AFL-CIO NOW Blog

Voters in New Hampshire won’t be disenfranchised by what would have been one of the most regressive voter photo ID laws in in the nation after the state Senate today failed to override Gov. John Lynch’s (D) veto of the bill. In the state Senate, where Republicans hold a 19-5 majority, the vote to override was 7-17.

When Lynch vetoed the bill in June, he said it would create a real risk that voters would be denied their right to vote, adding that the state has consistently high voter turnout, no voter fraud problems and strong election laws.

An eligible voter who goes to the polls to vote on Election Day should be able to have his or her vote count on Election Day.

Studies show that in states with similar laws—such as the one Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R)  signed in May—students, seniors and people of color are the most likely to be disenfranchised because they lack state issued photo IDs. Says New Hampshire state Rep Terie Norelli (D), who opposed the bill when it before the House:

We do not want to disenfranchise our seniors or our young people or low income voters. Those are the groups that would have the most difficult time complying.

 

Chicago illustrator Estelle Carol has won the Union Communication Services’ (UCS’s) “Unions Now More Than Ever” contest. She will receive a $500 prize for her winning entry.

“Estelle’s striking graphic [at left] does a wonderful job of reminding people why unions are still needed and relevant in the 21st century,” UCS publisher David Prosten says. 

Unions aren’t just about ending child labor in the textile mills of the 1930s. They’re still fighting for their communities, still standing up for worker rights. And in a globalized economy dominated by powerful multinationals, they’re more than ever the last best chance to protect and defend ordinary people.

As part of the contest, UCS also will donate $1,000 to the workers’ advocacy group American Rights at Work.

UCS, which publishes the Steward Update newsletter, the Union Members’ Complete Guide and other materials, is based in Annapolis, Md.

The only thing congressional Republicans have done about the nation’s job crisis is to make it worse by standing in the way of  job creation and pushing a budget proposal—which Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) equates to ”applying leeches to a patient who needs a transfusion.”

In a column in the Des Moines Register, Harkin writes:

The Republican mantra is “government can’t create jobs.” Nonsense. Smart government can create jobs—and short-sighted government can destroy jobs. The brief shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration this summer put 70,000 private-sector construction employees out of work. Draconian cuts proposed by House Republicans to the new transportation bill would destroy an estimated 490,000 highway construction jobs and nearly 100,000 transit-related jobs.

He says Republicans are in a “mindless march to austerity,” by focusing on the budget deficit rather than the deficit that most Americans say must be closed—the jobs deficit. The Republican budget, authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), would put the nation on “a course of radical disinvestment and decline.”

Smart countries do not just turn a chainsaw on themselves. Instead of the current slash-and-burn approach, which is being sold through fear and fatalism, we need an approach that reflects the hopes and aspirations of the American people.

Harkin points to tens of millions of jobs created by visionary leadership and government investment in the nation’s highway system, space exploration and research. For example, the federal government’s $3.8 billion in the human genome project, between 1988 and 2003, translated into $796 billion in economic output and, in 2010 alone, supported 310,000 jobs.

Investments to bring the U.S. infrastructure of roads, highways, transits systems, schools and the power grid into the 21st century would “rapidly create millions of private sector-jobs, especially in the hard-hit construction industry, while modernizing the arteries and veins of commerce.”

There can be no economic recovery and no return to fiscal balance without the recovery of the middle class. This means investing in education, innovation, and infrastructure—creating a world-class workforce. And it means restoring a level playing field, with fair taxation, vibrant unions and a strong ladder of opportunity to give every American access to the middle class.

Click here for the full column.

 

Join progressive activists from around the nation to map out strategy to Take Back the American Dream and rebuild America’s struggling middle class. The annual conference (formerly known as the America’s Future Now conference) is set for Oct. 3-5 in Washington, D.C. Click here to register.

