Biden: Strong Unions Needed to Build Middle Class
The nation cannot rebuild its middle class without strong unions, Vice President Joe Biden said today. Biden said he and President Obama believe it is impossible to grow the middle class without growing unions.
Biden, who chairs the White House Task Force on Middle Class Families, met with a panel of scholars assembled by the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Economic Policy Institute (EPI) to discuss the challenges facing America’s middle class in the 21st century economy.
At the live webcast event, EPI President Lawrence Mishel said unions set standards in the workplace. Decent standards help ensure “employers are not competing to see who can make the jobs worst, but who can make the products better,” Mishel said.
Join Biden in Live Webcast on the Economy and the Middle Class Today
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Click here at 10:30 a.m. EST to join Vice President Joe Biden as he hosts a live webcast with a panel of leading scholars to discuss the unique challenges facing America’s middle class in the 21st century economy.
This special Center for American Progress (CAP) and Economic Policy Institute (EPI) event will cover economic developments and trends affecting middle-class families, including changes to the overall labor market in recent decades, shifting gender roles, the need for a work-and-life balance in today’s economy, economic inequality and mobility, and the increased gap between productivity and wages.
Biden is chairman of the White House Task Force on Middle Class Families that President Barack Obama established in January to ensure the administration’s economic recovery effectively raises the living standards of middle-class families and those aspiring to be in the middle class.
Click here to watch.
Symposium to Tackle Challenge of Putting America Back to Work
The contrast is staggering: While Wall Street celebrates record earnings for the fat cats at the top financial firms, the reality on Main Street is that more than one in six working Americans is now unemployed or underemployed.
In the midst of this jobless “recovery,” leading policymakers and experts will gather to discuss how public policy should respond to this unprecedented unemployment crisis at the conference, “The Jobs Deficit: The Challenge of Putting America Back to Work.” The New America Foundation’s Bernard L. Schwartz Economic Symposium is sponsoring the discussion Oct. 20 in Washington, D.C.
For more information and to register for the symposium, click here.
Union Members Ramp Up Mobilization for New Jersey Election
Vice President Joe Biden came to New Jersey yesterday and joined AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler to mobilize union members for the Nov. 3 election. In less than four weeks, New Jersey voters will hit the polls in this critical election for governor. And every day between now and then, union volunteers will hit the streets and the phones to educate union voters about the stakes in the race between Gov. Jon Corzine and his opponent, Chris Christie.
The New Jersey State AFL-CIO has endorsed Corzine and made his re-election a top priority this fall. On issues like education, health care and jobs, Corzine has the right priorities for New Jersey’s working families, while Chris Christie, who got a political appointment from George W. Bush after serving as a major fundraiser, would take the state in the wrong direction.
Employee Free Choice Act Backers Out by the Hundreds of Thousands This Summer
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More than 150,000 union members and supporters turned out for events, rallies, parades and picnics in recent days, to show their support for the Employee Free Choice Act, federal legislation that would level the playing field for workers seeking to form unions and bargain for a better life.
In a letter to the Baton Rouge Advocate, Michael Day, a member of the Plumbers and Pipe Fitters (UA) in Louisiana, writes that in the face of more than 25,000 acts of discrimination against employees trying to form a union every year, Congress must pass the Employee Free Choice Act:
I can’t understand a good Democrat having a problem supporting a bill such as the Employee Free Choice Act that levels the playing field between employees and corporations and puts the choice of joining or not joining a union in the hands of working men and women.
I voted for change that I could believe in, not change that I can’t notice.
The Employee Free Choice Act: From 2003 to Today
Members of Congress soon will cast votes that show us where they stand on the Employee Free Choice Act. As key senators engage in negotiations over the bill, supporters of workers’ freedom to form unions aren’t backing down on three key principles:
* Workers need to have a real choice to form a union and bargain for a better life, free from intimidation.
* We have to stop the endless delays and make sure workers can get a fair first contract.
* There have to be real penalties for violating the law.
Over the past few months, opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act have more than once declared the bill dead, but in fact we’re still working hard to to ensure labor law reform happens this year. We’ve come along way from where we were several years ago.
Biden: ‘We Can’t Achieve a Middle Class Without a Strong Labor Movement’
Unions and their members will be a “gigantic part of the solution” to rebuilding the middle class, Vice President Joe Biden told the 3,000 delegates to the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department’s (BCTD) legislative conference.
Biden, speaking via videotape yesterday, told representatives of the 13 BCTD unions:
Welcome back to the table, it’s about time after eight years….We now have people on the Hill, we now have people in the White House who care a lot about you and respect you….For too many years we had a leadership in this country that dealt the middle class out of the American dream. We’re going to change that. We’re going to deal the middle class back in and you’re a big, big reason why….We can’t achieve a strong middle class without a strong labor movement. In this administration we know you are not the problem. You are a gigantic part of the solution.
Pelosi: Congress Committed to Passing Employee Free Choice
Congress is “committed to passing the Employee Free Choice Act” and President Obama is “ready to sign it into law,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi today told more than 3,000 union members and leaders from 13 unions at the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD) in Washington, D.C.
According to The Hill blog, Pelosi told delegates to the BCTD’s 2009 Legislative Conference:
Our work in Congress is based on two truths: America’s economy is only as strong as America’s middle class; America’s middle class is only as strong as America’s unions.
Biden to AFSCME: America’s Workers Should Get a Union If They Want One
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The Obama administration is committed to leveling the playing field for workers and giving them the bargaining power they need to rebuild the middle class. That was the message Vice President Biden and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis brought to the 2009 AFSCME legislative conference in Washington, D.C., this week. Biden said current labor law isn’t protecting workers’ critical freedoms:
You’ve got to climb up a hill with so many roadblocks on the way to organize that it’s just out of whack.
If a union is what you want, then a union is what you should get. Labor built this country and labor should get a share of the benefits.
On the economy, Biden said the Obama administration will not consider itself a success simply by restoring the gross domestic product (GDP), a benchmark of economic growth.
From 2001 to 2008, the economy grew, but middle class Americans-they actually lost over that period $2,000 in income. If we’re not creating good, sustainable jobs, we’re not meeting our obligations.
Maxwell, New NLRB Appointments: Change We Can Believe In
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It bears repeating: Elections have consequences.
Great news from the White House, as three new appointments over the weekend show President Barack Obama’s commitment to improving workers’ lives and protecting their freedom on the job. Mary Beth Maxwell will head to the U.S. Department of Labor, while two experienced worker advocates—Craig Becker and Mark Pearce—have been nominated to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
Maxwell, the executive director of American Rights at Work and a strong advocate for the Employee Free Choice Act, has been named as a senior adviser to Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and a member of Vice President Joe Biden’s Middle Class Task Force. She’ll bring to the administration a history of speaking out in support of workers and their freedom to bargain for a better life.
