Leadership Conference Honors Three with Humphrey Rights Award
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, civil activist Shirley Sherrod and Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese will be honored tonight with the Hubert H. Humphrey Civil and Human Rights award by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (LCCR).
The Humphrey award is the social justice community’s highest honor and is presented annually to individuals who best exemplify Humphrey’s “selfless and devoted service in the cause of equality.”
The LCCR, says Trumka “has been a steadfast leader on issues ranging from health and safety to pay equity and economic justice.”
Sherrod, who last year was the target of right-wing smear campaign, including a doctored video, is “committed to seeking justice for America’s historically marginalized farmers and fighting against bigotry in all its forms,” says the LCCR. Read the rest of this entry »
New Patient Safety Initiative Could Save 60,000 Lives
 |
More than 60,000 lives could be saved over the next three years under a new initiative announced today by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that would stop millions of preventable injuries and complications in hospital patient care over the next three years.
Already, Sebelius said, more than 500 hospitals, as well as physicians and nurses groups, consumer groups and employers have pledged their commitment to the new Partnership for Patients initiative.
Speaking at a Washington, D.C., press conference, along with representatives from major hospitals, employers, unions, health plans, physicians, nurses and patient advocates, she said:
Americans go the hospital to get well, but millions of patients are injured because of preventable complications and accidents. Working closely with hospitals, doctors, nurses, patients, families and employers, we will support efforts to help keep patients safe, improve care, and reduce costs. Working together, we can help eliminate preventable harm to patients.
The two main goals of the Partnership for Patients are to keep hospital patients from getting injured or sicker and help patients heal without complication. The initiative will target all forms of harm to patients such as preventing adverse drug reactions, pressure ulcers, childbirth complications and surgical site infections.
More Than 270 Lawmakers Oppose Taking Away Public Employee Bargaining Rights
 |
||||
|
||||
UPDATE: As of this morning, 284 state lawmakers have signed on in support of Wisconsin Senators, according to Progressive States Network.
Progressive States Network today released a letter signed by a bipartisan group of more than 270 state legislators representing 44 states voicing their solidarity with the Wisconsin state senators who oppose an extreme measure to take away the right of public employees to bargain for good middle-class jobs.
In the letter, the lawmakers noted that in contrast to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and others attempting to force through legislation benefiting corporate CEOs, they were dedicated to working “in a constructive manner with all relevant parties to advance a vision for our nation’s future that truly ensures the economic security of our communities.”
The full text of the letter and list of signers is available here.
Candlelight March to Save Collective Bargaining to Highlight King Day Celebration
 |
||||
|
||||
More than 400 union and civil rights activists will march to Cincinnati’s City Hall Jan. 14 to condemn the plan recently elected Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio) has to strip Ohio child care and home health care workers of their right to bargain for a better life.
The march is part of the annual AFL-CIO King Day celebration Jan. 13-17 in Cincinnati. Through the march and throughout the conference, activists will send a message that Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of social and economic justice is not dead even in this tough political climate. Workers who provide vital services to the Cincinnati area—including home and child care providers and transit workers—will share their stories and concerns about Kasich and his allies’ attempts to blame and punish low-income workers for the state of the economy. The activists will focus on developing strategies to advance the issues of good job creation, immigration reform and economic equality.
AFL-CIO: Federal Government Must Cut Ties with Arizona Law Enforcement
 |
|
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.
Women Taking on Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant Law
 |
||||
|
||||
Arizona’s new anti-immigrant law has “paved the way for assaults on the basic human rights of women and created an environment in which violence against women and children has been state-sanctioned.” But immigrants and people of conscience are steadfastly resisting the law, a group of women activists said this week.
At the same time, religious groups, political leaders and sports teams are calling for the law to be repealed.
The Women’s Emergency Human Rights Delegation, which includes civil and women’s rights leaders, journalists, union leaders and organizers from the AFL-CIO, National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), the National Domestic Worker Alliance (NDWA) and Jobs with Justice (JwJ), visited women at community centers in Phoenix on Mother’s Day to document the experiences of women in Arizona in the wake of the signing of the law. Ana Avendano, an assistant to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, was among the delegation. Read the delegation’s statement here.
Bill Would Create Agency to Protect Consumers from Big Banks
The global financial meltdown demonstrated how vulnerable workers and consumers are to abuses in consumer lending practices and Wall Street’s recklessness. A package of reforms now on the House floor would help protect Americans from a laundry list of risky Wall Street practices from predatory lending to unregulated derivatives.
In a letter to House members, the AFL-CIO urged lawmakers to pass the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (H.R. 4173). The letter said, in part:
The bailouts of major banking institutions reinforced the idea that workers and consumers must fight for protections they rightly deserve. Once signed into law, this package of reforms will work together to address the plethora of causes from predatory lending to unregulated derivatives that led to last year’s meltdown.
Trumka: Jobs Crisis—Fix It Now
 |
|
Today at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and other leaders joined together to call for urgent action to create jobs and rebuild the economy.
In a live webcast panel discussion, the consensus was clear: Without quick action, an entire generation could be mired in economic turmoil. The nation can, and must, put people back to work—while addressing critical needs for the future of our communities.
The scale of the jobs crisis is obvious: Since the beginning of the recession, more than 8 million jobs have been lost. The official unemployment rate is at 10.2 percent, with more than 26 million unemployed or underemployed. These figures are even more severe among African American and Latino communities. Young people are at risk of permanently stunted opportunity, and the jobs crisis is rebounding throughout the country with increased hunger and poverty, massive numbers of home foreclosures and diminished access to health care.
Trumka to Launch Jobs Initiative Tomorrow
 |
|
Tomorrow morning, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will announce a major new initiative to create and save jobs.
(Watch the live webcast at www.aflcio.org/createjobs starting at 9 a.m.)
Trumka will be part of a noted panel in “Spotlight on the Jobs Crisis” at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
With unemployment at its highest rate in more than 20 years, Trumka says America needs bold, quick action to put people back to work, in addition to longer term, structural fixes for our economy. The AFL-CIO initiative he announces will include calls to extend help for the unemployed, rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, provide aid to struggling states and communities, create federally funded community-based jobs and increase lending to small and medium-sized businesses to spur job creation.
Hate Crimes Bill Heads to Obama
After fighting for new hate crimes legislation for a dozen years, union and civil rights activists praised the final passage of a bill that expands the definition of federal hate crimes and removes unnecessary obstacles to prosecution.
The Senate passed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act late last week by a 68-29 margin. The bill, which was attached to a Defense authorization measure, already had cleared the House. President Obama is expected to sign it into law as early as this week.
Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), which includes the AFL-CIO and several unions, applauded lawmakers for “recognizing the fundamental right of all Americans to be protected from violence because of their race, the way they worship, their sexual orientation, gender identity or disability status.”
