Social Media: New Tools Aid in Organizing
They’re tweeting in Northern California about the Employee Free Choice Act, sharing about health care reform on Facebook in Montana and posting organizing messages on My Space for workers in York, Pa.
Across the country, union members are using the new social media to mobilize workers and share information.
Steve Selby, an Electrical Workers (IBEW) organizer in York, Pa., knows the value of social media. He urgently needed to reach 300 workers at a local Comcast office. Rather than standing outside the office and handing out a flier with different information each day, Selby taught himself how to set up a MySpace account. He handed out one flier directing workers to his MySpace page, where he shared information the workers needed to know.
Organizing for the Future
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Today’s theme at the 2009 AFL-CIO Convention is “Organizing for Our Future,” and the effort to build worker power and improve workers’ lives through organizing is at the heart of everything that unions do.
This morning, top union leaders presented a report on the state of organizing in America, and workers who are fighting the difficult battle for a voice on the job testified about their struggles. And at noon today, the convention passed a strong resolution in support of the Employee Free Choice Act.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said that over the past decade and a half, unions have made great strides in the capacity to organize, against vicious opposition from corporate interests and the politicians they fund. We’ve introduced the Employee Free Choice Act and elected new members of Congress who support it and a president who will sign it into law. Said Sweeney:
Brothers and sisters, everything we do—electing leaders, passing legislation, fighting in every field for economic and social justice—rests on our ability to organize.
Williams, Gage, Sullivan Re-Elected, Urge Fast Action to Rescue America’s Workers
Saying the best is yet to come for working people, three affiliated unions called for teamwork and urged their members to take advantage of the new political landscape in Washington to help working families.
Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) President James Williams, AFGE President John Gage and Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA) President Michael Sullivan, who all were re-elected at their unions’ conventions, echoed AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka’s call for union members to work together to take back the country. Trumka spoke at all three conventions.
Williams said the challenges facing working families will require unity and teamwork.
It’s all about team…we can’t overcome the challenges ahead of us all alone, we need each and every one of you to help us.
Coalition Concerned About Effect of Pulte-Centex Merger on Homeowners
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Robert Masciola, deputy director of the AFL-CIO Center for Strategic Research, shares this recent action by workers and their allies at Pulte Homes and Centex Corp. shareholder meetings.
In Pontiac, Mich., and Dallas yesterday, workers, community leaders, homeowners and other supporters of the Building Justice campaign came together to voice their concerns about the merger between Pulte Homes and Centex Corp. The merger will create the largest homebuilding company in the United States.
Building Justice is a partnership of the Painters and Allied Trades union (IUPAT), the Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA), the AFL-CIO, Pulte homeowners, community members and elected officials to improve conditions at Pulte developments. Members of the coalition staged rallies in Pontiac (Pulte) and Dallas (Centex) to coincide with shareholder meetings in each city to approve the merger.
Trumka: This Is Our Moment to Lead
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While union members played a key role for the incredible victories of Barack Obama and the new Democratic-majority Congress, it was just the first step in reclaiming America, says AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka.
Speaking Monday at the Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA) convention in Las Vegas, Trumka said we must build on last year’s wins.
What matters isn’t the battle we won last year; it’s whether we’re going to take advantage of this moment and build the labor movement we need to create the America we want—the America every worker deserves.
Labor College Announces Sweeney Leadership Institute
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One of AFL-CIO President John Sweeney’s priorities throughout his years as labor leader has been to build and strengthen the union movement by educating workers so they can meet the challenges ahead in the workplace and at the bargaining table. Now, Sweeney’s efforts will carry on after he retires in September.
During a gala celebration of the 40th anniversary of the National Labor College (NLC) last night, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka announced the creation of the John Sweeney Leadership Institute, which will open this fall at the Labor College. Trumka says the institute will
help to foster the next generation of union activists and leaders. Goodness knows we need them now more than ever for the tough battles ahead.
Labor College to Celebrate 40 Years, Honor Sweeney
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For four decades, the National Labor College (NLC) has strengthened the union movement through education and training. Next week, the college will celebrate its 40th anniversary, and at the same time honor three union leaders who symbolize what the school means to workers.
During the July 28 anniversary gala, the Labor College will honor AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney for his strong commitment to the NLC and labor education and NLC graduates, James Williams, president of the Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT), and Michael Sullivan, president of the Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA).
Former U.S. Labor Secretary Alexis Herman will be the emcee for the event.
For more information on the gala and to purchase tickets, click here.
Health Care Kumbaya
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| Protest against health insurers need to have both a union and community face—like this march both against foreclosures and for the Employee Free Choice Act earlier in March in Lynn, Mass. |
The peasants are filing their pitchforks to a fine point in anticipation of an attack on the palace—and the target of their ire is not what we might have intended. At this critical moment in the health care debate, more than a few working folk are taking a suspicious look at the health care reform efforts of Senate Democrats, President Obama—and their own unions. A headline in my local newspaper, the Lynn Item, helped stir the tempest: “Obama Open to Taxing Benefits to Fund Reform.”
Vincent Panvani of the Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA) warns:
If any of these Democratic Senators vote for this, they’ll be out in 2010, and it will be used against Obama….[Y]ou’re taxing the middle class.
Teamsters President James Hoffa calls taxing health care benefits “the poison pill that will kill reform.” The Laborers have attack ads at the ready. And Donna Smith, an organizer and legislative representative for the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) notes that insurance companies continue discriminatory rates for older workers and ongoing rescissions of benefits—that is, targeting people with more than 1,400 medical conditions for “opposition research” investigations so their benefits can be cut off. “Ugly stuff,” she puts it. (At a health care forum in Lynn, Mass., last week, Rep. John Tierney reported that in congressional hearings he asked every insurance company if they would stop these viscous targeted rescissions—each one said “No.”)
America’s Workers Oppose Taxing Health Care Benefits
One of the most troubling health care reform proposals—taxing health care benefits—that had gained some traction in recent weeks appears to be slipping. Grassroots health care activists, President Obama and leading congressional Democrats have helped shed the light on, and slow the momentum of, this unfair tax that could boost working families’ tax liability by as much as 28 percent, according to the Commonwealth Fund.
Yesterday, the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call reported that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told Sen. Max Baucus (D- Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, that any health care bill that included a tax on health care benefits and failed to include a strong public health insurance plan option would lose significant Democratic support. The paper said Reid told Baucus to drop
a proposal to tax health benefits and stop chasing Republican votes on a massive health care reform bill.
103 Students Set to Graduate from National Labor College
Rachelle Honeycutt works at an oil refinery in Washington State. Sam Schaffer is a skilled sheet metal worker from West Virginia. Javier Almazan organizes workers in south Florida and Cathy Merkel is a registrar in Maryland. They’re all union members. And in a few days, all four will be graduates of one of the crown jewels of the labor movement: the National Labor College.
With a 46-acre campus just outside Washington, D.C., the nation’s only labor college is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and grants bachelor’s and master’s degrees. The college evolved from the George Meany Center for Labor Studies, created in 1969, and now partners with the University of Baltimore and George Mason University for its graduate degree programs.
On Saturday, 101 students will receive B.A. degrees and two others will be awarded M.A. degrees, as the Labor College graduates its 11th class in a ceremony on the Silver Spring, Md., campus. U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis will give the commencement address.
