America Wants to Work: Time to Shift Focus to Jobs
AFL-CIO union members and allies will engage in a fall America Wants to Work mobilization to move the national debate from the right wing’s manufactured debt crisis to the nation’s real crisis: jobs.
In a statement released today at its annual August meeting, the AFL-CIO Executive Council said the mobilization will use the lessons learned from this spring’s nationwide We Are One labor-community mobilization and the current Summer Accountability campaign by partnering with allies at the local and national levels to:
create a sense of urgency and focus on challenging the corporate agenda to demand jobs and investment in our communities and for our future.
The council, meeting at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md., said the mobilization will:
focus on jobs that gives voice to the jobless, including unemployed veterans, students who cannot find meaningful work as they enter the labor force and communities of color that have been especially hard hit by the recession and the refusal of corporate America to invest in job creation.
ALPA’s Moak, AFT’s Johnson and SMWIA’s Nigro Named to AFL-CIO Executive Council
 |
||||
 |
||||
 |
||||
|
||||
The AFL-CIO Executive Council welcomed three new members today: Airline Pilots (ALPA) President Capt. Lee Moak, Lorretta Johnson, executive vice president of AFT and Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA) President Joseph Nigro. The Council also honored three retiring members at its annual August meeting, held this year at the National Labor College (NLC) in Silver Spring, Md.
Johnson chairs the AFT Paraprofessionals and School-Related Personnel program and policy council and started her career in 1966 as a teacher’s aide at a Baltimore elementary school. She served as president of the Baltimore Teachers Union’s paraprofessional chapter for 35 years.
Moak joined ALPA in 1988 and is a former Marine Corps fighter pilot and Delta Airlines B-767 300 ER captain. A 22-year veteran at Delta, he served three terms as the chairman of the Delta Master Executive Council (MEC), which represents the more than 12,000 Delta pilots. He was elected ALPA President in October.
Nigro comes to the Council after being elected SMWIA president July 1. He served his apprenticeship from 1969 until 1973 in Boston and held several offices in SMWIA Local 17 before beginning his tenure on the international level as assistant to the president in 1999. He was elected SMWIA secretary-treasurer in 2006.
Recently retired SMWIA President Michael Sullivan, former ALPA President Capt. John Prater, and AFT Vice President Laura Rico are retiring from the Council.
Sullivan, who led the SMWIA since 1999, “has gained a well-deserved reputation as both a progressive firebrand and an organizational problem-solver,” the Council said in a statement.
Obama Says ‘Made in America’ at Heart of U.S. Recovery
 |
|
President Obama today told the AFL-CIO Executive Council, “We are going to keep fighting for an economy that works for everybody, not just a privileged few.” He also said that with the help of working families and their unions,
we are going to rebuild our economy stronger than before, and at the heart of it will be three simple words: made in America.
Speaking on his 49th birthday at the Washington (D.C) Convention Center, the president told the council that this fall’s election is a choice between
polices that encourage job creation here in America or encourage jobs to go elsewhere…The choice is whether we want to go forward or we want to go backwards to the same policies that got us into this mess in the first place.
House Approves Historic Health Care Reform
In a historic vote more than 60 years in the making, the U.S. House of Representatives late Sunday night voted to approve (220-211) what AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka calls a ”momentous step toward comprehensive health care.”
The bill survived a $100 million lie-and-distortion campaign by Big Insurance to kill it—the same kind of tactics these groups have aimed at health care proposals for six decades. Trumka says the bill is not “a baby step or half measure,” but a solid step forward to set our country on a path to health care that actually works for working families.
After personally calling dozens of House members on Friday, Trumka spent the weekend meeting with House members to firm up votes in favor of the bill. On Capitol Hill today, Trumka joined two workers—among the millions in this nation—for whom passage of this health care bill means the difference between food and health care.
After 60 Years, Time to Say ‘Yes’ to Health Care Reform
This afternoon, the AFL-CIO Executive Council said waiting 60 years for health care reform is long enough. Council members agreed to actively support President Obama’s health care bill and called on Congress to pass the legislation, which the U.S. House is set to vote on this Sunday.
