Labor Across Prime Time TV
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Prime time last night was well worth watching. The NewsHour on PBS profiled AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann hosted California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro.
NewsHour showcased Trumka’s start as a coal miner in Pennsylvania and his graduation from Villanova Law School, his rise to president of the Mine Workers and his key role in the tough battle against Pittston Coal Co. The segment included clips from those early days, through to his emotional acceptance speech at our convention in September, when he was elected AFL-CIO president.
As NewsHour pointed out, Trumka made his name “as a bulldog against corporate overreach” while he was AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer.
NLRB Orders Coal Co. to Rehire 85 Mine Workers
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ordered Mammoth Coal Co., a subsidiary of Massey Energy, to recognize and bargain with the Mine Workers (UMWA) as the exclusive representative of the workers at its Mammoth Mine in Smithers, W.Va.
The Sept. 30 ruling also orders Mammoth to rehire 85 former workers at the mine who were not hired when Massey bought the operation in 2004. Says UMWA President Cecil Roberts:
This tremendous victory affirms what we have been saying all along. Mammoth Coal had an obligation to recognize the union when it bought this mine out of bankruptcy, and it had an obligation to rehire the miners who were working there at the time the board found were discriminated against because of their union membership.
Taking the Next Steps to Build Strength Through Diversity
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The diversity of the union movement is its strength. Building on the success of the historic Resolution 2 passed in 2005, the AFL-CIO Convention adopted a far-ranging policy to create more inclusive unions and a more diverse leadership.
The resolutions, “A Diverse and Democratic Labor Movement” and “Unions Should Give People with Disabilities a Voice and a Face,” call on unions to reach out at every level to build diversity.
The resolutions require every state federation and central local bodies to establish concrete goals for expanding diversity in their leadership. We also will increase our commitment to include lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers and workers with disabilities at all levels. And to secure the future of the union movement, we will actively recruit, train and include young workers in all activities and programs and provide opportunities for leadership.
AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer William Lucy said the union movement stands on the threshold of a crusade to rebuild the middle class. The progress made in including new workers in union leadership has chipped away at one more source of divisiveness in our movement. He praised the unions for successfully carrying out the mandate of Resolution 2 to make convention delegations more inclusive—43 percent of delegates are women or people of color.
The Time Is Now for Health Care Reform, Safe Workplaces
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The nation’s health care system is broken and now is the time to act to gain real health care reform. With a vote on health care reform coming soon to Congress, delegates to the AFL-CIO Convention today passed two strong resolutions to provide quality affordable health care and another to ensure safe and healthy workplaces.
They also took immediate action on the floor to mobilize against the insurance industry that is profiting by denying health care to patients who need it and raising premiums.
Both AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka and Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) told the convention the Senate will vote on a health care bill in the next few weeks. After passing the resolutions, delegates signed pledges to work for real health care reform when they get back home. Many used their cell phones to call their locals to march on the major health insurers between Sept. 22 and Oct. 2. AFT President Randi Weingarten, who was presiding over the debate, called the chief lobbyist for the United Federation of Teachers in New York City, her home local, while on the podium, and with the entire convention listening, convinced him to hold an action.
The mobilization is part of an AFL-CIO campaign to hold insurers accountable, Trumka said,
for denying care and shutting people out and using our members’ premium dollars.
AFL-CIO Delegates: Jazzed and Ready to Rock
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The Jacob L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh is filled with union members and leaders taking part in the AFL-CIO’s 26th Constitutional Convention, many of them first-time convention delegates like Lisha Thayer from Mine Workers Local 717 member from New York. (See Thayer and many other AFL-CIO delegates at our convention video page here.)
“I’m hoping to bring back ideas to get the union involved more, more women involved in the local, with the idea I’d like to come back and say that each one reached each one of us.”
Another first-time convention participant, AFL-CIO Convention delegate Sylvia Wilson, a member of AFT, the Allegheny County (Pa.) Central Labor Council and the A. Philip Randolph Institute, was among more than 500 participants at the AFL-CIO Diversity Conference Sunday in Pittsburgh.
“I want to see what’s going on in the Diversity Conference that I can carry out and apply to what I’m doing….What way can we reach out to bring more minorities in and what can we do as union members to go into the community and continue to bring more people up and elevate them and their status where they can take care of their families and have a living wage.”
Veteran delegate Richard Shaw, secretary-treasurer of the Harris County AFL-CIO Council in Houston, has been to many conventions and is “very excited about renewed activism in the AFL-CIO.”
“We’re certainly going to be working on health care reform and Employee Free Choice Act and I think the excitement of that and the excitement of the new officers is going to re-energize our labor movement. So I’m looking for new energy and new direction from our officers.”
Remembering Former Mine Workers President Sam Church
Former Mine Workers (UMWA) President Sam Church, 72, died yesterday in Bristol, Va.