With the floodgates of corporate campaign cash flung open and a tea party-dominated conservative movement doing violence to the fundamental pillars of middle-class prosperity, the promise of the American Dream is under threat as never before.

But as the grassroots uprising in Wisconsin, the battles in Ohio and other states and this summer’s actions show there is a growing energy and counterweight to battle this extremist and corporate attack on middle-class jobs and dreams.

At the conference, sponsored by Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) and co-sponsored by Rebuild the Dream, MoveOn.org and Change Nation, activists, local volunteers, students, teachers, unions and community groups will come together to find ways to revitalize the economy, build jobs, change communities and harness the grassroots energy.

Top items on this year’s agenda and workshops include:

• Jobs: Putting American Back to Work;
• Corporations Corrupting Democracy: How Citizens Can Take on Money Power;
• Stop Outsourcing the Dream: How America Can Revive Manufacturing in a Green Industrial Revolution;
• Rebuilding the Middle: Why Empowering Workers & Holding CEO’s Accountable is Vital to Economic Growth;
• Caring Across Generations: Organizing Domestic Workers & Seniors Across Race, Class and Generation; and more, click here for the full agenda.

Scheduled speakers include AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who will deliver the conference keynote address Oct. 4; United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard; Ai-Jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance; Heather McGee, director of Demos’s Washington, D.C. office; Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.); Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.); student and education activists Allie McCullen; and more. Click here for the full list.

Click here to find out more about the conference, accommodations, to register and more information.

 

How appropriate. We’re drowning in rain here in the nation’s capital, while outside the Beltway, America’s working families are drowning in one disastrous economic wave after another. A few recent nuggets.

• The new working-age (18-64) poor now make up nearly three out of five poor people—a switch from the early 1970s, when children made up the main impoverished group. The nation’s working-age poor share surpasses a previous high of 55.5 percent, first reached in 2004—and are at the highest level since the 1960s when the war on poverty was launched.
• People who are laid off from previously stable employment, if they are lucky enough to find work, take a median wage hit of more than 20 percent, which can persist for decades.
• The median working-age household saw its income decline by $2,700 from 2007 to 2009.  As a result, the typical working-age household brought in roughly $5,000 less in 2009 than it did in 2000. 
• As the chart here shows, CEO pay last year jumped an average 27.8 percent and is now 325 times the average pay of a U.S. worker.
• The New York Times is now asking, “Can the Middle Class Be Rebuilt?” implying, of course, that the foundation of solid middle-wage earners that fueled America’s historic strength is broken beyond possible repair.

 

While T-Mobile’s parent company, Deutsche Telekom, respects workers’ right to bargain collectively in Germany, T-Mobile’s U.S. management has fought workers’ attempts to join the Communications Workers of America (CWA) with campaigns of delaying tactics and interference to intimidate workers.

You can help T-Mobile employees gain a voice on the job by signing a petition here telling Deutsche Telekom we expect better from a corporation that asserts it’s committed to social justice. Join in by demanding that T-Mobile USA stop bullying workers and agree to end all interference in their workers’ decision to join CWA. The petition is sponsored by LabourStart in partnership with the global 20 million-member UNI Global Union.

In July, UNI; the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC); ver.di, the union for Deutsche Telekom workers; and CWA filed a complaint under the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises against Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile for anti-worker activities in the United States. Click here to read the complaint.

The same month, a group of T-Mobile technicians in Hamden, Conn., became the first T-Mobile workers to win a voice at work with CWA. In June, T-Mobile workers in Long Island, N.Y., took the first step toward forming a union by signing union authorization cards (see video above).

Says UNI General Secretary Philip Jennings, who traveled to Long Island from UNI headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland, to verify the card signings:

In any other country, these workers would already have their union. Their right to union representation would already be recognized. But not here in the United States, where delay and harassment is the game plan that most corporations seem to follow.

That’s why the worldwide union movement is supporting the effort by T-Mobile USA workers to gain full organizing and bargaining rights, Jennings said. 

