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.
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.
Momentum Building to Repeal Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant Law
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Momentum continues to build for repeal of Arizona’s new anti-immigrant law and as AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says: The law is not only an affront to American values of fairness and respect for the U.S. Constitution—it “severely undermines workers’ rights.”
Any employer faced with Latino workers’ complaints—in the form of a picket or a lawsuit—can simply call the police and have workers arrested under the guise of “reasonable suspicion.” The law’s chilling effect is all too clear.
The law requires a police officer to demand proof of immigration status when the officer has “reasonable suspicion” to believe the person is not authorized to be in the United States, regardless of whether he or she is suspected of a crime. The law puts Arizona’s entire Latino population—the great majority of whom are U.S. citizens or legal residents—at risk of arrest, Trumka said.
AFGE Files for TSA Election; Rally for Workers’ Rights Set for Tomorrow
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The 41,000 transportation security officers (TSO) at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) are a step closer to winning the collective bargaining rights they have been denied since 2003.
Today, AFGE filed a petition with the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) for an election to allow the TSOs to vote on union representation. More than 30 percent of the TSOs nationwide support the AFGE petition. In 2003, the Bush administration stripped the workers of collective bargaining rights. Says AFGE President John Gage:
We have always known that the choice to unionize and the task of winning collective bargaining rights for the TSA workforce would be a two-part process. While it would be ideal for a TSA administrator to have granted collective bargaining rights first, the two do not have to go hand-in-hand. By settling the question of representation first, AFGE will be ready to begin negotiations as soon as the bargaining rights are established.
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.
