Rally Urges Senate to Put Teachers, First Responders Back to Work
 |
|
|
|
In May, on the last day of Teacher Appreciation Week in Broward County, Fla., Cherine Akbari was honored “with a fancy embroidered jacket and handed a pink slip.”
Today, the out-of-work history teacher was in Washington, D.C., along with hundreds of teachers, firefighters, police officers and supporters at an indoor Senate rally for the just-introduced Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act (S. 1723). The bill provides funds to local governments to put back to work or keep on the job some 400,000 teachers and first responders. Said Akbari, an AFT member:
I have my own worries, but I am more worried about my students….We need to ensure students have better opportunities to learn and receive the attention they deserve. Instead of being in front of a classroom today, I am here to urge Congress to pass this bill.
Click here to send a message to your senators urging them to support the bill.
The rally drew an overflow crowd that spilled into the Russell Senate Building hallways and was sponsored by the Fire Fighters (IAFF), AFT, AFSCME and other unions. IAFF President Harold Schaitberger called the Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act a “critical piece of legislation for our nation’s economic future.”
In the past three years revenues have dropped. Some 300,000 teaching jobs lost, 15,000 firefighters jobs vacant, tens of thousands police officers’ jobs on the chopping block. The time for a solution is now and the time to put people back to work is now. The time to support this legislation is now.
Teacher/First Responder Bill Reverses Growing Public Safety Risk
 |
Across the country, tens of thousands of firefighters, paramedics and teachers have been laid off and the jobs of tens of thousands more are under threat. As this nationwide ad from the Fire Fighters (IAFF) shows, those first responder cuts are threatening public safety.
Says fire Capt. Tracey Wright:
Longer response times and fewer of us responding are putting our neighbors at risk.
The just-introduced Teachers and First Responders Act (S. 1723), would provide funds to local governments to put back to work or keep on the job some 400,000 teachers and first responders. It mirrors a provision in President Obama’s American Jobs Act that Senate Republicans blocked with a filibuster last week. In his most recent weekly address, Obama said provisions of the bill will be broken out for individual votes.
This afternoon on Capitol Hill, teachers, firefighters, paramedics and police officers will rally with Vice President Joe Biden, Senate leaders and union members to urge Congress to approve the legislation.
Click here for a live webcast of the event.
Biden: Only Unions Can Stop Middle-Class Onslaught
|
|
The union movement is in a fight for its life and the other side is determined to take away our right to exist, Vice President Joe Biden told a gathering of working families.
Speaking at a Labor Day rally yesterday in Cincinnati, Biden said unions are the only non-governmental power with the power and capacity to stop the onslaught against the middle class.
The middle class is under attack because labor is under the most direct assault in generations. The other side has declared war on labor’s house and it’s about time we stand up.
Biden, Solis Tell Workers: ‘We Need Collective Bargaining’
 |
||||
|
||||
Tens of thousands of working people under attack from Republican governors in 12 states received some high-level support and encouragement today. In a virtual town hall meeting this evening, Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis told the workers the Obama administration will stand with them and will stay with them to make sure their rights are protected.
Joined by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in the call, the Vice President opened with a quote from President Obama saying that “We can’t have a strong middle class without unions.” Then Vice President Biden added:
You built the middle class. This fight is not about wages or benefits; it’s about trying to break unions. We absolutely, positively need collective bargaining.
Solis also said our leaders should be focused on creating good jobs and helping working families get back to work.
That’s important to remember now that as states and cities grapple with enormous fiscal challenges and everyone we know is making sacrifices and meeting those challenges. But some states’ leaders have gone too far. Budget sacrifices are one thing, but having union members give up their rights is another.
Live NOW: Join Teletown Hall with Joe Biden, Hilda Solis and Richard Trumka
 |
Vice President Joe Biden, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka are speaking to 100,000 activists about the Republican assaults on collective bargaining in at least a dozen states.
Click on the icon at left to listen live to the virtual town hall beginning at 6 p.m.
