New AFL-CIO Campaign Highlights How ‘Work Connects Us All’
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Viewers in Austin, Texas, and Pittsburgh are getting the first public look at a new AFL-CIO television spot, “Work Connects Us All: America’s Unions.”
The evocative ad features members of many unions, from virtually every industry, and is part of a broad campaign that aims to “fly above the tactics and controversies of the day” and connects with people around the values associated with work, according to AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler.
Rounding out the campaign’s features are social media and online ads, and a dynamic, interactive website, www.WorkConnectsUsAll.org.
The campaign emerges along with an expanding national awareness of the divide between the 99 percent and the economically privileged, and the recognition that the middle class is declining. Efforts in some states to take away rights of working people to come together in unions have given rise to a growing recognition of the bonds shared by working people.
Key lines from the TV spot, which is airing in English and Spanish, include:
And as work changes, we change with it. Work doesn’t separate; it’s what binds us together. I teach your kid, you fix my car, he builds my city, she keeps it safe…work connects us all.
Overtime Rule Proposed For Home Care Workers
Home care workers will have a measure of justice if a rule proposed by the Dept. of Labor goes into effect.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka applauded the proposed rule, which will extend federal minimum wage and overtime protections to the growing home care workforce:
“The Department of Labor’s proposed rule is a long-overdue matter of basic justice for the hundreds of thousands of workers who do the vital work of providing at-home care for our nation’s elderly and disabled citizens. Every person deserves fair pay for a hard day’s work. This rule ensures home health care workers receive the same minimum wage and overtime protections as virtually all other working people.”
Home care workers have been excluded from wage and hour protections since 1974 due to over-broad regulations and a hostile Supreme Court decision. As reported in USA Today, more than 90 percent of home care workers are women, while 50 percent are minorities. Some 40 percent rely on Medicaid, food stamps and other benefits to stay afloat.
Home care workers’ services will be increasingly critical as the population ages, yet they earn an average $17,000 to $20,000 a year.
Added Trumka:
“The proposed rule is a win-win for consumers and the home care workforce. Improved working conditions will attract new workers to this quickly-growing industry while reducing turnover among existing employees. This will allow more families the choice of home-based care as a long-term care option.”
Coalition to Congress: No Corporate Tax Holiday
What’s that saying about death and taxes? For multinational corporations, nothing is certain except a permanent campaign to avoid paying their fair share.
The AFL-CIO and hundreds of member-organizations of the FACT Coalition have signed an open letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, urging them to reject calls for a “repatriation tax holiday.”
With help from Republican lawmakers, the holiday would allow the multinationals to bring home offshore profits at a reduced tax rate. It would benefit a few corporations, their executives and their shareholders, at the expense of everyone else.
They’ve tried it before, in 2004, touting the measure as a job-creator. But it failed miserably: many of the companies that benefited the most actually reduced their U.S. employment. And the prospect of repeated holidays—this year and into the future—only encourages corporations to be even more aggressive in moving jobs and profits offshore.
Read more here.
As Unemployment Aid Sets to Expire, Jobless Worker Says: ‘All of Us Need to Stand Together’
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| Terry Maile |
Terry Maile’s supervisor called her into a conference room with all of her co-workers to hear the news: It was their last day of employment at Level 3 Communications in Pittsburgh.
That was it. The jobs were gone to India.
“I couldn’t stop crying,” said Maile, a divorced mother of one, who until that moment had spent her professional life as a telecommunications worker before being laid off first by Verizon and then by Level 3.
Even then, Maile said, she still believed in the American Dream.
You’ve got to work hard… work hard.
Maile owned her own home. Although she had been forced to liquidate her retirement after the Verizon layoff, she had begun to build it back up. Then came the Level 3 layoff. It shook her to her core.
That was my defining moment. I was filling out paperwork, and I couldn’t help it…. I was just crying and crying. I said, ‘They don’t understand…. We’re all interconnected.’
Ten years ago, back when Maile worked at Verizon, she earned $75,000 a Read the rest of this entry »
Voices from Immigrant Alabama: Scared Workers, Conflicted Families
More from Alabama, where a delegation of African American labor and civil rights leaders is investigating the state’s recently passed anti-immigrant law. Follow the delegation here.
