Union Families Bring Holiday Cheer to Pittsburgh-Area Families in Need
Andy Richards on our Field Communications staff sends us this.
With the holidays only days away, Pittsburgh-area faith leaders, community members and union families came together Friday to hand bring holiday cheer and hand out hundreds of toys and donations to families in need.
At the Allegheny County Labor Council’s annual Labor of Love/Stuff the Bus Toy Drive, they gave out toys, gift cards and other donations collected earlier this month. The annual toy collection is one of the largest holiday toy drives in Pittsburgh and union members and their families kick it off each year by filling a 40-foot transit bus to the brim with gifts for children in need. Says Bob Mazzie, a retired member of ATU Local 85 who donated toys at the kick-off event earlier this month: Read the rest of this entry »
Pittsburgh Council Members in Solidarity with Wisconsin Workers
More shows of solidarity with Wisconsin workers. Tomorrow, Feb. 22, Pittsburgh Council member Natalia Rudiak will preview a proclamation co-sponsored by all nine city Council members expressing support and respect for public workers prior to the Pittsburgh City Council’s regular weekly meeting.
Council member Rudiak and other Council members will be joined by a variety of public workers, including firefighters, drivers, snow plow drivers and school crossing guards.
Says Jack Shea, president of the Allegheny County Labor Council:
The right-wing assault on public workers grossly misrepresents facts and tries to lay blame for budget deficits and pension problems at the feet of dedicated public servants who come to work everyday and do their jobs delivering the services that keep us safer, healthier and contribute to the vital functions of government that serve the public.
Photo Stream from One Nation
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| 5:30 a.m.: Pennsylvania Democratic Candidate for Governor Dan Onorato sends off four busloads of teachers from Pittsburgh to One Nation rally. | |
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| 8 a.m.: AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler joins members of IAM for a pre-rally with unemployed workers. |
Tens of thousands of union members from a dozen or more states are taking part in today’s One Nation events in Washington, D.C. Beginning with pre-dawn bus trips from places like Philadelphia and New York through closing events later this afternoon, we’ll post photos here as they come in. Also check out photos on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/aflcio
In Philadelphia, where 250 AFSCME members gathered before getting on buses to D.C., Philadelphia City Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell thanked labor for being the “backbone of America.”
Blackwell was joined by Philadelphia Democratic Party leader Jonathan Saidel who who told the crowd to
“run, not walk, to the polls on Nov. 2.”
Saidel urged union members to spend the next four weeks talking to family, friends, neighbors andco-workers about the importance of voting this election.
“It’s your name on the ballot. You need to vote for yourself by voting for the candidates who will protect your jobs, your pensions, your healthcare, and your families.”
Global Union Leaders: Focus on Jobs, Not Deficits
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Global union leaders called on G-20 governments to deliver the promise made at the Pittsburgh summit to “put quality employment at the heart of the recovery” and focus on creating jobs in the short term to sustain the recovery and reduce public deficits in the medium term.
The union leaders from the G-20 countries are warning their governments that efforts to cut budgets and impose fiscal austerity now could plunge the international economy into another, deeper recession. The statement was issued yesterday by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the Trade Union Advisory Council (TUAC) to the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD).
End the Denial. Label China a Currency Manipulator
America and China are publicly in denial about currency manipulation. Both officially state that China is not devaluing its currency.
In mid-March, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao flatly denied that China deliberately suppresses the value of its currency against the dollar, a practice that decreases the price of its exports and increases the cost of American goods imported into China. Similarly, the U.S. Treasury Department, which is required by the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 to name foreign currency manipulators in biannual reports, has not in the past decade and a half called out China—including in the past two reports submitted during the Obama administration.
China and America decline to acknowledge what everyone else knows: China suppresses the value of its currency to gain a trade advantage over America. The New York Times reported on the practice in a story published March 14, describing how currency manipulation has worked wonders for Chinese industry while killing American manufacturing. (Click here to tell the Treasury Department to stop denying that China is manipulating its currency.)
