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Trumka Challenges G-20 Leaders to Respect Workers, Environment
Last night in Pittsburgh, at an event featuring former Vice President Al Gore and a broad coalition of environmental and union leaders, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka challenged the global heads of state attending the G-20 conference to build a new economic order that protects the dignity of workers and the planet.
The world cannot afford to continue with a globalization that works only for the very richest and leaves workers and the communities they live in behind, Trumka said. While the G-20 leaders meet, unions are issuing a declaration that calls for global action for good jobs:
Together, the labor movement and the environmental movement are a fighting force for change. This is our time—time to let the powers gathered here this week know exactly what we want, and exactly what we won’t stand for. We want a clean energy economy that creates good jobs, and we want a safe and healthy planet.
We need a new economic order that demands respect for both workers and the planet…globalization that benefits only the rich, the assault on workers and the planet and the devastation it breeds, has got to go.
Trumka noted that Pittsburgh wasn’t revitalized by the type of globalization that exports jobs—Pittsburgh’s growth came despite, not because of, the big banks and global corporations. In the real economy, Trumka said, it takes workers with good, safe jobs to build a lasting prosperity. We can’t go back to business, to the unfair economic system that caused our financial crisis, he said.
Trumka laid out a program of regulation of the finance industry, major public investment in clean energy and transportation, controls on carbon emissions and the freedom for all workers to form a union.
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7 Comments
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Dear President Trumka, and all Union Members,
Congratulations! I have watched you rise in the Union movement since 1994, when I was working with Mike Dalpiaz, the President of the UMW, District 22, to create more Union jobs.
As you said last night, “This is our time!”
I was a Union member in a “sweat shop” working for $1.50 an hour, at the age of 17. That was before I went to Vietnam. When I came back, with a Silver Star, I was also a member of the Natl. Association of Letter Carriers.
For the last forty years, I’ve been developing new technologies in both the Building and Energy Sectors. Now, I am the CEO of American Veterans Green Building & Energy, and an Air & Energy Advisor to the Grand Canyon Trust.
We have developed and Patented new Environmental Technlogies for both the coal and industrial process industries. We can “clean” the emissions from any “smoke stack,” in situ. Resulting in “Zero Emissions!”
Then, we can take the “waste ash” from any Coal-fired Power Plant and “manufacture” the “Greenest” of Green Building Materials in the World. We are currently working with UNLV.
Senator Reid recently hosted the second “National Clean Energy Summit” here in Las Vegas. I had extensive conversations with many of the participants and gave them DVD’s, including our departed friend Van Jones, General Clark and John Podesta.
Our local AFL-CIO Executive Director, Danny Thompson, and myself discussed what your dynamic leadership can do for the Union movement just a week ago.
Please have one of your aides call me, (702) 375-6650, or visit our website at http://www.EVCS.info. I asked to speak at the National Summit on “How the Energy Bill can pay for the single-payer Health Care Option.” But, they told me they were “full.”
These are proven, tested technologies that are currently being used in different versions ALL OVER THE WORLD, except in the U.S. They can turn the “single-payer” option into reality!
I look forward to your prompt response. We don’t have another minute to lose. We need you to lead the fight for REAL “Green Jobs” that will be a profit center, NOT an expense!
The Amalgamate Bank, America’s Union Bank, has done all the due diligence and we are, “fired up and ready to go!”
Respectfully,
American Veterans Green Building & Energy
Dan Longworth, CEO
AVGBE_1@msn.com
(702) 375-6650 Phone
how about protecting American jobs by dropping the amnesty train?The UMA worker above is obviously a cheerleader,we at the American Federationof Citizen Union Workers P.A.C. have heard from THOUSANDS of UMA workers who consider Trumpka an absolute failure…they also love what Trumpka’s green friends have don to the coal industry.Wake up and demand new Union election rules that favor transparency and Democracy.
I am glad to see Labor and the sane environment groups working
together for the benefit of all. I hope that the renegiotation of
NAFTA in favor of the interests of the majority of both Mexican
and US citizens will be a priority with Labor.
Best wishes to Rich Trumpka and the AFL-CIO leadership.
Strongbuck? You want a job? Join the Army son.
Warmest Congratulations Rich! This is the best news that the American labor movement has had in decades.
I know you from ICEM days as a tough negotiator and a determined fighter for the working class. But also a man of vision and someone who understands the need to change in advance of the times. Your comments on strong transitional policies that protect the environment AND jobs and the transformation of globalisation as a uniting force between working people across the world rather than a divisive ‘dog-eat-dog’ philosophy of greed, augur well for the revival of your great labor movement.
In solidarity,
Vic Thorpe
Former General Secretary of the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions (ICEM)
Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has extended the olive branch to US Labor and Leaders.
