AFL-CIO, National Immigration Forum Call for Immediate Suspension of Secure Communities in Alabama
This from Brenda Loya in AFL-CIO Media Affairs.
The AFL-CIO and the National Immigration Forum (NIF) sent a joint letter yesterday to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano stressing the urgent need to change the Secure Communities program.
The Secure Communities program, implemented a few years ago by Homeland Security, was created to empower local law enforcement agencies to report undocumented immigrants with criminal records to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. But rather than making America’s communities safer, a recent investigation by the Justice Department confirmed the program has in many instances led to racial profiling.
Trumka Honored for Defending Immigrant Workers, Families
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The United States faces grave immigration and citizenship challenges, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, and the nation must confront those challenges “with a movement to fight against intimidation, and for an economy and a nation that honors the dignity of all workers and our fundamental freedoms every single day.”
Last night, Trumka, who has spoken forcefully and often in support of immigrant workers and immigration reform, received a Hero of Our Communities Award from the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition (PICC).
The group also honored two others with “Hero” awards: Maria Teresa Kumar, founder of Voto Latino and an MSNBC political analyst, and Mia-Lia Kiernan, an organizer with the One Love Movement fighting to defend the rights of Cambodian immigrants facing deportation.
Trumka says the controversy over immigration is centuries old and that “fear, hatred and political division” have been used to pit native-born workers against immigrants and to “distract from urgent economic issues.”
Immigrants are workers, and in the end that’s really all we need to know. Because all working people must stand together and call for practical measures that improve all of our lives.
AFL-CIO: Federal Government Must Cut Ties with Arizona Law Enforcement
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The AFL-CIO and the nation’s largest civil rights coalition issued a strongly worded call for the Obama administration to sever its ties with law enforcement officials in Arizona or be complicit in the state’s racial-profiling anti-immigrant law, also known as S.B. 1070.
In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (LCCR), a coalition of more than 200 organizations, urged the administration to immediately stop cooperating with local law enforcement officials in Arizona.
Bargaining Rights for Airport Screeners Would Help Security
Granting collective bargaining rights to airport screeners and other Transportation Security Agency (TSA) employees would enhance national security, union leaders and Obama administration officials said this week.
Federal border guards, immigration and customs and Federal Protective Service employees are already union members. In an interview with CNN last night, AFGE President John Gage pointed out that union members routinely protect the national security:
No one talked about union when the cops and fire fighters went up the stairs on 9/11 at the World Trade Towers. No one talks about our two members who took down the shooter at Fort Hood. There was nothing in their union membership that stopped them from doing their duties.
Airport Screeners Move Closer to Bargaining Rights
The nation’s 43.000 airport screeners are a big step closer to having the basic freedom to choose a union and bargain collectively. Last week, the House Homeland Security Committee approved legislation that would give transportation security officers (TSOs) the same workplace protections covering other federal employees.
Security screeners in airports around the country are the first line of defense against terrorism in our skies. But they suffer from high injury rates, attrition and low morale, according to the committee.
Although TSOs have been denied the freedom to bargain collectively, AFGE represents 10,000 Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers nationwide and regularly represents these employees before the TSA Disciplinary Review Board, the Equal Opportunity Commission, Congress and in the courts.
Buy American Opponents: Un-American
What do Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have in common?
They both oppose provisions in the economic recovery package that would ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent on products that are made in America-to the maximum extent possible. The Buy America provision survived the recent Senate debate, despite attempts to kill it by someone who consistently wraps himself in the American flag: Sen. John McCain.
In the words of United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard, organizations like the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable “want to give American tax dollars to foreign manufacturers to create jobs overseas.”
