Texans Rally for Reform—and Other Health Care News
 |
||||
|
||||
More than 3,000 union members and allies crowded the streets of Austin, Texas, on Saturday to show their support for health care reform.
The demonstrators gathered at the State Capitol to hear from workers, community leaders and lawmakers. AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Emerita Linda Chavez-Thompson got the crowd fired up, and leaders and activists from across the union movement encouraged the crowd to stay mobilized.
U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who voted for the House’s historic health care reform bill a week ago, thanked those present for their activism and said we need to keep fighting to pass real reform legislation. Said Doggett:
We need an engaged citizenry to say we won’t stand for anything less than genuine reform.
Biden: Strong Unions Needed to Build Middle Class
The nation cannot rebuild its middle class without strong unions, Vice President Joe Biden said today. Biden said he and President Obama believe it is impossible to grow the middle class without growing unions.
Biden, who chairs the White House Task Force on Middle Class Families, met with a panel of scholars assembled by the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Economic Policy Institute (EPI) to discuss the challenges facing America’s middle class in the 21st century economy.
At the live webcast event, EPI President Lawrence Mishel said unions set standards in the workplace. Decent standards help ensure “employers are not competing to see who can make the jobs worst, but who can make the products better,” Mishel said.
Join Biden in Live Webcast on the Economy and the Middle Class Today
 |
|
Click here at 10:30 a.m. EST to join Vice President Joe Biden as he hosts a live webcast with a panel of leading scholars to discuss the unique challenges facing America’s middle class in the 21st century economy.
This special Center for American Progress (CAP) and Economic Policy Institute (EPI) event will cover economic developments and trends affecting middle-class families, including changes to the overall labor market in recent decades, shifting gender roles, the need for a work-and-life balance in today’s economy, economic inequality and mobility, and the increased gap between productivity and wages.
Biden is chairman of the White House Task Force on Middle Class Families that President Barack Obama established in January to ensure the administration’s economic recovery effectively raises the living standards of middle-class families and those aspiring to be in the middle class.
Click here to watch.
Workplaces, Laws Fail to Keep up with Growing Role of Women Workers
 |
|
For the first time in our nation’s history, working women make up nearly half of all U.S. workers, and mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families.
This dramatic shift from just a generation ago marks a permanent cultural change, yet most institutions, including the workplace and government have not caught up with this new reality.
“The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything,” released earlier this month by the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Maria Shriver, looks at the changing face and attitudes of the American worker. The multi-faceted report includes a national poll on attitudes about the rising role of women.
Made in America Jobs Tour: Investing in Green Economy Creates Jobs
 |
|
Workers, union leaders and business executives joined Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson today to deliver the message that investing in clean energy not only is good for our environment but also would create millions of good green jobs to rejuvenate the economy and rebuild the nation’s middle class.
Jackson spoke at a rally in Gary, Ind., as part of the nationwide Made in America Jobs Tour sponsored by the Blue Green Alliance and the Alliance for Climate Protection’s Repower America campaign. The tour kicked off Aug. 20 in Cleveland and will involve more than 50 events in 22 states, including rallies in St. Louis, Detroit, Pittsburgh and Gary.
Millions Lose Health Coverage Since Recession and Job-Based Health Care Declines
 |
|
The decline in the share of workers with employer-provided health care, the dramatic increase in the number of workers losing their health insurance along with their jobs, plus reports that employers are planning to shift even more health costs to workers, highlights the desperate need for comprehensive health care reform for all.
(Tell us what you think should be included in comprehensive health care reform. Take the 2009 Health Care for America Survey. The survey gives you the opportunity to make your voice heard and help shape health care reform to meet the needs of working families. Take the survey here.)
According to a new report by the Center for American Progress (CAP), the percentage of workers with employer-provided health care dropped from more than 64 percent in 1999 to just over 59 percent in 2007.
Forty-six million Americans lacked health care coverage in 2007, when the national employment level peaked and before the current economic recession officially began. Today, that number is markedly higher as many workers who have lost their jobs have also lost their employer-provided health insurance.
Clean Energy, Good Jobs Should Go Hand in Hand
 |
|
Twenty-five major leaders from government, business, labor and activist organizations—including AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore—met on Monday to discuss strategies for boosting the nation’s renewable energy production, reducing dependence on foreign oil and ensuring that “green jobs” are quality jobs.
The forum, titled “National Clean Energy Project: Building the New Economy,” was sponsored by the Center for American Progress (CAP). Participants focused on modernizing and expanding the electricity grid, rapidly increasing transmission capacity for renewable energy and reducing dependence on foreign oil by examining short- and long-term solutions to replace foreign oil with domestic resources. Click here for a video of the discussions.
As Sweeney told the participants:
The challenge of clean energy and climate change creates a rare opportunity to do two things at once—meet the challenge of a cleaner planet and at the same time use it to create the good jobs of a new economy. A new U.S. energy strategy can be the foundation of rebuilding the middle class if we ensure that the jobs we create are good, innovative jobs here in our country—and that can then become the foundation of a strong new economy.
Obama Housing Plan ‘Aims Straight at the Heartland’
 |
|
As many as 9 million homeowners who are facing foreclosure or struggling with skyrocketing monthly mortgage payments could save their homes under the terms of a home rescue plan President Obama unveiled yesterday.
When the Bush economy began to tank more than a year ago with banks failing and jobs vanishing, foreclosure signs and abandoned houses began sprouting in working and middle class and even up-scale neighborhoods around the nation. The AFL-CIO first called for a homeowners’ lifeline in late 2007. But the Bush administration preferred to bailout Wall Street instead of throwing a lifeline to Main Street. Says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney:
The swift action by the Obama administration to address the housing crisis is a welcome and refreshing change.
For more than a year, the Bush administration ignored calls from the AFL-CIO and others to address a coming foreclosure tsunami. Tragically, in the months that followed, the deepening housing debacle turned millions of families’ lives upside down and strengthened its chokehold on our economy
No Solar Sweatshops or Wal-Mart Windmills
When it comes to making the connection between how union membership can benefit low-wage workers, create green jobs and, ultimately, bolster the nation’s sinking economy, Ian Kim gets it.
Kim is director of the Green-Collar Jobs Campaign at the Los Angeles-Oakland-based Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. He says President Obama’s economic recovery package offers the opportunity to connect low-wage workers with quality union jobs—quality “green jobs.” In Kim’s words:
We’re not talking about solar sweatshops or Wal-Mart windmills.
14,000 Insured Lose Health Coverage Every Day
 |
|
In December and January, as the nation’s unemployment rate shot upward—hitting 7.6 percent in January—the number of Americans without health insurance neared the 50-million mark.
Some 14,000 people a day, nearly 100,000 a week, lost their health insurance during that two-month span, according to a forthcoming analysis by James Kvaal and Ben Furnas, reports the Center for American Progress’ Wonk Room.
The growing number of working families that are losing their health care coverage highlights the need for swift action on comprehensive health care reform.