Church, who first entered the mines in 1965, served as UMWA president from 1979 to 1982. He also served as UMWA vice president and in several local and district offices.
Says AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka, who succeeded Church:
Sam was a good friend and a good labor leader. He was a union man from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. He will be greatly missed.
Trumka Announces Candidacy for AFL-CIO President
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AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka this morning announced his candidacy for president of the AFL-CIO to succeed the retiring John Sweeney. Trumka has served as AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer since 1995.
Gregory Junemann, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), announced June 8 he is running for secretary-treasurer.
At a rally that drew several hundred supporters at the University of the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C., Trumka also introduced his running mates. Joining Trumka on the ticket are Liz Shuler, executive assistant to the Electrical Workers (IBEW) President Edwin Hill, for secretary-treasurer and incumbent AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker for re-election. This marks the first time two women have run for the AFL-CIO’s top offices.
No other candidates for the top three leadership positions have announced. Earlier this year, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney announced he was retiring when his fourth term as president expires in September. Delegates to the AFL-CIO’s 26th Constitutional Convention meeting in Pittsburgh Sept. 13-17 will elect the AFL-CIO’s new officers.
In a joint statement, Trumka, Shuler and Holt Baker note that the labor movement “faces tremendous challenges,” including an unregulated global economy, labor laws that favor employers over workers and a political system in which the wealthy wield far too much influence.
At the same time, we have historic opportunity, with a president and Congress we elected, to overcome these challenges. Our most important task is to make sure our economy creates jobs. And we are keenly aware that we must look within our movement for answers about how we can create full employment, organize workers and make sure workers prosper in the 21st century.
Before being elected AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer in 1995, the same year Sweeney took the helm of the AFL-CIO, Trumka served as president of the Mine Workers (UMWA) from 1982 to 1995. He is a third-generation coal miner and graduate of Pennsylvania State University and holds a law degree from Villanova University Law School.
Shuler is the highest-ranking women in the IBEW and has served as Hill’s top assistant since 2004. In 1993, she joined IBEW Local 125 in Portland, Ore., where she worked as an organizer and state legislative and political director. In 1998, she was part of the IBEW’s international staff in Washington, D.C., as a legislative and political representative.
Holt Baker has served as AFL-CIO executive vice president since September 2007. The longtime AFSCME member and leader came to the federation in 1995 as executive assistant to Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson, who was the first woman to become a top AFL-CIO officer. Holt Baker was AFSCME’s international union area director in California from the late 1980s to 1995 and also worked as an organizer and international representative.
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Ludlow Massacre Site Dedicated as National Landmark
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Today, Mine Workers (UMWA) leaders, union activists, lawmakers and historians will dedicate the site of the 1914 Ludlow Massacre—one of the bloodiest chapters in the nation’s labor history—as a National Historic Landmark.
On April 20, 1914, in Ludlow, Colo., thugs hired by several coal companies and the Colorado militia attacked a peaceful encampment of striking miners and their families. By the end of the day, 20 were shot or burned to death, including 14 women and children.
More than 90 years ago, UMWA erected a monument there. But since 1918, despite the efforts of family survivors, historians and labor activists, there was no state or national commemoration of the site.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of the Interior designated Ludlow a National Historic Landmark. UMWA President Cecil Roberts says the designation will “preserve the memory of this brutal attack on workers and their families.”
The tragic lessons from Ludlow still echo through our nation, and they must never be forgotten by Americans who truly care about workplace fairness and equality. With this designation, the story of what happened at Ludlow will remain part of our nation’s history. That is as it should be.
Cap and Trade Bill: Good First Step
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The U.S. Congress took a step forward toward a national policy that helps clean up the environment and create good green jobs, but there is still work to do, union leaders say today.
The American Clean Energy and Security Act, which passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee yesterday, would set a national ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions and let polluting industries buy and sell credits to meet it. This “cap-and-trade” system would limit harmful human-generated emissions and, hopefully, speed up development of renewable energy sources, create green jobs and help reduce our dependence on oil.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says the bill, as currently marked up, “makes significant, job-creating investments, while attempting to minimize impacts on existing workers.”
The AFL-CIO supports cap-and-trade legislation that takes a balanced approach towards an economy wide-program and prevents foreign competitors from getting advantages over American companies.
Labor Department Budget Strengthens Worker Protection Enforcement
The Obama administration today unveiled its plan to fulfill a promise to make America’s workplaces safer and protect workers’ rights.
During the Labor Department’s first-ever online discussion about its budget, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said the department’s fiscal year 2010 budget, which totals $104.5 billion, will:
- Promote a “green” economic recovery;
- Begin to restore worker protection programs;
- Ensure that programs are transparent and accountable; and
- Promote diversity and stakeholder inclusion in every aspect of the department’s work.
As an example of the importance of worker protections, the budget allocates $1.7 billion in discretionary funds for worker-protection programs, a 10 percent increase from the prior year’s budget.