Workers have spoken with a strong voice for their union rights. That should be sufficient.

    IAM President Tom Buffenbarger (left), Spirit AeroSystems CEO Jeff Turner (center) and former House Majority Leader and Spirit Board Member Richard Gephardt (right) take questions from union and company representatives at a meeting last year.         

There is a place in Kansas where workers and managers cooperate with each other and have built a very successful business. No Dorothy, this is not Oz. It’s Spirit AeroSystems, a top aerospace supplier in Wichita. And actually, it’s just one of many untold stories of innovation and cooperation. 

Last year, the company and the Machinists (IAM) signed a landmark 10-year contract committing to “a long-term, cooperative relationship.” The contract ties a portion of 3,800 union workers’ pay to Spirit’s economic performance. In exchange for the workers’ commitment to not strike during the term of the pact, the company committed to “the maintenance of a strong, highly skilled and sustainable work force in Wichita.”

“This is what we tried to do with Boeing,” IAM President Tom Buffenbarger told The Seattle Times. With Spirit, he says, “we found a partner.”

Spirit is a great lesson for businesses that can get over a myopic, right-wing view of how labor can work with them.

The company also agreed to maintain major manufacturing operations in Wichita for the life of the agreement, which maintains jobs in Wichita. Under the contract, the company agreed to consider layoffs only as a last resort, and the deal requires management to consult with the union about any decision to outsource or offload work.

Spirit, a former division of Boeing, makes large airplane sections for Boeing, Airbus and smaller manufacturers. It employs some 13,000 people at the former Boeing sites in Kansas and Oklahoma, up from about 8,400 when Boeing sold them in 2005.

Buffenbarger told the Times he was “very pleased” with the way the contract is working.

Last year before formal contract negotiations began, Turner, Buffenbarger and former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt, a Spirit board member, jointly addressed more than 500 managers and union shop stewards at the Wichita plant, to explain the idea of the new partnership.

The Seattle Times quotes Turner as saying, “I want ‘The Fighting Machinists’ at my side, not in my face,” borrowing the union’s slogan.

Read the entire Seattle Times article here.

The relationship between workers and management at Spirit contrasts sharply with the situation at Boeing. The National Labor Relations Board is investigating charges that Boeing moved production away from its Washington State facility in retaliation for the workers exercising their right to strike.

 

With Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid possibly on the budget cutting block, members of the Alliance for Retired Americans will celebrate the organization’s 10th anniversary this week by doing what they have done for a decade: fighting for for America’s seniors.

As part of the Alliance’s annual legislative conference which began this afternoon and runs through Sept. 9, hundreds of seniors will converge on Capitol Hill Sept. 8, just hours before President Obama’s address on jobs, to tell their representatives and senators to keep their hands off Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Alliance members already have gotten lawmakers’ attention after holding more than 70 actions in more than two dozen states around the country this summer. The events have ranged from celebrating the anniversaries and successes of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to holding accountable presidential candidates and lawmakers. Alliance members also told Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry in no uncertain terms what they thought of their schemes to raise the Social Security retirement age, cut benefits or privatize the program.

As part of the conference, “Celebrating Our Past, Fighting for Your Future,” seniors will analyze the latest threats to Social Security and Medicare and plan strategies to protect them. They also will take an early look at the 2012 elections and will explore new ways of organizing, including using  e-mail, Facebook, and YouTube to broaden the reach and effectiveness of their grassroots campaigns.

AFSCME President Gerald McEntee and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will receive special Leadership Awards.

Speakers will include Alliance President Barbara Easterling,  AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO President Emeritus John Sweeney, Alliance Secretary-Treasurer Ruben Burks, Alliance Executive Director Edward Coyle, Alliance President Emeritus George Kourpias, AFT President Randi Weingarten, National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel and singer Judy Collins.

A large contingent of political leaders will also speak to this politically-motivated and active group, including Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Democratic National Committee Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shulz  (D-Fla.) and Reps. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) and Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.).