We need to work in unity and cooperation with our brothers and sisters around the world, which includes acceptance of and participation with the Bolivarian Movement (ALBA) and their financial arm BancoSur and extended into Africa BancASA as a “fair trade” alternative to the World Bank and IMF. The extension of such to all communities would go a long way towards giving us the ability to plan and implement an ecological economic democratic redevelopment plan based on the needs of workers, communities, and the poor.
To face the the crises of financial meltdown, resource constraints, and population pressures, we need to fundamentally restructure the financial/economic system.
The fundamental mission and principles need to be inclusion, humanity, equity, quality of life, environmental/public health and wellness, sustainability, and peace. We need benevolent direction in forming an economic democracy that recognizes the need for village/neighborhood sovereignty and equity, inculcates, fosters and facilitates inter-community, inter-regional and world unity and cooperation.
We need a financial/economic system that is dedicated foremost to meeting peoples’ needs and reasonable wants and replaces the greed and hoarding based Capitalist system of exploitation of people and resources that takes unfair advantage of accumulated competitive advantage to benefit from such and from equity trading, usurious loans and inequitable property and asset holding practices with an Equity Union, a financial/economic system that fosters and facilitates equity sharing for community betterment programs and projects.
We need to fundamentally change the ways and means in which resources are allocated to and within communities and within and among economic sectors.
I will follow this post with a brief synopsis describing in some detail the fundamentals of such an equity union.
Thank you.
In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,
Mike Morin
Peoples’ Equity Union
Eugene, OR
(541) 3434-3808
Restructuring Financial Systems
By Mike Morin
With respect to the “nature of wealth”, I think that the “quality of life” paradigm in lieu of the “standard of living” paradigm needs to be stressed.
“Quality of life” includes personal happiness for self, family, friends, neighbors, and all others. It includes ownership opportunities for all and everybuddy having the things they need, including health, healthy and loving relations with family, friends, neighbors, and all the people of the world. It includes peace on earth, and it includes a future for all the children of the world.
“Standard of living” implies maximizing the consumption of things.
The current Capitalist dominated system is dysfunctional both from an equity/fairness and economic and natural resource sustainability perspective.
The dominant paradigm in Capitalist financial business operations uses something called the discount rate which assumes that money will be worth less (eventually worthless) in the future, thus creating a necessity to extract profits exceeding a “hurdle” rate leading to unfair and unwise exploitation of workers, borrowers, and natural resources, and to rampant inflation.
The use of credit is not a good business or personal practice. In business, it should be discouraged because creditors have first claims on net revenues and hold liens on real property and capital assets. For “consumers”, the use of credit is unwise because the system is set up to extract profits from interest thus assuring that when consumers use credit that they are losing money relative to inflation. Certainly the current foreclosure crisis in the USA is ample evidence of the inflation and the unfairness and unhealthiness of the mortgage lien process.
Credit Unions and Mutual Insurance companies are in theory attempts to institute non-profit economic democracies for their respective industries. However, because of the need to compete for customers, both of these relatively progressive financial service organization types are forced to play the same game that is basically destructive to individuals, families, communities, and the natural environment. Ideally, credit should only be used as a last resort, much more preferably not at all. We should replace all aspects of the extant financial system with an Equity Union. In some ways, a mutual insurance company is similar to an equity union. However, because such companies are required to realize profits in order to compete for “policy holders” (really investors), the companies that comprise the portfolios of the mutual insurance firms cannot be not-for-profit, can not be mutual organizations themselves.
In a not-for profit Equity Union financial services system based on principles of mutuality working in concert with ethical, wise, knowledgeable, and intelligent community, inter-community, inter-regional, and worldwide planning there would certainly be an important role for financial service workers.
A major impediment to such an Equity Union would be the competitive advantage of the current financial sector and the fear of the friction of change to those individuals and organizations. Dealing with this sector of “the” economy, it would be more feasible with regards to Capitalist resistance and more humane, to orderly and peacefully transition to an Equity Union, coordinated with ecologically sound economic planning.
I am writing and talking about transitioning slowly, methodically, and with the minimum amount of friction and hardship from a dysfunctional financial system, based on self-interest, to one designed to benefit everybuddy.
At risk of understatement, it will take a huge amount of work to educate folks to the need and benefits of such change and to communicate the basic Plan. Transition Planning will also be a very difficult process, but I see no alternative to the current, impending and worsening global economic, political, social, and natural environmental collapse.
The Peoples’ Equity Union concept is designed to be a grass roots, popular choice “movement”. I am organizing with individuals, workers, and shopkeepers in my neighborhood, adjoining neighborhoods, and through the inter-net to whomever I can attract an interest in the concept.
