Support Keeps Coming for NLRB Rule Change
Support continues to pour in for the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB’s) proposed rule designed to ensure a fair process for workers who want to vote on whether to form a union. Congressional leaders and civil rights and faith groups have joined working people and workers’ rights advocates in voicing their support for Tuesday’s proposed election rule changes from the NLRB.
Here are a few of the people and organizations who’ve weighed in so far in support of the rule change:
Sen. Barbara Boxer (Calif.):
The current union election system is badly broken and breeds fear in the workplace. It’s no secret that expensive litigation and intimidation are often used to prevent employees from forming a union and negotiating for fair wages and benefits. The NLRB’s proposed rules will instill fairness for both employers and workers by ensuring a fair, timely vote.
Protesters Spread the News: Keep Hands Off Medicare
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About 100 working men and women told congressional Republicans to “Keep Your Hands off Medicare” Monday in front of the Newseum in Washington, D.C., where CBS was hosting a town hall meeting with members of Congress.
Holding signs with headlines from various newspapers about the Republican budget’s proposal to replace Medicare with underfunded vouchers for private insurance, the protesters lined up and unfurled a banner that read, “No News Here…Republicans Want to Eliminate Medicare to Give Tax Breaks to Millionaires.”
Passers-by honked horns along busy Pennsylvania Avenue at lunchtime, tourists walking by gave the demonstrators the thumbs-up sign and one woman pushing a stroller invited the protesters to move to Canada where she lives “because we have health care there.”
90 Students Graduate from National Labor College
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Doug Swanson, a teacher from Wisconsin, spent 12 years working to earn a college degree while coping with his wife’s illness and three job changes that required moving to two different states.
Deborah Thiri, a Burmese refugee now living in Los Angeles, was finally able to come to the United States and get an education.
But now, Swanson and Thiri are college graduates. This past weekend, they joined 88 other union members who received degrees during the National Labor College’s (NLC‘s) 12th commencement.
Economy and Jobs at Heart of Working-Class Anger
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Working America’s canvassers knock on some 25,000 doors a week in neighborhoods across the country to talk with working people about the economy, jobs, health care, Wall Street reform and more. And, says Working America Executive Director Karen Nussbaum:
Glenn Beck is often on the other side of that screen door.
The flame-fanning influence of extremist media monsters like Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News’s hard right news coverage are often cited as the engine driving what is undeniably a growing working-class anger.
But, as panelists at a special AFL-CIO and Working America forum explored today, it isn’t Beck’s bellowing or Rush’s ranting that’s really behind that anger—they’re just exploiting it.
Working people are mad about an economy that’s punished them with vanishing jobs and lost homes and rewarded Wall Street with bailouts and bonuses while they see a government that doesn’t seem capable of fixing what’s gone wrong or holding anyone accountable. Says Nussbaum:
They’re worried about jobs, they’re angry at Wall Street and they don’t trust the government.
But will the far-right be able to continue to exploit people’s legitimate economic anger into ballot-box victory in the fall elections and move the nation down an extremist path marked with divisive social issues and pro-corporate, free-for-all economy?
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told the nearly 200 people attending the Working Class at the Tipping Point forum at the AFL-CIO here in Washington, D.C.:
It’s up to us to continue to educate, it’s up to us to continue to give people hope…to channel that anger to a positive direction….We’ve e been successful in the past when we give people economic facts, union members stuck together while the other side tried to use divisive social issues to tear us apart.
Progressives Set for America’s Future Now Conference, June 7–9
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More than a year into the Obama administration and with November elections just ahead, progressive activists will gather June 7–9 in Washington, D.C., to forge a strategy to build a majority for real change in America.
The America’s Future Now conference, sponsored by the Campaign for America’s Future (CAF), traditionally is the largest gathering of progressives in the country. There’s still time to register for the conference. Register now here or click on the America’s Future Now icon above.
Grassroots activists and policy-wonk analysts have gathered at the campaign’s conferences each year for six years to forge an economic agenda for change—and the organizing strategies for taking that agenda to the country.
Working Class Anger: Tip to the Right or Left?
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The angry working class—the good folks between the two coasts who live in what elitist pundits dub as ”Fly-Over Land”—are certainly getting a lot of TV face time, dead tree ink and blogosphere attention.
Most of the conventional wisdom paints them as part of a populist uprising, angry at the economy, distrustful of the government and, if not members of the ”Tea Party,” firmly planted on the right side of the political spectrum.
But let’s face it: Who wouldn’t be angry with an economy that’s lost 11 million jobs largely due to Wall Street’s reckless actions? What sane Americans wouldn’t be upset after working hard and playing by the rules for years only to see incomes fall and dreams of retirement security fade?
But does that mean this populist wave embraces the kind of corporate free-for-all, you’re-on-your-own economic philosophy of the Republican right, or the even-further-right fringe groups?
Sweeney Receives Lifetime Leadership Award at America’s Future Now!
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The Campaign for America’s Future awarded AFL-CIO President John Sweeney its Lifetime Leadership Award last night in a gala dinner that capped the first two days of the three-day America’s Future Now! conference in Washington, D.C. In presenting the award, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin noted how Sweeney’s commitment to working families began when, working as a caddy at a golf course, the teenage Sweeney organized a work-stoppage for a wage increase.
Hosted by Rep. Donna Edwards (Md.) and the Campaign’s Roger Hickey, the tribute also featured a short video with highlights of Sweeney’s life and events from his years as a union leader—from creating the nationwide Justice for Janitors campaign, while president of SEIU, to spearheading the now 2.5-million member AFL-CIO community affiliate Working America.
Sweeney called his 55 years of service to working families an honor and noted that when he steps down as president in September he does not plan to retire but will carry on as a “union warrior at large.”
I have been privileged to…represent the millions and millions of working families who make our country so extraordinary. Serving working people is the biggest honor anyone could have. I have been so fortunate to do this work—and now what a great future we are facing together.
As Durbin stated, the efforts by the AFL-CIO union movement with Sweeney as leader were critical to the election of President Barack Obama and a host of working family lawmakers in the U.S. House and Senate.