Nearly every president since Harry Truman has sought health care reform. But powerful opposition from the insurance industry and others has scuttled each attempt. In a video message to working families, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says:
We can’t miss this opportunity. We’ve been fighting for health care for 60 years. When I look at the years we have put into fighting for health care and what it means to working families to start down the path of comprehensive reform, I know the time to step forward is now.
Jobs Don’t Live Here Anymore
 |
|
The unemployment data is due tomorrow, and it’s likely to be bad, with an expected 300,000 to 320,000 jobs lost in July, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and others. That’s a big problem. But unfortunately, when it comes to getting the nation back to work, tomorrow’s unemployment rate isn’t the biggest problem we face.
What’s really troubling is long-term unemployment.
EPI economists see the economic stimulus as alleviating the jobs crisis created under Bush. In fact, the economic recovery program already has saved or created some 750,000 jobs. Plus, says John Irons, EPI director of research and policy, the gross domestic product (GDP) report last week showing GDP shrunk far less in the second quarter of this year (-1 percent) than the first quarter (-6.4 percent). That means
we’re beginning to see the fingerprints of the economic recovery package.
How to Create American-Made Clean Energy
Rapid growth in green jobs, especially those that create clean and efficient energy, offers huge opportunities to revive American manufacturing and rebuild the nation’s economy. But there’s a hitch: Most of the components for clean energy are manufactured overseas. The United States ranks fifth among countries that manufacture solar components, even though the solar cell originated in America. The fact that other countries are prepared to deliver these products means that new legislation creating demand for renewable energy systems and energy efficiency services actually could create new jobs overseas, even though we have a robust manufacturing infrastructure.
The Apollo Alliance, a coalition of business, labor, environmental and community leaders working to create a clean energy revolution in America, has developed Make It In America: the Apollo Green Manufacturing Action Plan (GreenMAP), a series of policy recommendations aimed at revitalizing America’s manufacturing sector by investing significant federal funding in the domestic manufacture of clean energy components.
Solis Meets Workers of Future
Union workers will play a key role in rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure and revitalizing the economy. Last week, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis saw firsthand how unions are preparing workers to meet the needs of the country now and in the future.
After meeting with the AFL-CIO Executive Council in Miami, Solis toured the Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 349 training center where she met and talked with young workers who are learning the skills that will prepare them for better jobs with a decent wage and benefits. IBEW taped the visit for its news broadcast.
AFL-CIO Urges Stricter Bank Bailout Process, Hails NEA Affiliations
The AFL-CIO Executive Council wrapped up its winter meeting in Miami today, calling for stricter regulation and oversight of the financial industry, urging President Obama to ensure that taxpayers get “fair value” for any additional funds used to bail out the nation’s banks, authorizing continuation of discussions on unifying the labor movement and urging adoption of a global charter of rights for working women.
Also today, the AFL-CIO and the National Education Association (NEA) announced that three more NEA local chapters, with more than 3,000 members, have affiliated with the AFL-CIO under the Solidarity Partnership program. The program is supported by AFT, a long-time AFL-CIO affiliate.
Says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney:
These affiliations show that we are unified and committed to fighting for quality education in our nation’s classrooms.
Biden to AFL-CIO: Employee Free Choice Act Key to Rebuilding Middle Class
 |
||||
|
||||
Vice President Joe Biden told the AFL-CIO Executive Council today that returning our economy to health means restoring the basic right to join a union and bargain collectively. And the way to do that is by passing the Employee Free Choice Act.
He quoted President Obama saying: ‘”I don’t buy the argument that providing workers with collective bargaining rights somehow weakens the economy or worsens the business environment.”
If you’ve got workers who have a decent pay and benefits, they also are customers for your business. So let me add to that and say that I have a simple, basic belief, one that we’re going to work hard to put into action: If a union is what you want, a union you’re entitled to have.
