AFT Civil Rights Conference: Help Turn America Around
Public school teachers must work hard to make the nation’s schools places where the suffering of the nation’s children is alleviated. In her keynote address to AFT’s Civil, Human and Women’s Rights conference, Oct. 23-25 in Miami, union President Randi Weingarten said teachers can help turn America around by advocating for change inside and outside the classroom.
Building on the conference theme, “Rise, Advocate, Collaborate, Educate: Our Civil Rights,” Weingarten urged the hundreds of union members and allies to fight for health care reform, affordable housing and after-school activities for students, as well as for tools and resources in the classroom.
Said Weingarten:
We know that it takes a village to raise children. We have to pull in partners and fight to ensure that parents and children get the services they need.
Government Grows the Economy
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Economist Jeff Madrick, director of policy research at The New School’s Bernard Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis, is among several key speakers at next week’s Building the New Economy conference here in Washington, D.C. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard also are among keynote speakers. Here, Madrick shares with us why government involvement in the economy is essential to ensure a robust, successful nation.
America had been living a free-market myth for a generation until the credit crisis of 2008 and 2009 descended on the nation—and the world. One expression of that myth, found frequently on the editorial pages of the popular media, was that government does not grow economies, business does. In other words, government, don’t meddle where you’re not needed. Politicians are even easier to belittle than government itself.
Jobs Crisis Will Affect Young Workers for a Lifetime, More Recovery Aid Needed
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Speaking at the second and final day of the Demos conference, A Better Deal 2009, Algernon Austin, an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), said the U.S. economy was failing young people long before the current recession was officially declared. He called the prospects for young workers “bleak” and said the nation needs additional investment in recovery.
Even before the recession, we had a very weak economy in terms of job growth, economic growth—it was one of the historically weakest periods for job growth—and now we’ve been hit with the hardest recession we’ve seen since the Great Depression. For young people, this impact has been particularly difficult.
Holt Baker in New Mexico: Protect the Most Vulnerable
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Around the country, states are getting squeezed by the economic crisis, and state budgets are feeling the pressure. It’s imperative that we fight to make sure state budgets are not balanced at the expense of children and the services they need.
Today, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker is in New Mexico, leading a rally of more than 2,800 people to ensure a just budget that protects children and vital public services.
Standing with New Mexico Federation of Labor president Christine Trujillo, Santa Fe Mayor David Coss and four state legislators, Holt Baker said the proposal for big cuts in the education budget will cost the state jobs and competitiveness in the future.
New Mexico’s schools, universities and state agencies could face 3.5 percent cuts in funding, and employees could face pay cuts as well, as legislators seek to avoid a $650 million deficit. Holt Baker said the cuts to education will fall most heavily on families already reeling from the economic crisis.
D.C. Families, Trumka Demand Respect for Teachers
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Thousands of students, parents, teachers and community members from across Washington, D.C., converged on the district’s Freedom Plaza yesterday afternoon to rally in support of hundreds of laid-off teachers.
Nearly 400 school employees have been laid off as a result of controversial decisions by D.C. school chancellor Michelle Rhee. The layoffs include 229 classroom teachers, many of them veterans. The Washington Teachers’ Union (WTU) has protested the layoffs, saying that many teachers have been targeted for their age and that the firings are poorly timed and an attempt to undermine the teachers’ contract.
At yesterday’s rally, reports Chris Garlock of the Metropolitan Washington Council, D.C. residents and students of all ages spoke out strongly in support of their teachers. It was one of the largest labor rallies in recent memory in the District. At the rally it was announced that a delegation of teachers sought to present to Mayor Adrian Fenty with a statement in opposition to the layoffs, but Fenty’s assistant wouldn’t even come to the door to accept it.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called the firings “a cold hard case of union busting,” and said that union members across the city stand in solidarity with fired teachers:
The labor movement is right here with you. We’ll stand shoulder to shoulder with you for as long as it takes.
Few Jobs for Young Workers Part of a Long-Term Trend
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| Algernon Austin, Economic Policy Institute |
If you’re under age 25 and looking for a job, you’re going to have a much tougher time than your older brother or sister did in 1999. Then, 60 percent of 16-24-year-olds had a job. Today, just 48 percent do, the lowest rate of young worker employment since World War II.
Young workers are twice as likely to be unemployed as the overall population—18 percent, compared with the overall unemployment rate of 9.7 percent. The jobless rate soars to 27.3 percent for young African American workers and 21.3 percent for Hispanic workers.