Here’s mandatory reading material for lawmakers returning to Capitol Hill this week. A new United Nations study “savages” U.S. and European economic policies that call for austerity measures and deficit cuts, which the report says is pushing the world economy toward disaster “in a misguided attempt to please global financial markets.” The report called for:

wage increases, stricter regulation of financial markets, including a return to a system of managed exchange rates, and a conscious break with market-led thinking.

The report’s author, Heiner Flassbeck, is head of the globalization and development strategies division at the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and a former deputy finance minister in Germany. Flassbeck says:

If interests rates everywhere are zero, and if governments stick to the policy of not only keeping fiscal deficits where they are but retrenching, cutting public expenditure, then we will end up in permanent recession.

Or, as UNCTAD Secretary General Supachai Panitchpakdi put it:

The message here is very pragmatic: We need to reverse our course quickly.

 

Social Security Works has put together a video to urge President Obama to stay true to his vision of the American Dream and not cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

You can take action now. Sign the petition here asking the president to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

The video (above), “The America We Want,”  includes a montage of the president defending Social Security and Medicare. In one of his speeches, he says we want an America that cares about others.

The video also warns that Obama showed a willingness to cut a deal with congressional Republicans to cut the Social Security cost of living allowance (COLA) and increase the Medicare eligibility age. Cutting the COLA would cost 12 weeks of food for retirees who depend on their Social Security checks for all their income, according to the video.   

The video is part of a Social Security Works campaign to urge President Obama to oppose cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in his jobs and deficit speech on Sept. 8, or later on, as the Super Committee talks get under way. The Super Committee, a joint congressional panel that will recommend even more budget cuts later this year, was created in August.

 

Most American children never receive any education about the union movement’s proper place in our country’s history and its many contributions to the nation’s development, according to a new report.

“American Labor and U.S. History Textbooks: How Labor’s Story Is Distorted in High School History Textbooks,” sponsored by the Albert Shanker Institute in cooperation with the American Labor Studies Center, surveys four major textbooks that together account for most of the market in U.S. history textbooks. The report found that these textbooks often present labor history in a biased, negative way, focusing on strikes and strike violence while giving little or no attention to the employer abuse and violence that caused the strikes.

In addition, it notes that the textbooks virtually ignore:

• The role of unions in passing protections and reforms such as the eight-hour work day, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, occupational safety and health, the end of abusive child labor, and environmental protection;
• Unions’ strong support for the civil rights movement; and
• The role unions played in the 1960s in particular, when the rise of public sector unions brought many more Americans into the middle class and gave new rights to public employees.

AFT President Randi Weingarten said the report “explains why so few Americans know much about labor’s history and contributions.”

It paints a devastating picture of distortion and omission. Too often, labor’s role in U.S. history is misrepresented, downplayed, or ignored. The result is that most American students have little sense of how the labor movement changed the lives of Americans for the better. A vital piece of U.S. history is disappearing before our eyes.

Weingarten also is president of the Albert Shanker Institute.

The World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) Appellate Body yesterday upheld President Obama’s decision based on U.S. trade law to provide relief for American tire industry workers against surging imports from China of passenger and light truck tires. 

In September 2009, Obama became the first president to enforce U.S. trade law when he imposed tariffs to protect domestic workers against a surge in tire imports from China. The original complaint came from the United Steelworkers (USW), and Obama’s decision led to a rebound in the tire industry.

USW President Leo W. Gerard hailed the decision as good news for America’s workers and praised the WTO for reaffirming that:

President Obama’s decision to stand up for America’s workers against the flood of passenger and light truck tire imports from China were legal and justified.

Since the president’s decision, investments in U.S. tire manufacturing are up, jobs have been created and our companies are shipping more tires to consumers, Gerard said. “While we still need to accelerate our nation’s economic recovery, the economic benefits of the trade relief are clear and indisputable,” he added.

