American Rights at Work Honors Sweeney, Employee Free Choice Champions
 |
||||
|
||||
AFL-CIO President Emeritus John Sweeney received the top honor at last night’s 5th annual American Rights at Work Eleanor Roosevelt Awards for his long-term dedication on behalf of workers’ freedom to form unions.
Business Leaders for a Fair Economy and “West Wing” actor Richard Schiff also were recognized at last night’s event in Washington, D.C., where hundreds of labor activists and our allies gathered to celebrate their outstanding leadership.
Sweeney credited the union members, activists and advocacy groups who make up the coalition for making real progress on the Employee Free Choice Act:
You are the front-line fighters for social and economic justice, working towards a better future for America’s working families.
Speakers noted the tough fight ahead for passage of the bill but said we are closer than ever to passing the Employee Free Choice Act and making sure that the freedom to form a union and bargain for a better life is a reality.
Silvers: We Need Comprehensive Financial Reform
AFL-CIO Director of Policy Damon Silvers has a prescription for moving our economy forward: Make the financial sector the servant of the real economy—not its master.
Silvers debated American Bankers Association President Edward Yingling on the need for financial reform in a hard-fought discussion at the Aspen Institute yesterday, and the differences between the two were most apparent when it comes to protecting consumers and applying stronger rules to banks, credit cards and the mortgage industry.
Silvers, who sits on the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), says we cannot allow the financial industry to drive our economy into the ground again. We must have new, tough regulations that protect consumers and put the financial sector to work for the real economy. And we absolutely can’t bail out the CEOs and stockholders of failed banks.
Canada’s Experts Skewer Shoddy Study on Employee Free Choice
Opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act often claim the legislation would hurt employment. They base that falsehood on a study paid for by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its cronies, which purports to examine the effects of majority sign-up on the labor market in Canada.
Now, a devastating new critique shows the bought-and-paid-for “study,” by consultant Anne Layne-Farrar, is “misleading and poorly supported”—and that’s the nicest thing they could find to say. Just Labour, the Canadian labor-studies journal, features a series of articles on the Layne-Farrar piece by the experts who best know Canada’s labor market.
Among them, Noreen Pupo, director of the Center for Research on Work and Society at York University, says:
We refute efforts by business lobbyists opposing the [Employee Free Choice] Act to manipulate Canadian data and experience for purposes of defeating any strengthening of collective bargaining systems in the U.S. The vested interest of these business lobbyists in the continued erosion of collective bargaining in America has led them to misrepresent the Canadian experience.
Trumka: Jobs Crisis—Fix It Now
 |
|
Today at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and other leaders joined together to call for urgent action to create jobs and rebuild the economy.
In a live webcast panel discussion, the consensus was clear: Without quick action, an entire generation could be mired in economic turmoil. The nation can, and must, put people back to work—while addressing critical needs for the future of our communities.
The scale of the jobs crisis is obvious: Since the beginning of the recession, more than 8 million jobs have been lost. The official unemployment rate is at 10.2 percent, with more than 26 million unemployed or underemployed. These figures are even more severe among African American and Latino communities. Young people are at risk of permanently stunted opportunity, and the jobs crisis is rebounding throughout the country with increased hunger and poverty, massive numbers of home foreclosures and diminished access to health care.
Trumka to Launch Jobs Initiative Tomorrow
 |
|
Tomorrow morning, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will announce a major new initiative to create and save jobs.
(Watch the live webcast at www.aflcio.org/createjobs starting at 9 a.m.)
Trumka will be part of a noted panel in “Spotlight on the Jobs Crisis” at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
With unemployment at its highest rate in more than 20 years, Trumka says America needs bold, quick action to put people back to work, in addition to longer term, structural fixes for our economy. The AFL-CIO initiative he announces will include calls to extend help for the unemployed, rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, provide aid to struggling states and communities, create federally funded community-based jobs and increase lending to small and medium-sized businesses to spur job creation.
Union Retirees Celebrate Labor History in New Play
 |
|
In the midst of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, two Missouri union retirees are stepping back into history to look at the lessons of the Great Depression in a new play.
This weekend and next weekend, “1937! One Hell of a Year” is playing at the Just Off Broadway Theatre in Kansas City, Mo. Written by AFGE 1336 retiree Bill Clause and directed by AFT 691 retiree Judy Clause, the show is a musical history of economic, racial and gender struggles during the Depression and the role of the union movement in rebuilding America.
Unions Can Help Create Good Jobs for People of Color
 |
||||
|
||||
Increasing union membership is one of the keys to creating more good jobs for all workers, but especially for people of color and those in low-wage jobs, several experts said today. Many of the 8.1 million jobs lost during the current recession have been good jobs, including union jobs in manufacturing. The jobs now created, mainly in the service sector, are less likely to provide what working families need.
In a new report released today, Algernon Austin, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s (EPI’s) program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy, says the United States has too few good jobs. He defines a good job as one with a wage that can support a family, health care benefits and retirement security. Using that minimal standard, Austin found that Hispanics are less than half as likely as non-Hispanic whites to have good jobs, and African Americans about two-thirds as likely.
Obama Announces White House Jobs Summit
 |
|
This morning, President Obama announced he will invite labor leaders, business executives, small business owners, economists and other financial experts to a special White House summit on jobs next month.
Obama says the summit will explore ways to slow the loss of jobs and quicken the pace of job creation at a time when the nation’s jobless rate is at 10.2 percent, its highest point since 1983. As Obama said,
We have an obligation to consider every additional responsible step that we can to encourage and accelerate job creation in this country.
Just this week, the AFL-CIO Executive Council met in Washington, D.C., to outline a national jobs creation strategy that AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will announce Tuesday at a special Economic Policy Institute (EPI) jobs and economy panel and seminar. (Plan now to view the live webcast from 9-11:30 a.m., Tuesday, Nov. 17, at www.aflcio.org/createjobs.)
Obama Signs Unemployment Insurance Extension
Long-term jobless workers finally have some relief, with President Barack Obama signing legislation today to provide up to 20 extra weeks of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits for workers who exhaust their benefits before finding new work. The bill had been held up for almost six weeks as Senate Republicans blocked several attempts to bring it to a vote.
Obama’s signature came just hours after it was announced the nation’s unemployment rate had soared to 10.2 percent in October, from 9.8 percent in September.
The legislation provides an additional 14 weeks of benefits to unemployed workers in all states and an additional six weeks for jobless workers in states with an unemployment rate of 8.5 percent or higher.
Unemployment Insurance Must Be Extended for Struggling Workers
With 26 million U.S. workers unemployed or underemployed, and the long-term jobless rate the highest since 1981—hundreds of thousands of struggling workers need relief. The U.S. Senate is expected to take action next week on an extension of unemployment insurance (UI).
Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says struggling workers will receive a much-needed boost from the UI extension—and workers whose UI has already run out will see it resume:
Our proposal from the outset has been simple: Let’s support those families who have been hardest hit by the recession. In the almost three weeks since Republicans first began to delay this measure, over 150,000 Americans have lost their unemployment benefits. Those Americans, and the thousands of others who will lose their benefits if we don’t act, need us to act now. It cannot be overstated how critical this assistance is to workers.