The town hall, which will include union members, Working America members and other activists who are passionate about workers’ rights, will last about 45 minutes.
Seniors: Join Biden in Medicare/Health Care Reform Conference Call
Vice President Joe Biden and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will host a conference call Thursday, Sept. 23, at 11:30 a.m. EDT to talk about how the new health care reform law helps seniors on Medicare.
The law lowers the cost of prescription drugs and provides free preventive benefits in Medicare as of Jan. 1, 2011. The new law:
- Provides a $250 rebate to those in the Medicare “donut hole” (those checks started going out earlier this summer) and in subsequent years fully closes this coverage gap.
- Ends co-payments and deductibles for annual physicals, mammograms, colonoscopies and other preventive screenings.
- Helps early retirees (ages 55 to 64) better afford and keep their private health insurance.
- Enables middle-class families to better afford the high costs of long-term care.
- Strengthens the life of the Medicare Trust Fund by ending wasteful taxpayer subsidies and overpayments to private insurance companies who operate Medicare Advantage programs.
For more on the new health care reform law from the Alliance for Retired Americans, click here.
New Report: Recovery Act Created Up to 3.3 Million Jobs
 |
|
While the nation’s job crisis continues, it would be far worse if Republican congressional leaders had been successful in blocking the economic recovery act.
A new report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act put 1.4 million to 3.3 million people to work in the second quarter of this year and lowered the unemployment rate by as much as 1.8 percent.
Read the full CBO report here.
Vice President Joe Biden says the CBO report:
is further confirmation of what we’ve been hearing from leading economists, the nation’s governors and families across the country: The Recovery Act is working to rescue the economy from eight years of failed economic policy and rebuild it even stronger than before.
AFL-CIO Protests Saddam-like Iraqi Labor Order
As U.S. combat troops head home from Iraq, new evidence shows there is much to be done before all Iraqis are truly free. In a letter to Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka strongly protests a recent government order that bans all trade union activities in the government-owned electrical industry.
The order by Iraq’s minister of electricity prohibits ministry officials from dealing with unions and instructs them to take back all the benefits electrical unions have negotiated in recent years. More ominously, it orders the ministry, along with the police, to close all electrical union offices and take control of their assets.
In the letter—which also was sent to Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—Trumka reminds Al-Maliki that Iraq is a member of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and must abide by international treaties such as the ILO rules on the right of workers to join unions.
Biden: Growing Construction Jobs Grows the Middle Class
 |
|
Pointing to an unemployment rate—nearly 25 percent—for construction workers that is “unacceptably high,” Vice President Joe Biden yesterday told some 3,000 delegates to the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD) legislative conference:
We are waging a way to get you back where you belong, not just for your sake but for the sake of the middle class, because if you do not grow, the middle class will not grow, and without a growing middle class our ability to lead to the 21st century is diminished.
BCTD President Mark Ayers opened the three-day Washington, D.C., conference for union activists and leaders saying, “Putting our members back to work is our number one priority.” He also slammed
the poisonous and reprehensible behaviors of Wall Street and eight years of an administration that had hopes of eradicating unions. Together they have torn a gaping hole in the financial fabric of our nation and our very existence as the stalwarts of the middle class.
Biden to Executive Council: We Need A Middle Class
 |
| Vice President Joe Biden spoke to members of the AFL-CIO Executive Council who are meeting in Orlando March 1-3. |
In his second visit to the AFL-CIO Executive Council in 13 months, Vice President Joe Biden outlined plans to shore up America’s faltering middle class with jobs, tax policy and workers’ rights protections.
Biden also said the Obama administration intends to work to make the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) more worker friendly, even though two nominees are being held up by Senate Republicans. Biden said:
We haven’t gotten done yet what we’re going to do with the NLRB, but we’re going to get it done.
Introducing Biden, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka noted the report released last week by the White House Task Force on Middle Class Families, which Biden chairs. The report listed several recommendations resulting from a year-long review of ways to assist middle-class workers and families.