(For more on the economic struggles of a broader group of young workers—under age 35, see our AFL-CIO report, “Young Workers a Lost Decade).”
This morning at a House Education and Labor Committee hearing examining job and economic problems of 20-something workers, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) warned:
It is clear that the drop in employment is not just the result of a sudden shock to the system, but is part of a larger trend. You cannot ignore the fact that 20 percent fewer young workers are participating in the labor market.
The consequences of reduced work opportunities among young Americans mean fewer long-term employment prospects, less earnings and decreased productivity….If these dramatic trends are not reversed, our nation faces the potential of a generation of youth disconnected from the job market.
Jobs with Justice Week of Action: Demanding Real Economic Recovery
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This week marks the one-year anniversary of the Wall Street bailout, and Jobs with Justice (JwJ) is launching a Week of Action to demand that the banks use our taxpayer dollars to finance the recovery and not their own corporate agenda.
During the Sept. 24-Oct. 1 week of action, working people will join with students, activists, community leaders and others across the country to highlight Big Banks’ misuse of tax dollars. So far, few of the billions in taxpayer money that went to Big Banks have reached Main Street. Instead, executives of banks that were bailed out with taxpayer dollars have lined their pockets with stock options that guarantee them huge windfalls for years. While they get richer, they have laid off more than 160,000 employees since Jan. 1, 2008.
To top it all off, Bank of America, which received $45 billion in taxpayer-funded bailout support, has spent more than $1.5 million lobbying on Capitol Hill against the reforms that would protect consumers from a future financial crisis, such as restrictions on executive compensation, home mortgage lending and credit card fees. The bank also is lobbying on a consumer rights bill, on student lending issues, on a bill that would’ve allowed bankruptcy judges to alter mortgages and on a proposed federal regulatory oversight agency.
New Jersey: Get the Latest News on Chris Christie
Every day, it seems there are new developments in the race for New Jersey governor. Candidate Chris Christie, a longtime Bush political appointee, has been the subject of close scrutiny in the state and voters want to know the real story.
You can get all the latest news about Chris Christie and the race for New Jersey governor at The Real Chris Christie, a project of the New Jersey State AFL-CIO. The newest feature at the site is a news feed that pulls in the latest headlines about Christie, including:
- Christie’s possibly illegal pledge to give former Bush-era federal colleagues state jobs;
- An undisclosed $46,000 loan from Christie to an aide while he was serving as U.S. Attorney; and
- Christie’s conversations with fellow Bush political operative Karl Rove about a run for governor—while he was still serving as U.S. Attorney.
In addition, The Real Chris Christie site looks at where the candidate stands on issues like the economy, health care, education and workers’ rights.
The election is little more than three months away, so it’s time to take a close look at Christie’s record and actions. Check out The Real Chris Christie for the latest developments.
LabourStart: AFT Reaches Out at Home, Around the World
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On the second day of the LabourStart conference, participants got to hear from AFT this afternoon about the challenges facing teachers in the United States and around the world.
David Dorn, director of the AFT International Affairs Department, said the AFT long has been interested in reaching out around the world. One of the most important projects in which AFT has been engaged is the AFT-Africa AIDS Program. African teachers unions with which AFT has built relationships have been affected by the AIDS crisis, as their members, their students and their students’ families and communities have been devastated by the spread of HIV and AIDS.
AFT is using organizing techniques to educate teachers in South Africa and other countries about AIDS, primarily through teacher-to-teacher education aimed at breaking the silence that surrounds AIDS and connecting people to information, counseling, testing and treatment.
Woodard Tapped to Lead School Administrators
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Diann Woodard is the new president of the School Administrators (AFSA). She was elected last week by delegates to the union’s constitutional convention, in Washington, D.C.
Woodard becomes the sixth AFSA president and succeeds Jill Levy, who held the post since 2006. AFSA represents more than 20,000 school principals, assistant principals and other supervisors and education professionals in the United States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Woodard says the union’s main goal is improving wages, hours and working conditions.
We want to gain the right to collectively bargain for those who do not have it. And we want to improve the contracts for those affiliates who have contracts…we want to help train leaders so that they can build and maintain strong local unions.
For the past three years, Woodard was the union’s executive vice president and has served as AFSA secretary-treasurer. The former assistant principal at two Detroit high schools says she first learned about unions and workers rights’ growing up in a UAW family in Michigan.