The focus is primarily local, yet global at the same time. It is my dream, not a hope yet, to encourage a critical mass of people to organize locally around a unifying mission, unifying principles, unifying strategies, and unifying tactics in order to minimize the amount of executive administration at the regional and global levels.
The theory is that neighborhood locales, the neighborhood community/worker hybrid association will have maximum autonomy and will be guided only, in their inter-community and inter-economic sector relationships by regional Planning Boards and a Global Policy Committee.
We must replace the current equity trading systems, corporate conglomerate corporations, insurance companies, and usurious banking systems of the Capitalist status quo with a worldwide Peoples’ Equity Union with branches in every community/neighborhood.
The goal is to be a true economic democracy: of, for, and by the people.
Housing and Property Ownership
Concurrent with financial systems reform, where equity sharing and not-for-profit equity collaboration would replace the current financial paradigm of for-profit equity investing, equity trading, and usurious credit arrangements, we need to evolve to a different system with respect to residential and other real property occupation arrangements.
In lieu of rent or leases, people should be allowed to acquire equity in their abodes and business properties. For example, in the case of an apartment, if one paid $500 per month to a property management firm, let’s say $50 per month would go to property maintenance, and another $40 to administration fees, insurance, etc. This would leave the resident with $410 of accumulated equity added to their account each month. If we had a large cooperative housing organization (preferably world-wide, and preferably the only form of property ownership) then when someone had to move or wanted to move, they could take their equity with them to the new property.
With regards to mortgages, they are horribly usurious and should be banned. The scenario related above would also replace the current system of financing “home ownership loans”.
A huge problem that we are facing now is the terrible inflation in the market values of real property (and capital assets, for that matter). If we pooled our equity, pooled our assets, and collectively wrote off our liabilities, then we could significantly write down the market values of real and capital assets.
More on Equity Union(s)
In a not-for profit Equity Union financial services system based on principles of mutuality working in concert with ethical, wise, knowledgeable, and intelligent community, inter-community, inter-regional, and worldwide planning would serve the needs of the people.
In local and inter-community equity unions, equity sharing would be the modus operandi. People with funds being held in equity unions would have the option of sharing in primarily worker owned community betterment projects based on the principles of quality of life, equity (which means ownership, and also means equality), humanity, and sustainability (which means there will be an economy and natural resources for the youth and the children, and for generations to come).
If the inflation spiral can be removed (and the cost of real and capital assets brought back to earth), then indigent and poor workers could hope to increase their equity holdings and quality of life assets and equity investors could hope to get their money back. Some endeavors, beyond poor workers enrichment, would be not-for-profit. That is, profits made beyond a pre-determined return to the poor workers, would be re-invested in more such worker/community betterment hybrid businesses (preferably cooperatives).
Equity investments in community businesses could not be sold to others, but could be bought back at par value (the price of the share of the stock when it was invested). Such would be discouraged, and disallowed if it was a qualified low-income/low wealth equity investor, who may, or may not if they were allowed to collect (limited) personal dividends.
Equity Union branches in low income/low wealth neighborhoods would be allowed to set up a (501)(c)(3) to receive donations to an equity fund for their neighborhoods, to be kept in a local Equity Union and the funds allocated (equity grants) by a Board committed to community betterment and the likely success of the endeavor(s).
Mike Morin
mlarosramorin@earthlink.net
wiserunion@earthlink.net
(541) 343-3808
Equity Union – An Example
Getting Started
Hi Mike,
(rest of letter deleted)
[By the way, I presently have more income than is best for my
lifestyle, and now have recently gotten my hands on some extra money.
I'm not used to this situation. Do you have any suggestions about
where to 'invest' for the greater good, keeping in mind that my main
concerns remain first 'global heating', and then generally shorter
paths to possible eutopias vs. possible extreme dystopias?]
Dan
**********************************************************
Hi Dan,
(rest of letter deleted)
I, too, have some discretionary funds that I would like to put into trust
for public service and altruistic endeavors. Perhaps, you and I (and others if we can find them) should investigate creating a local Peoples’ Equity fund. My idea on that is to see if we can open a group trust account in a Credit Union, where each trustee would have an individual account, yet allocations to community betterment projects could be done collectively, with each individual signing off on the amount that they want to dedicate to the project.
The idea would be that we would “invest” in community betterment projects with the care that we would expect to only get the par value of our “investment” back or we could choose to make individual and/or collective tax-deductible or maybe tax credit eligible contributions to “qualified” 501(c)(3) community betterment organizations (CBOs)
CBOs could be not-for-profit, non-profit or both.
That’s enough for now.
What think?
Mike