22,000 L.A. Workers Win Pact with City that Saves Jobs—and More Bargaining News
Some 22,000 Los Angeles workers win pact with city that prevents layoffs—and more bargaining news from the “Bargaining Digest Weekly.” The AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Department delivers daily, bargaining-related news and research resources to more than 1,200 subscribers. Union leaders can register for this service through our website, Bargaining@Work.
SETTLEMENTS
Multiple, City of Los Angeles: The Los Angeles City Council on Friday approved a pact with the Los Angeles Coalition of City Unions, a group made up of AFL-CIO and Change to Win unions and representing 22,000 city workers. The agreement avoids layoffs and furloughs and will save the city more than $77 million by offering an early retirement plan, reducing the number of hours worked and postponing pay raises until after 2011. A deal with the Los Angeles Police Protective League/IUPA also was approved Friday and will save the city $63 million.
Global Unions: Put Jobs First at G-20
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At the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh this week, the world’s leaders need to focus on the urgent need to create millions of new jobs and reform the global financial and trading system.
More than 50 trade union leaders from around the world, including AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, will meet with the G-20 leaders to press the case for a coordinated global economic strategy to stimulate new jobs to ensure a real recovery.
With 59 million people expected to be unemployed worldwide by the end of the year, Guy Ryder, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), says:
Governments must do much more to arrest the plunge in jobs as tens of millions of people, especially young people and those in precarious jobs, find themselves facing a future without work. Coordinated global action to maintain and create jobs is required, and this has to start with the Pittsburgh Summit. Any talk of recovery has little meaning until people are getting back to work.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney: Solidarity Is Our Way of Life
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| AFL-CIO President John Sweeney gives his final keynote to convention delegates. |
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| Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President Bill George (above) and former Pittsburgh Steeler Franco Harris (below) help open the AFL-CIO Convention. |
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With the convening of the 26th AFL-CIO Constitutional Convention this afternoon in Pittsburgh, nearly 2,000 delegates, alternates and guests took part in the formal opening ceremony and paid tribute to retiring AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. Following greetings by Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President Bill George, Jack Shea, president of the Allegheny County [Pittsburgh] Labor Council, and former Pittsburgh Steelers player Franco Harris, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka welcomed everyone, noting how great it is to be in Pittsburgh, “the city of bridges.”
And bridges are the perfect illustration of what we’ll be talking about over the next few days. Bridges that connect diverse people, diverse unions, diverse communities and diverse nations. Bridges to cross together, so we can turn around America….Some of the bridges America needs have been burnt—destroyed by years of a rampant corporate agenda embraced by the Bush administration. It’s hard to overstate just how damaging those years have been.
Our unions and the workers we represent are suffering in a historic collapse. But at the very same time, we have historic opportunities. New bridges with a new administration, a new Congress and rivers of hope flowing through the people of our country. Our Convention has a theme for today: We are many, we are one.
That’s our power—and it’s our joy.
USW President: AFL-CIO Convention Opportunity to Rally Activists
This is a cross-post from the United Steelworkers.
United Steelworkers International President Leo W. Gerard today gave the keynote speech at the Union Label & Service Trades Department convention in Pittsburgh, saying the meeting along with the upcoming AFL-CIO convention is an opportunity.
Gerard said working families should be hopeful after President Obama’s decision last night to enforce trade rules in the 421 trade case that showed a flood of tires imported from China was harming the domestic industry. Thousands of jobs at U.S. tire plants have been lost because of the imports. (Click here for more information on the 421 story.)
AFL-CIO Convention Meeting in City Rich with Labor History
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The 26th AFL-CIO Convention, Sept. 13-17, will convene in a city rich with labor history. Pittsburgh is the birthplace of both the AFL and the CIO, as well as the United Steelworkers (USW), the Ironworkers and the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM). It also is the site of two legendary strikes—the Homestead steel mill strike in 1892 and the U.S. Steel strike in the 1930s.
Labor historian Charlie McCollester writes in The Point of Pittsburgh:
[Pittsburgh's] workers and industries had produced incalculable volumes of coal, iron, steel and glass. Its inventors and laborers had been the first to refine oil, manufacture aluminum and create some of the primary mechanisms of electrical generation and distribution. In a stupendous effort, its mills and factories had been the arsenal of democracy, providing much of the muscle that made the United States of America the world’s most powerful nation.
