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A group of working families advocates, led by labor unions and community and faith groups, visited the office of Rep. Rodney Davis (R) in Champaign, Ill., delivering a letter that asked him to support a comprehensive immigration policy with a road map to citizenship. Davis was not present. While a Davis spokesperson said he has an open mind on immigration, he has repeatedly put forth issue stances on immigration that are punitive and regressive and said that bill that passed the Senate was "dead on arrival."
A packed schedule at the upcoming AFL-CIO National Convention will feature appearances by U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez. The quadrennial convention will take place in Los Angeles from Sept. 8–11. The AFL-CIO's 27th convention will focus on the changing face of labor and chart out new directions for the labor movement in the coming years. It also will include a series of breakout action sessions that will lay out strategies for the future and will elect the union's officers.
The state-owned Fiji Sugar Corp. (FSC) continues to refuse to negotiate with workers over wages and working conditions—the last wage increase being more than seven years ago. Despite FSC management threats, and the presence of the police and military during the strike vote, workers voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike.
A new report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows that wages for the vast majority of America's working families have stagnated or declined over the past decade and that raising wages is the key challenge facing the country in terms of growing the economy and recovering from the Great Recession. In A Decade of Flat Wages: The Key Barrier to Shared Prosperity and a Rising Middle Class, authors Lawrence Mishel and Heidi Shierholz note that while productivity and corporate profits are on the rise, that prosperity is not being shared with workers. They also point out that the only notable growth in wages is concentrated on corporate executives and in the finance sector, meaning the bulk of wage growth has gone to the upper 1% of the workforce.
Cincinnati voters will decide this fall on a ballot measure to eliminate pensions for city workers that was written by an extremist right-wing think tank, funded by unnamed out-of-state interests and promoted by tea party activists.
In August 1963, as was the case 100 years earlier when the cemetery for the heroes of Gettysburg was dedicated, many speeches were delivered; but one stood out as a galvanizing moment to redefine and repurpose a movement. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, delivered in November 1863, clearly defined the issue of the Civil War to be whether states’ rights could trample the rights of anyone. Similarly, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech came to define the civil rights movement of a century later. It has come to be interpreted as a call for a colorblind society, instead of a call to end racial injustice. His vision was more powerful than the sanguine, “not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” interpretation that has seen right-wing conservatives quoting Dr. King’s speech to justify racial disparities; in the same way that tea party members embrace Lincoln’s “government of the people,” to somehow mean no government at all.
Community service isn't always the first thing that comes to mind when people think of unions, but it should be close to the top of the list. Union members are community-minded by their very nature and they prove this every day through the many different service projects they create and participate in, on and off the clock.
In a victory for some 3,100 retired Mine Workers (UMWA) members and a setback for Peabody Energy and its attempt to duck its health care obligations, a U.S. Court of Appeals’ bankruptcy appellate panel today reversed a lower court’s ruling that would have allowed Peabody to shed its responsibilities.
Nine new large fires have ignited across the American West, stretching the nation's firefighting resources to the limit, the National Interagency Coordination Center said Wednesday.
On Sept. 8, the AFL-CIO will kick off its national convention in Los Angeles. The last time it was held in L.A. was in 1999, when the AFL-CIO announced its historic declaration for a legalization program for all undocumented immigrants, increased workplace protection for immigrant workers and an end to employer sanction laws, which it supported back in 1986 as part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). The national convention this year in L.A. will also be a historic one. With union density at around 12% (the private sector below 7%), the labor movement today is in a state of crisis. As the recent deep recession, or depression, as some economists have labeled it, has shown us, the labor movement is really the only safety net that we have in this country for the working class.
