Listen to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka's response to President Obama's State of the Union address.
Please take a moment to watch this video and pass it around. The president was absolutely right to make jobs a top priority, and we must act on a scale that is meaningful. I hope you can join us in this fight.
In solidarity,
Richard L. Trumka
AFL-CIO President
Showing posts with label AFL-CIO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AFL-CIO. Show all posts
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Supporting Partners of the Employee Free Choice Act
Supporting Partners of the Employee Free Choice Act
Josh Goldstein
American Rights at Work
Sierra Club: “The green economy holds great promise to build the American middle-class. One way to ensure that it benefits the many rather than the few is by passing the Employee Free Choice Act.”
Human Rights Watch: "Weak US labor law effectively denies millions of workers the right to form a union and bargain collectively. Congress should bring worker protections closer to international standards by passing the Employee Free Choice Act."
Sojourners: “The “right to organize” is what is at stake with the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), and it is why the Employee Free Choice Act is fundamentally a moral issue. It is a way to level the playing field, to give workers a collective voice in the wages, benefits, and conditions of their employment. It is a way to ensure their basic human dignity.” - Reverend Jim Wallis, President
National Partnership for Women and Families: "With our nation's work/family policies badly out-of-sync with the realities of this era, and the economy taking a terrible toll on families, the National Partnership for Women & Families strongly supports the Employee Free Choice Act because it has the potential to dramatically improve working conditions of millions of women and men around the country. Union participation improves wages, health coverage, pensions, and other benefits that hard-working Americans need to hold jobs and care for their families and their health." - Debra Ness, President
Center for American Progress Action Fund: “The Employee Free Choice Act holds the promise of restoring workplace democracy for workers attempting to organize, boosting unionization rates, and improving the economic standing and workplace conditions for millions of American workers.”
People for the American Way: The Employee Free Choice Act supports important American values around workers’ rights to association. It provides workers a free and fair choice about how to form a union, helps workers secure their first contract in a reasonable amount of time, and toughens penalties against employers that violate the law. This is a sound and measured approach to restoring workers’ rights – and to rebuilding and renewing our nation’s economy.
Center for Community Change: “Our economy can only prosper when it works for everyone. Especially in difficult times, American communities have a history of meeting challenges by coming together. The rise of corporate greed and irresponsibility has created the worst economic crisis in this nation since the great depression. It’s time that we empower American families and working people to hold corporations accountable. Through unions, workers come together to balance their voices with the power of companies, and to build an economy that works for all of us.”- Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director
National Consumers League: The National Consumers League is proud to join with our labor friends and other national consumer groups in supporting the Employee Free Choice Act. Consumer groups understand that the fair wages, benefits, and protections that union workers receive allow them to have a decent standard of living and be better-informed consumers. That is good for America and that is why NCL supports the Employee Free Choice Act.
Alliance for Justice: "Union members have been a key voice for all Americans on issues like affordable health care, public education, green jobs, and equal opportunity. Restoring the freedom to choose a union is a key to getting America back on track... Congress should pass the Employee Free Choice Act to help strengthen workers' ability to win justice at work and in our communities." - Nan Aron, President
Catholics United: “The Employee Free Choice Act is the cornerstone of an economy that serves working families. The right to organize is foundational to Catholic social teaching. Catholics United stands with working families and supports the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.”
National Employment Law Project: “Workers have a fundamental right to join together into unions, but any semblance of a free and fair process for exercising that right is destroyed by ruthless employer opposition to organizing and a legal framework favoring employers every step of the way. By insisting that workers alone get to decide whether to form a union and the process for making that choice, the Employee Free Choice Act will renew workplace democracy, improve jobs, strengthen the economy and rebuild America’s middle class. This simple and just measure will at long last genuinely restore “the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively.” - Christine L. Owens, Executive Director
Jobs with Justice: “The Employee Free Choice Act is an issue not only for workers but also for their communities. When workers are fired for organizing on the job the effects ripple through their families, their churches, and their neighborhoods. When workers can choose a union through a fair process it creates a stable and prosperous community. That’s why Jobs with Justice supports the Employee Free Choice Act as a necessary part of a broad economic recovery that benefits working men and women.”
Economic Policy Institute: "The evidence suggests that more than 50 million Americans who don’t have union representation today would choose it if they were given an easy, safe way to do so," he said. "This legislation is an essential part of rebuilding the middle class in America and ensuring broadly shared prosperity."- Ross Eisenbrey, Vice-President
Campaign for America's Future: "We built a middle class because workers were able to win a decent share of the profits and productivity that they helped to generate. Unions were central to that. That is why passage of the Employee Free Choice Act is so important now, as we make the reforms needed to build an economy that works for the many and not the few." - Robert Borosage, Co-Director
The Partnership for Working Families: Millions of Americans are in economic crisis, facing the loss of their jobs, their health care, and their homes. The Employee Free Choice Act is a critical step toward rebuilding the middle class and will restore balance to our economy and our country.