Obama put the tariffs in place in each of the three years after public hearings before the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) in response to a petition filed in April 2009 by the USW on behalf of its members employed in tire plants throughout the country.

You can learn more about the trade case filing here. The WTO Appellate Body’s full report can be found here.

 

 

   

Nicole Fuller, AFL-CIO Community Services liaison for the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania/Philadelphia Council (UWSEPA), reports on the effort to provide book bags for children in need.  

Five years ago, AFL-CIO Community Services liaison Janet Hammond Ryder, who is retiring this year, spearheaded a partnership with the UWSEPA, unions, local businesses and grassroots community leaders to raise money, collect school supplies and pack them in book bags and distribute them to children living in shelters in Philadelphia and three surrounding counties. Her vision dubbed “Stuff the Bus” is now being duplicated in sister United Way agencies. 

Unfortunately, the need for this effort has grown in these challenging economic times. Five years ago, some 1,700 backpacks were distributed in the Philadelphia area. Last year that count increased to 4,500.

To help our campaign grow this year, for the first time, Stuff the Bus partnered with the Cradles to Crayons Backpack-A-Thon effort. Cradles to Crayons is a fledgling local nonprofit based in Boston that provides free year-round resources to children up to age 10 years and to other nonprofit agencies and organizations. In addition to school supplies, they give away gently used clothing, shoes, toys, furniture and books. The two organizations felt that our combined resources and enthusiasm would encourage growth in our numbers and it surely did.

This signature event was held on a very rainy Thursday, Aug. 25, just days before Hurricane Irene struck the area. Our goal was to distribute 15,000 backpacks; however, our combined fundraising efforts yielded more than 17,000 backpacks that were given to needy children throughout the region.  

This partnership allowed us to provide more children with necessary school supplies. But it also showed us how much can be accomplished when the entire community gets involved and works together. There were CEOs, local labor leaders, rank-and-file members from area locals, community organization directors along with many young people working side by side for this worthwhile cause.

Special thanks are extended to UWSEPA board members Catherine Scott, president of AFSCME District Council 47, who served as co-chair of this effort, and Patrick Eiding, president of the Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO.

 

Steve Stallone is president of the International Labor Communications Association  (ILCA)  and  secretary/editor of the Pacific Media Workers Guild.

Labor Day in San Francisco would not be complete without a large community picket at UNITEHERE! Local 2’s latest target. Tourism is the city’s biggest industry and the country’s largest hotel chains seemingly can’t resist providing the labor movement with a villain all can despise.

This year, the winner—and still champion—is Hyatt, with credentials that would make Cruella De Vil blush.

 

Hundreds of labor activists from nearly every union in the city and from numerous progressive community and faith groups came out Monday morning to let Hyatt know San Francisco will not tolerate this kind of corporate bad behavior. They assembled in swanky Union Square, and then took to the streets, a flood of union colors, banners and chants disrupting shoppers and tourists.

For a warm-up, the march stopped at the nearby Hotel Frank, as chants of “Union Power” reverberated in the narrow streets with tall buildings. Wells Fargo took over the hotel in a foreclosure a year and a half ago. The new management refuses to recognize the union that’s been there for 40 years, workloads have increased as staff is cut, and the state of medical benefits and pensions remains undecided. Local 2 has led a boycott of Hotel Frank since, and picket lines continue there several times a week.

Then it was on to the Grand Hyatt. The entire block in front of its entrance filled with a circling picket as the Brass Liberation Orchestra provided a funky musical backup for dancing marchers and chants.

We’re gonna boycott.
We’re gonna shut it down,
San Francisco is a union town.

The crowd then moved to the adjacent Hyatt Plaza, swarming the steps and forming a raked audience as Local 2 President and President of the San Francisco Labor Council Mike Casey explained the situation at the Hyatt.