DREAMer activist Victor Palafox took a delegation of national labor leaders and community and faith activists on a tour of a trailer park in Pelham, Ala., about 15 minutes from Birmingham, to give them a taste of how Alabama’s H.B. 56, which is one of the most punishing anti-immigrant state laws in America, hurts typical working people.
“My name is Pedro,” said one young man who spoke to the delegation in a community center in the park.
I don’t speak English very well because I’ve spent my time working. I work for a cleaning company. Ever since the law, my employer has used derogatory language and threatened not to pay me. I can’t leave. I have to work to feed my family.
People were nervous to come forward to talk to the delegation for fear that the news coverage Read the rest of this entry »
Alabama Deli Owner, Businesses Stand Strong for Immigrant Rights
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More from Alabama, where a delegation of African American labor and civil rights leaders is investigating the state’s recently passed anti-immigrant law. Follow the delegation here.
Alabama’s new anti-immigrant law instantly intimidated the nine Latino employees of Max’s Delicatessen, owned by Steve Dubrinsky, who says:
They are good solid people, and I don’t like how they feel right now.
Dubrinsky also quickly adds:
They’re all here legally.
His qualifying statement has become obligatory for everyone in Alabama these days who mentions an employee, friend or family member who’s Latino.
Dubrinsky wants that to change. Today, he hosted a group of local business owners to meet with African American union and civil rights leaders from as far away as Michigan and Washington, D.C., to enable owners to talk about Read the rest of this entry »
Poet Laureate Levine: I Do Believe in People
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Introducing the nation’s poet laureate, Philip Levine, yesterday, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka described his poetry as cutting through false language and ”unflinching” in exposing the ”raw realities around us.”
In lifting up the truth in our lives, Trumka said, Levine:
“writes about what it is to be human, which is to say that he writes about labor and dignity and the heart of the human condition.”
Levine, who gave a reading of his poetry at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., is best known for his visceral depictions of working life and his volume, “What Work Is.” He has authored 20 collections of poetry, won a Pulitzer Prize, two National Book Awards, two National Book Critic Circle Awards and received many other honors. He also taught literature and creative writing at California State University, Fresno, for 30 years.
His poems, not easily excerpted, are best read in their entirety, as with his most oft-quoted poem, “What Work Is,” which he read here during the gathering (see video, above). Asked about his source for inspiration during these difficult economic times, Levine offered a sage’s view:
In a way, times have always been hard.
Levine went on to say his inspiration is his memory—of the factory work he experienced in Detroit beginning at age 14 and, most of all, of the people who made those tedious, dirty jobs bearable. The workers who fill his poems carry with them the hope and perseverence that Read the rest of this entry »
Bank of America’s Unconscionable Debit Card Fee Grab
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The Big Banks still don’t get it. Bank of America recently announced that it will start charging its customers $5 per month to use their debit cards. Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase are considering similar fees on their customers.
For many workers, debit cards have replaced credit cards as a more affordable way to make purchases with their money. Unlike credit cards that carry high interest rates on their balances, debit card transactions transfer money directly from customers’ bank accounts like writing a check.
The Big Banks claim that these new fees are necessary because the Federal Reserve cut the amount that banks can charge merchants each time their customers swipe a debit card. These so-called “swipe fees” are passed on to customers in the form of higher prices. Read the rest of this entry »
AFL-CIO President Trumka Visits Occupy Wall Street
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More than 800 Occupy Wall Street protests have sprung up across the nation, from Washington, D.C., to yes, Occupy Missoula (Mont.). While Republican Rep. Eric Cantor has called the protestors “mobs,” President Obama said yesterday the protests show a “broad-based frustration” among Americans about the U.S. financial system. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is in New York City today to meet with Occupy Wall Street protestors. He brought along bagels and water for the protestors, and since he’s a big reader, he first stopped by the ”library” at Occupy Wall Street (see video).
Trumka at Take Back the American Dream Conference: ‘Bring It On!’
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Dave Johnson, a fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future, sends us this.
At the Take Back the American Dream conference this afternoon, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka described the unequal economic situation in the country today, saying:
Think about it: Bank of America, which makes about $1 billion a month, announces it’s going to charge customers $5 a month to use their own money to shop with their debit cards. Mind you this is the financial giant that paid its global banking and markets president nearly $30 million last year—and this year turned around and announced it’s going to fire 30,000 workers!
Trumka told the audience that the right wing is “banking on an upside-down America for its path to political power.” He described the right’s four-part plan:
