AFL-CIO: Federal Government Must Cut Ties with Arizona Law Enforcement
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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.
Public Option Must Be Part of Health Care Reform
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If Senate and House members vote against including a public health insurance plan option in health care reform, they very well could lose the backing of working families and their unions in the next elections, says AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka.
Trumka issued the warning in an interview with Sam Stein of Huffington Post after recent news reports indicated a public option to allow working families to choose between a private plan or a public plan that offers quality care could be pulled from health care reform legislation. Trumka told Stein:
We’ll look at every one of their votes. If they’re against the Employee Free Choice Act, if they’re against health care for that reason, I think it’ll be tough for them to get support from working people.