Workers there and at the Regency Hyatt down on the Embarcadero have been working without a contract for more than two years. The issue holding up an agreement is a “solidarity” clause the union has put on the table. Hyatt workers want to modify the contract’s no-strike language to allow them to not just honor a picket line of other Hyatt workers, but to join it and take boycott action in support. There are currently 17 Hyatt hotels being boycotted and seven in organizing drives—two of them in the Bay Area. The workers have already walked out twice in the course of negotiations, and another strike is likely in coming weeks.

Casey announced the prerequisite presence of the usual suspects—the San Francisco politicians and candidates for the upcoming November elections. A couple of them made their most militant stomp speech of the season before Casey introduced a few hotel workers involved in Local 2 struggles.

Antonio Arenas, a worker at the San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf Hyatt, said the three-year organizing drive there has stalled because of management intimidation. Union supporters see their hours cut and they get written up for little things that others routinely get away with, he said.

Victoria Guillen, a dishwasher at the Grand Hyatt, told the story about when she got pregnant two years ago and her doctor ordered her to take a long leave of absence. A month before the birth of her daughter, Hyatt management told her she had used up her leave and had to return to work three days after her due date or be fired. That clearly could not happen, especially after the Cesarean section birth. Only the actions of her co-workers and union finally won her job back months later.

Guillen introduced her daughter sitting in a baby carriage.

We were going to name her Cielo Yolanda. But we called her Cielo Victoria, for our fight and victory.

Wrapping up the event, Casey acknowledged that the San Francisco Labor Council doesn’t hold the traditional Labor Day picnic. Nonetheless, he said, there were sandwiches and other food, and he urged people to line up and get something to eat.

Picnics don’t build power. Being in the streets builds power.

 

The union movement is in a fight for its life and the other side is determined to take away our right to exist, Vice President Joe Biden told a gathering of working families.

Speaking at a Labor Day rally yesterday in Cincinnati, Biden said unions are the only non-governmental power with the power and capacity to stop the onslaught against the middle class.

 The middle class is under attack because labor is under the most direct assault in generations. The other side has declared war on labor’s house and it’s about time we stand up.    

 

America’s jobs crisis is hitting college grads especially hard, with new graduates less likely to get a job than they were 10 years ago. If they do find work, the job will pay less, on average, than jobs in 2000, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Read the report here.

After seeing wage gains in the 1980s and 1990s, hourly wages for young college-educated men in 2000 were $22.75, and that dropped by almost a full dollar to $21.77 by 2010. For young college-educated women, hourly wages fell from $19.38 to $18.43 over the same period.

In addition to the dismal job prospects, college students face the double dilemma of falling wages and mounting debt. The average college student today graduates owing about $25,000.

The deterioration in wages is part of the larger jobs crisis facing working people. With unemployment still above 9 percent and wages stagnating, millions of Americans are struggling to keep their heads above water.

Last week, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka unveiled a six-point “America Wants to Work” jobs and economy initiative “that is serious and reflects the scale of the crisis we face.” The plan includes:

• Rebuilding America’s schools and transportation and energy systems;
• Reviving U.S. manufacturing and ending the exportation of U.S. jobs;
• Putting people to work in local communities;
• Helping states and local governments to prevent layoffs and cuts to public services;
• Extending unemployment insurance (UI) benefits and helping homeowners keep their homes; and
• Reforming Wall Street so it helps Main Street create jobs.

Click here for a detailed look at the plan.

If you think it’s time to focus on the jobs crisis, add your name to our petition here calling on Congress and the media to admit that people are hurting and start addressing the jobs crisis.

President Obama spent Labor Day in Detroit speaking with working families in an event sponsored by the Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and other top union leaders joined Obama, who asserted his strong support for workers’ freedom to seek a voice at work through a union.

And I want everybody here to know, as long as I’m in the White House I’m going to stand up for collective bargaining….Because having a voice on the job and a chance to organize and a chance to negotiate for a fair day’s pay after a hard day’s work, that is the right of every man and woman in America—not just the CEO in the corner office, but also the janitor who cleans that office after the CEO goes home. Everybody has got the same right.

