In Georgia, New AFL-CIO Leaders Take on Banks, Support Flight Attendants

by Seth Michaels, Sep 21, 2009

The new AFL-CIO leadership team, already is on the road, meeting with workers in a multiple-state listening tour.
The new AFL-CIO leadership team, including AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, center, met with more than 200 people at a community forum in Atlanta.

The AFL-CIO’s new leadership team is kicking off its first days with a tour around the country, listening to workers and energized to turn around the economy. Today, they visited Atlanta to focus on the foreclosure crisis that has driven millions out of their homes—and the banks that enabled it.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler and Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker brought a message to an area hit by more than 40,000 foreclosures in just the past six months: We need an economy that protects everyone, not just finance-industry CEOs.

Speaking to a breakfast of faith leaders and community activists in Atlanta, Trumka said the finance industry undermined the economy by engaging in predatory practices in the hopes of profiting off of the most vulnerable:

It’s time banks are held accountable for the pain they’ve inflicted on families now faced with financial ruin, even foreclosures and bankruptcy. The banks and their fly-by-night business partners took advantage of people who wanted to buy a home, knowing full well they’d have to default, and lose their homes to the bank.

Trumka said that our economic crisis is due to the greed and irresponsibility of an economy that worked for only a few, while most workers struggled with stagnant wages and debt:

Our financial system is a shambles and we’re not going to restore its luster until we rein in the abuse by financial institutions like Wachovia that threw our economy into crisis.

They profited on a broken economic model—the idea they could crush unions, cut wages and benefits, and then lend workers the money to live a decent life, knowing they couldn’t pay it back.

Even worse, Trumka said, is the fact that banks took billions from the government—billions meant to open the credit markets and get the economy moving again—but are expending their taxpayer-provided resources on bonuses for executives and lobbying against financial reforms. Workers across the country must demand accountability, Trumka said, including a federal consumer protection agency with the power to prevent unfair financial practices.

This afternoon, Trumka, Holt Baker and Shuler went to Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport to hold a rally with Delta flight attendants, who are fighting for fair representation, and with THE Machinists (IAM). Shuler and Holt Baker are spending the rest of today at community roundtables with  women and young workers. Trumka will head to New York tonight for a major speech on financial reform tomorrow. By Wednesday, the three officers will return to Pittsburgh to meet with world leaders and global union activists during the G20 Conference.

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