the Democratic Party (from meager resources of dues of organized workers) cannot and SHOULD NOT COMPETE against the billions of dollars available to corporate capitalism.
THUS IT IS ESSENTIAL FOR ECONOMIC SURVIVAL OF WORKING PEOPLE THAT A NEW PRO-LABOR PARTY BE FORMED NOW IN TIME FOR THE ELECTIONS OF 2010. CANDIDATES NEED TO RUN IN EVERY STATE AND FEDERAL DISTRICT TO INSTALL PEOPLE COMMITTED TO THE NEEDS OF WORKING PEOPLE.
How about a swing through San Antonio? UNITE HERE is currently engaged in a fierce battle with Hyatt. The USWA is experiencing similar situation with the County Adult Probation Department.
I agree with comment #2, especially if the Democratic majority in Congress fails to pass the Employee Free Choice Act in it’s original form.
Please come to California to see what has happened here with economic collapse and with Mr. Schwartzennegger has completely destroyed the public health system, public eduction, state services, etc.
How about the organized labor movement in California organizing a state party to replace the governor and replace the Democrats and Republicans, with a party platform to resolve the state’s bankruptcy problems?
Many solutions for generating new revenue are available:
* Tax the off-shore oil wells (as does the state of Alaska).
* Massive increase in taxation of the top 10 percent in wealth and corporations. (The minimization of taxes for wealthy and corportions has NOT resulted in more jobs as Swartzen-natzi claims.)
* Urge the creation of a state bank for California (and every State), to cut out the high interest rates for consumers credit cards, school loans racket, and provide a safe place for teacher’s retirement funds, etc.
* Create a new non-profit construction company to build quality affordable housing that uses union labor. (Previous articles here with futile protests against largest home builders for building poor quality, mortgages that were not in buyers interest, etc.
* California representatives should work to get massive billion dollar relief to the states. How? But stopping the wars-for profit in Middle East, nationalize the corrupt banks, NO MORE BAIL OUT MONEY TO WALL STREET CROOKS.
* ETC. THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO FUND THE NEEDS OF THE PEOPLE BY CUTTING OUT THE VAST CORRUPTION SUPPORTED BY THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
Unemployment in California reaches 70-year high
21 September 2009
Official unemployment in California, the most populous state in the US, has reached a new historical milestone. At 12.2 percent in August, it is now at the highest level since 1940. It has risen 4.6 percentage points over the course of the last year alone.
The recently released unemployment figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveal the social reality that lies behind official claims of an end to the economic downturn. Just last week, speaking before an audience at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke claimed that the recession is “very likely over.” For workers throughout the country, however, the crisis is intensifying.
As high as it is, the statistic fails to capture the true gravity of the jobs situation in California. The 2.5 million people represented in the August figure do not include those who are out of work but have given up looking for a job, or those who are involuntarily working part-time. By some estimates, when calculated together, the unemployment and underemployment rate in California stands at 23 percent.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/sep2009/pers-s21.shtml