Tennessee Volunteers Help Build Classroom
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Josh Cazares, southern regional director of the AFL-CIO Community Services, reports on a volunteer effort by Nashville union members.
More than 30 union volunteers earlier this month built and put up a partition wall to create two needed classrooms for the Edgehill Center in Nashville, Tenn. The new classrooms will allow the center’s highly successful Read to Succeed program to expand.
Begun in 1997, the Read to Succeed program each year helps prepare 1,200 pre-kindergarten children from low-income and minority communities to enter school for the first time at grade level. Michael Allen, the AFL-CIO Community Services liaison for United Way of Metropolitan Nashville and Middle Tennessee, says the program has a phenomenal 98 percent success rate.
The Edgehill Center also has an after school tutoring and reading program that helps children ages 9 to 18 improve their reading and leadership skills.
Working Families in Indiana, Across Nation Rally for Workers’ Rights
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On Day 24 of rallies and marches at the Indiana Statehouse yesterday, many of the protesters were dressed in camouflage to symbolize that they were under siege.
As Indiana State AFL-CIO President Nancy Guyott told the crowd:
We are wearing our camouflage to symbolize that working families and their communities are under siege. Unprovoked and without warning or reason, these politicians have launched an all-out attack on the middle class. Brothers and sisters, we did not choose this war. We would rather be focusing on rebuilding this economy, creating good-paying jobs and putting more Hoosiers back to work.
Political Action Pays Off for State Workers in Kentucky and Tennessee
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| Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear signs two negotiated union agreements covering 9,000 satte corrections and social service workers. |
State employees in Kentucky and Tennessee received early holiday gifts last month: historic new agreements with their employers. In both cases, political action was at the core of the victories.
In Kentucky, Gov. Steve Beshear (D), who was elected with strong union support, signed two agreements with AFSCME Council 62–their first-ever union contracts.
The agreements cover some 5,000 corrections employees who work in prisons and related facilities, including probation and parole and juvenile justice employees and nearly 4,000 social service employees, including family case workers and managers and social workers.
“This is a tremendous step in building a strong union,” says David Warrick, executive director of Council 62. Read the rest of this entry »
Corker: Classless
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America’s economy is in a tailspin and millions of the nation’s autoworkers could lose family-supporting jobs if the industry tanks, but Republican Sen. Bob Corker knows what he’s concerned about: the “Valentine’s” Day cards autoworkers and their allies delivered to his Tennessee office.
I think delivering 4,200 incredibly tacky Valentine’s to my office was a classless thing to do.
Classless. The gall! The gall of workers who, if Corker had his way, would lose their jobs or get such severe cuts in pay they would become more casualties of the lingering Bush war on the middle class. Corker fought against assistance to the auto industry in December and voted against the economic recovery package that would save or create 3.5 million U.S. jobs.
Working America AND UAW Don’t ♥ Sen. Corker
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The hundreds of UAW members who rallied Friday were among the thousands who have written Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) letters protesting his anti-worker stance and attempts to require major concessions from the UAW.
Working America, the AFL-CIO community affiliate, recently sent a canvass team into Nashville and surrounding communities that collected more than 1,400 letters. Seven canvassers knocked on doors and greeted passers-by on busy streets and college campuses. Michigan State Working America Director Cara Alcantar, who helped with the canvass action in Tennessee, reported that
people are really supportive of what we’re doing, they’re supportive of the union, because they’re going through tough times. Most of the people we’ve spoken to do not believe that what Corker is doing is right.
UAW Members Don’t ♥ Sen. Corker
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, members of the UAW have sent a “love-note” to Sen. Bob Corker, a highly conservative Republican from Tennessee.
Corker, as you recall, introduced a pay-cut amendment to the auto rescue package last December that would have required the UAW to accept deep concessions. Far be it from Corker to try to save the jobs of thousands of autoworkers at a time when the nation’s jobless rate is worsening at an alarming rate.
Members signed a giant-sized card letting Corker know what they thought of his union-busting tactics and then delivered the valentine to Corker’s Nashville office.
