SEARCH
Trumka’s Speech on Immigration Available Now in Video Excerpts
Now available: three video excerpts of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s June 18 speech on immigration before the City Club of Cleveland. Check them out at the AFL-CIO YouTube page here.
During the speech, Trumka made the case that the United States needs a new economic strategy to replace the failed model of the past 30 years—one that focuses on developing a workforce with world-class skills and world-class rights and trade policies that serve the interests of the American people.
The video clip here is an edited version of the speech with highlights.
Click here to hear Trumka warn that when a nation’s political leaders truly lead and develop a plan to lift all people, the “voices of hate will grow stronger and feed on the public’s anger, pain and desperation.”
In another clip here, he calls for us to be true to our better selves and make the American Dream real for all of us.
 |
Become a Fan on Facebook |  |
Follow Us on Twitter |  |
Subscribe to YouTube |  |
Subscribe to Blog RSS | ||||
4 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Our ‘proud immigrant history’ is sadly a history of the exploitation of one immigrant group after another by employers as cheap labor.
Strong job-site immigration law enforcement as well as on-site job safety and labor law enforcement are the only things that will help all of America’s workers see a better future but Labor has been unable to see this is accomplished in any meaningful or significant way, outside of its own membership. Not only that, after literally decades of trying, labor organizations have been unable to organize the non-union workforce and have been lucky to maintain the members they have, especially in the industries where immigrant labor has moved in.
Labor union leaders have embraced the new exploited documented and undocumented immigrant workers as prospective new labor union members even while they couldn’t help the American workers that were once their union members in the industries these immigrant workers now work in.
I agree the documented and undocumented immigrant workers are not the enemy and deserve amnesty (because that is what their employers will walk away with).
However, when Labor leaders fight against job-site immigration law enforcement while knowing this will lead to even more worker abuse and continued loss of union jobs in hopes of wooing the unorganized undocumented workers that probably replaced a union worker, I wonder what these labor leaders like President Richard Trumka are thinking.
You would think, that until they come up with a successful, proven strategy that is organizing the unorganized undocumented immigrant workers so as to help them, they would do what is best for their present American union workers and support the job-site enforcement of immigration laws that prevent exploitation of undocumented workers as they do with enforcement of labor and job safety laws.
I appreciate your contribution to this discussion. It is not shrill or childish, but I disagree with your conclusion. The part I do like is that you treat the idea of organizing the immigrant worker as an important endeavor and challenge for the unions, the success in which would greatly strengthen our ranks. You make the valid implication that taking a position alone will not get the job done.
I want to convince you, however, that this statement of position represents an advance for our struggling union movement. First, it puts before us the elephant in the room – how to organize the immigrant worker? Secondly, it lets all of our immigrant members and their families know that they are loved and valued as equal brothers and sisters, and that unions are here to speak up for the poor and dispossessed.
I do not think your analogy between safety enforcement and immigration enforcement is valid. Opposing police raids on an organized plant, or any plant, is basic to any labor movement anywhere – this is nothing new. In the 20s, immigration laws were used to arrest and deport radicals and union organizers. Should we support drug raids? Drug testing? As a rule, unions oppose these type of creeping police state measures. There is no way the unions can sit by and watch members and their families torn apart, arrested, or deported while they are at work doing their union job. It is assinine not to oppose it on the local level, and it is a good thing that national realizes now that this must be opposed.
I definitely agree that it is up to the leadership to act and not just talk. BE BOLD! INSPIRE US AND WE WILL RIDE A MIGHTY WAVE OF JUSTICE1
Whoa, on the border, I’ve watched for almost 80 years as employers pay the immigrant $1.00 a day and the citizen $2.00 a day (and more as inflation is added). The citizen is angry because the immigrant is willing to accept less, keeping wages depressed, and the immigrant is angry because the citizen makes twice what he does. The only road to true equality is enforcement of our current laws, making those who choose to acknowledge and follow the law, the winners rather than the losers. For most of my lifetime, the construction trades were considered the top of craftsmanship and paid accordingly, then about 20 years or so ago, especially in AZ, illegal aliens were suddenly the carpenters, the electricians, the plumbers, etc., and the building trades no longer had apprenticeships or an equitable mechanism for entering the workforce. Mr. T., please open your eyes. Through your policies, organized labor is being destroyed in American and AZ is an excellent place to go look to find this is true. Sedona, the hangout for rich Americans, is the ideal place to go see that this is true. My daughter lived there for a number of years and we watched as illegal Mexican labor took over the craftsman jobs and suddenly were deported at payday.
I find it a bit hard to take that a person who would likely not have a bit of a problem insisting that a person who is working in a union shop environment have to present evidence that he is a true union member still seems to have a problem having people present serious evidence that they are legally able to work in the US. This makes no sense to me.
I find it also odd that a person who would likely have no problem in determining that a person who has been hired to break a strike for higher wages and better conditions shouldn’t be given preference over union members who have worked and bargained long and hard for these benefits seems to have no problem in allowing people who are not even legally able to work here to be given preference over those who are.
That is what I – and I think ibewdan – are talking about.