Symposium: Building Bridges to Labor’s Community Allies
Marvin Bing, a member of the AFL-CIO Special Committee on Labor-Community Partnerships, sends us this report on a meeting of AFL-CIO constituency groups in Phoenix.
AFL-CIO constituency groups kicked off the “We Are One Moving America Forward” symposium late last week with a series of great speeches by William Lucy, Ben Jealous, George Gresham, Danny Ortega and Judith Browne-Dianis. A resounding theme: “We can’t let the 1 percent trick us into believing we are different—We are the 99 percent, we are one and if we don’t work together on issues that bring us together, we will fall together.” We are the people who fight for working families, we are the people who fight to protect our students, children, seniors and families. We are the labor movement and together with the community we are unbeatable.
Constituency members include: The Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU), A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI), Pride At Work (PAW), Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA) and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA).
Maria Elena Durazo, secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, closed the panel, “Organizing in Our Communities: How African Americans and Latinos Have Strength in Unity,” by saying: Read the rest of this entry »
Eye-Witness to the Cruel Conditions in Tobacco Farm Labor Camps
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Brenda Loya in AFL-CIO Media Affairs sends us this from North Carolina, where she is on a fact-finding trip to witness the brutal conditions endured by tobacco workers.
We joined a diverse delegation of 25 activists, students, labor and community leaders and traveled to farm labor camps in Dudley, N.C.., to witness firsthand the appalling and abusive conditions of tobacco farm workers.
Our journey began with a visit to the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), where we learned about a recent report, “State of Fear: Human Rights Abuses in North Carolina’s Tobacco Industry,” that brings light to the tobacco industry’s impact on the human rights of farmworkers in the fields of North Carolina. Issued jointly by FLOC and Oxfam America, the report presented human right violations that we would later witness.
We drove 40 minutes into the country to visit labor camps where farmworkers live while they harvest tobacco to supply companies like RJ Reynolds, one of the richest corporations in U.S. agriculture—in fact, one of the largest tobacco corporations in the world, with annual profits of over $2 billion.
We what saw was never to be imagined. Read the rest of this entry »
Latino Labor Organization Calls for New Approach on Immigration
Andrea Delgado, LCLAA policy analyst and communications manager, sends us this.
Politicians must stop blaming immigrants and focus on the root causes of immigration—addiction to cheap labor and free trade policies that displace workers—according to a new study by the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), an AFL-CIO constituency group.
“Disposable Workers: Immigration After NAFTA and the Nation’s Addiction to Cheap Labor” calls attention to the root causes of immigration flows into the United States, focusing on international economic policies that have triggered a massive displacement of workers, and U.S. addiction to cheap labor, which have intensified undocumented immigration and sparked racial tensions in this country.
The study’s author, LCLAA’s Executive Director Hector Sanchez, asks us to think about the hypocrisy in slandering of immigrants in the United States and the anti-immigrant policies even as we ignore the role that U.S. international economic policies have had in exacerbating income inequalities and uprooting millions of Mexicans and Central Americans from their homeland. Hector adds:
The same policies that are displacing workers here in the U.S. have dislocated workers in Mexico and other countries—limiting their economic prospects in their homeland and forcing them to seek better opportunities in the U.S.
Students, Workers Organize Solidarity Actions on César Chávez’s Birthday
AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow Jennifer Angarita contributed to this report.
Today, on what would have been César Chávez’s 84th birthday, students, workers and immigrants joined together to pay tribute to the legacy of Chávez.
As a renowned labor activist and a leader of the United Farm Workers (UFW), Chávez’s dedicated vision helped elevate the plight of migrant farm workers to a national spotlight. Today, in Wisconsin and other states where the middle class is under attack, working people are reminded of the struggle for economic and social justice that Chávez and others dedicated their lives to.
Report: Latinos in Unions Fare Better Than Nonunion Peers
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The current economic crisis is hitting Latinos hard and they need the same help that all workers do—better wages, safe working conditions and a union. A new report marks National Hispanic Heritage Month with the news that the union difference benefits Latino workers, just as it does all other union workers.
In the report, the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) documents a large wage and benefit advantage for Latino workers who join unions compared with their nonunion counterparts. The report, Unions and Upward Mobility for Latino Workers, found that unionized Latino workers earned, on average, 17.6 percentage points more than nonunion Latinos. Latino union members also were much more likely to have health insurance benefits and a pension plan.