Obama blasted efforts by lawmakers to take away workers’ ability to collectively bargain for good middle-class jobs.

When I hear some of these folks trying to take collective bargaining rights away, trying to pass so-called “right to work” laws for private sector workers—that really mean the right to work for less and less and less—when I hear some of this talk I know this is not about economics. This is about politics.

In his remarks, Trumka pointed to Labor Day as the:

one time of year when we stop to recognize work. Work—and the people who do it. Think about it. Think about what work means to our lives…and our country. Think about how work connects us all.

And then…say thank you to everyone who works….To the bus drivers who get us to our jobs. To the teachers who educate and encourage our children. To the nurses and doctors who look out for our health. The construction workers who build our cities—and those Secret Service agents keeping our president safe.

Trumka also pointed to Labor Day as the:

time to think about the millions of men and women who want to work, but have been unable to find jobs for weeks, months—even years.

Trumka urged the crowd to pledge to “do everything we can to insist that our elected leaders and our companies create good jobs…and put America back to work.”

Last week, Trumka unveiled a six-point America Wants to Work Action Plan, with the AFL-CIO calling on Congress and the administration for big, bold, timely action to put America back to work, retain good jobs and rebuild the U.S. economy.

You can sign the America Wants to Work pledge here, or text PLEDGE to 235246 to get involved.

Each Labor Day, the nation takes the time to honor the value of work and all who do it. But in this Labor Day video message, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says we also should remember the millions of jobless workers by joining the fight to put America back to work.

It’s time to think about the millions of men and women who have lost their jobs and have spent weeks, months—even years—struggling to get back to work….Together as activists, it’s our job to demand that our leaders—local and state officials, Congress and the president—take big bold action to create good jobs and put America back to work.

You can sign the America Wants to Work pledge here, or text PLEDGE to 235246, and we will keep you informed about the America Wants to Work campaign and when and how you can make a difference.

 

Happy Labor Day! Before you head out for a Labor Day parade, picnic, barbecue or maybe even a political action, head on over to www.aflcio.org/iheart, where you can honor America’s workers and their hard work this Labor Day.

As part of the AFL-CIO’s America Wants to Work Labor Day actions, you can select the worker you HEART and then, with just two clicks, share your tribute via Facebook and Twitter.

We offer suggestions, such as teachers, truck drivers and steelworkers, but you can choose your own. Maybe it’s the air traffic controller who’s guiding you and your family home, the nurse who took such great care of your mom, or maybe the snowplow driver who freed you and your neighbors after one of last year’s big blizzards.

So click here and tell us who you HEART this Labor Day.

 

John Padget, labor liaison for the Cedar Valley (Iowa) United Way, reports on a fundraiser by union motorcycle riders to help children read to grade level.

Last weekend, dozens of union motorcycle riders, members of the Community Ride in the Cedar Valley/Waterloo, Iowa, area, came together for an ”I Can Read Ride”  fundraiser to help school children who are struggling to read at grade level. Community Ride consists of union members from a variety of unions who share a common interest in motorcycles and a desire to see our community become  a better place to live, work and raise a family. The riders raised just more than $3,000.

There is a big need for the program in Black Hawk County, which includes Cedar Valley. Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of all fourth graders in the county are proficient in reading compared to 79 percent statewide . The numbers drop considerably for low-income fourth graders (58 percent) and African American fourth graders (51 percent) in the county. 

Volunteers work one on one with children who are not reading at grade level. The money raised by Community Ride is used for books and other material to support the project. For example, the program may help a family that has lost their income because of job loss to buy appropriate reading level books for their children to practice reading.

Ritchie Kurtenbach, a member of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 288, and Barb Rice of  UAW Local 838, the co-chairs of this year’s fundraiser, said it’s essential workers join together to make a better community.

We wanted to raise awareness of this problem and play a part in the solution.