Support Keeps Coming for NLRB Rule Change
Support continues to pour in for the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB’s) proposed rule designed to ensure a fair process for workers who want to vote on whether to form a union. Congressional leaders and civil rights and faith groups have joined working people and workers’ rights advocates in voicing their support for Tuesday’s proposed election rule changes from the NLRB.
Here are a few of the people and organizations who’ve weighed in so far in support of the rule change:
Sen. Barbara Boxer (Calif.):
The current union election system is badly broken and breeds fear in the workplace. It’s no secret that expensive litigation and intimidation are often used to prevent employees from forming a union and negotiating for fair wages and benefits. The NLRB’s proposed rules will instill fairness for both employers and workers by ensuring a fair, timely vote.
Candlelight March to Save Collective Bargaining to Highlight King Day Celebration
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More than 400 union and civil rights activists will march to Cincinnati’s City Hall Jan. 14 to condemn the plan recently elected Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio) has to strip Ohio child care and home health care workers of their right to bargain for a better life.
The march is part of the annual AFL-CIO King Day celebration Jan. 13-17 in Cincinnati. Through the march and throughout the conference, activists will send a message that Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of social and economic justice is not dead even in this tough political climate. Workers who provide vital services to the Cincinnati area—including home and child care providers and transit workers—will share their stories and concerns about Kasich and his allies’ attempts to blame and punish low-income workers for the state of the economy. The activists will focus on developing strategies to advance the issues of good job creation, immigration reform and economic equality.
Human Rights Day: Workers Ask, ‘What’s Gone Wrong at Chase?’
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Today is International Human Rights Day and hundreds of union members, religious leaders, activists, farm workers and victims of bank home foreclosures are protesting at 100 JPMorgan Chase Bank branches across the country to demand the bank respect the basic human rights of people to have decent places to live and work.
Large banks such as Chase are flush with cash and protestors handed out fliers asking, “What’s Gone Wrong at Chase?” and demanded the bank declare a one-year moratorium on home foreclosures. The Wall Street Journal reports that Chase has $19.5 billion worth of home loans in foreclosure, more than any other bank.
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.
Women Taking on Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant Law
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Arizona’s new anti-immigrant law has “paved the way for assaults on the basic human rights of women and created an environment in which violence against women and children has been state-sanctioned.” But immigrants and people of conscience are steadfastly resisting the law, a group of women activists said this week.
At the same time, religious groups, political leaders and sports teams are calling for the law to be repealed.
The Women’s Emergency Human Rights Delegation, which includes civil and women’s rights leaders, journalists, union leaders and organizers from the AFL-CIO, National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), the National Domestic Worker Alliance (NDWA) and Jobs with Justice (JwJ), visited women at community centers in Phoenix on Mother’s Day to document the experiences of women in Arizona in the wake of the signing of the law. Ana Avendano, an assistant to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, was among the delegation. Read the delegation’s statement here.
At Orlando Forum, Residents Hard-Hit by Jobs Crisis Share Their Hardships
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On the heels of huge jobs rallies in Evansville, Ind., and at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida this weekend, a packed local Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) union hall heard workers and community leaders in the Orlando area discuss the economic struggles area residents face.
Jobs for Justice played a key role in putting together the forum, which included panels of leaders who questioned workers who testified. The panelists included Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) and Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Larry Olness from the Heart of Florida United Way said the organization’s help line is inundated with calls from families lacking the resources to cope with the crises they face.
Tamecka Pierce, who is unemployed, told of her inability to find a job. She needs a job with benefits because she suffers from a chronic illness.
The truth is, to have a good quality of life, you have to have a good job with paid sick days and affordable health care.
Barbara Medina, an office staff person who works at the IUPAT local union hall where the forum was held, was homeless four years ago. She described how she built a new life, thanks to a good job after she was laid off and had to send her children back to Puerto Rico because she couldn’t afford to support them.
Bill Would Create Agency to Protect Consumers from Big Banks
The global financial meltdown demonstrated how vulnerable workers and consumers are to abuses in consumer lending practices and Wall Street’s recklessness. A package of reforms now on the House floor would help protect Americans from a laundry list of risky Wall Street practices from predatory lending to unregulated derivatives.
In a letter to House members, the AFL-CIO urged lawmakers to pass the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (H.R. 4173). The letter said, in part:
The bailouts of major banking institutions reinforced the idea that workers and consumers must fight for protections they rightly deserve. Once signed into law, this package of reforms will work together to address the plethora of causes from predatory lending to unregulated derivatives that led to last year’s meltdown.
Hate Crimes Bill Heads to Obama
After fighting for new hate crimes legislation for a dozen years, union and civil rights activists praised the final passage of a bill that expands the definition of federal hate crimes and removes unnecessary obstacles to prosecution.
The Senate passed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act late last week by a 68-29 margin. The bill, which was attached to a Defense authorization measure, already had cleared the House. President Obama is expected to sign it into law as early as this week.
Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), which includes the AFL-CIO and several unions, applauded lawmakers for “recognizing the fundamental right of all Americans to be protected from violence because of their race, the way they worship, their sexual orientation, gender identity or disability status.”
Henderson Tells Convention: Employee Choice Is Civil Rights Issue
As the AFL-CIO Convention prepared to vote on Resolution 1 on organizing, Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), told the delegates that the freedom to form unions is a civil rights issue.
He called for Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act and pledged that the civil rights community will work “shoulder to shoulder” with workers to pass the bill.
Union participation can begin to lift the dead weight of decades of discrimination. For African Americans, women and Latinos the best way to build a better life is to join together with others to form a union.
Obama to Address AFL-CIO Convention
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President Barack Obama will address our AFL-CIO Convention in Pittsburgh on Sept. 15, marking a major shift in the relationship between the union movement and the White House. For the past eight years, the Bush administration waged war on America’s workers, and union members took a big step toward taking back America by playing a major role in electing Obama and a Democrat-controlled Congress.
Obama will address a convention that will make history by electing a new leadership team. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney is retiring after 14 years at the helm.
Along with Obama, the Sept. 13-17 convention will hear from many prominent political and union leaders, including Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Caroline Kennedy and NAACP President Benjamin Jealous.