Labor Council for Latin American Advancement: "Latino workers will strongly benefit from the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. It will assist them in their efforts to organize at the workplace which in turn will ensure better wages; health benefits and the opportunity for a secure retirement. The introduction and ultimate passage of this legislation will help move workers into the middle class and thus help reinvigorate the economy." Dr. Gabriela Lemus, Executive Director
Workplace Fairness: “The Employee Free Choice Act is the best stimulus package we have. Workers with good jobs, benefits and job security are able to confidently spend their earnings and help lift our economy out of this recession.” - Paula Brantner, Executive Director
USAction: “One key to economic recovery is rebuilding the middle class in this country and that’s why we need the Employee Free Choice Act. Big business and CEOshave too much power, make too much money and wield too much influence. They get golden parachutes and bailouts while the workers get lower wages, higher health care costs and reduced pensions. So the Employee Free Choice Act is about leveling the playing field.” - William McNary, President
Pride at Work: "It is still legal to fire someone for being Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender in 30 states. In states without non-discrimination legislation, labor unions are the LGBT community's front line of defense against workplace discrimination. This is why so many national LGBT organizations have signed on in support of the Employee Free Choice - because an LGBT workers best protection is a union contract." - Sandra Telep, Program Director
Interfaith Worker Justice: “All faith traditions teach that workers should be treated with respect and dignity and paid fairly. Unions serve vital roles in ensuring workers' just treatment and pay, which is why Interfaith Worker Justice supports the Employee Free Choice Act. In this time of economic crisis, workers need a voice in the future of their companies that comes through collective bargaining.” - Kim Bobo, Executive Director
Bishop Gabino Zavala: “The right of workers to freely associate and form unions without fear of intimidation or retaliation is consistent with the democratic principles that sustain our society and ensure the quality of life for its citizens. This right is also consistent with the precepts and teaching of the Roman Catholic tradition.”
Rabbi Robert Marx: “The Employee Free Choice Act offers an important opportunity to offer more than words to support the just goals of millions of working people.”
Rev. Dr. Frank Raines: “By empowering workers, the Employee Free Choice Act will enable more people to earn better wages and improve working conditions that will allow them to lift up their families.”
Imam Mahdi Bray and Hussam Ayloush: "An Islamic Perspective on the Employee Free Choice Act" available at Interfaith Worker Justice
Rev. Dr. William Jarvis Johnson: “Discourse about work and the plight of workers is sacred discourse that belongs in the pulpit and in churches all across this country.”
Rev. Aaron McEmrys: “The word "union" best describes what happens when groups of individuals come together in a spirit of mutual support, respect and love. In this sense, the concept of union is one of the most beautiful and spiritual words in my vocabulary.”
For more faith spokespersons, visit Interfaith Worker Justice.
Catholic Labor Network Organizing Committee Employee Free Choice Act Endorsement Statement:
Well over a century ago, with the rise of industrial capitalism, Pope Leo XIII issued his encyclical Rerum Novarum. Reflecting on how the modern economy too often offered the rich and powerful an opportunity to exploit working people, he took consolation in the multiplication of “workingmen’s unions” that helped ameliorate the condition of labor. “There are not a few associations of this nature,” the Holy Father observed, “but it were greatly to be desired that they should become more numerous and more efficient.”
But we live today in a nation where associations of this nature are becoming steadily fewer, in large measure because of widespread unlawful action by employers to obstruct the right of workers to organize in unions. Conservative estimates indicate that tens of thousands of workers are fired every year for exercising their lawful right to organize. Seeking a union under today’s National Labor Relations Act system is an arduous and dangerous process for employees if their employers object, yet penalties for violating the Act are so trivial as to create economic incentives for illegal union-busting activities.
Catholic social teaching on the right of workers to organize has been admirably consistent over the century since Leo XIII wrote, with John Paul II observing even more emphatically in his 1981 encyclical “Laborem Exercens” that labor unions are “indeed a mouthpiece for the struggle for social justice” and in fact “an indispensible element of social life.”
We in the Catholic Labor Network agree that trade unions represent “an indispensable element of social life” and that “it were greatly to be desired that they should become more numerous,” but that the current condition of labor law in the United States militates against this. The Employee Free Choice Act would help address this problem. For this reason, we in the Catholic Labor Network conclude that the Employee Free Choice Act represents a sound public policy method to effect the purposes of Catholic Social Teaching.
Click here to see this article at its original site: American Rights at Work
This page contains copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We believe this constitutes a "fair use" for "for nonprofit educational purposes" in accordance with U.S. Copyright Law Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.
Links to the original sites are provided as a service to our readers and for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated, become inactive, or require registration or subscription to be viewed on their originating sites, these links may not always provide the content as it is shown here.
Josh Goldstein
American Rights at Work
Sierra Club: “The green economy holds great promise to build the American middle-class. One way to ensure that it benefits the many rather than the few is by passing the Employee Free Choice Act.”
Human Rights Watch: "Weak US labor law effectively denies millions of workers the right to form a union and bargain collectively. Congress should bring worker protections closer to international standards by passing the Employee Free Choice Act."
Sojourners: “The “right to organize” is what is at stake with the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), and it is why the Employee Free Choice Act is fundamentally a moral issue. It is a way to level the playing field, to give workers a collective voice in the wages, benefits, and conditions of their employment. It is a way to ensure their basic human dignity.” - Reverend Jim Wallis, President
National Partnership for Women and Families: "With our nation's work/family policies badly out-of-sync with the realities of this era, and the economy taking a terrible toll on families, the National Partnership for Women & Families strongly supports the Employee Free Choice Act because it has the potential to dramatically improve working conditions of millions of women and men around the country. Union participation improves wages, health coverage, pensions, and other benefits that hard-working Americans need to hold jobs and care for their families and their health." - Debra Ness, President
Center for American Progress Action Fund: “The Employee Free Choice Act holds the promise of restoring workplace democracy for workers attempting to organize, boosting unionization rates, and improving the economic standing and workplace conditions for millions of American workers.”
People for the American Way: The Employee Free Choice Act supports important American values around workers’ rights to association. It provides workers a free and fair choice about how to form a union, helps workers secure their first contract in a reasonable amount of time, and toughens penalties against employers that violate the law. This is a sound and measured approach to restoring workers’ rights – and to rebuilding and renewing our nation’s economy.
Center for Community Change: “Our economy can only prosper when it works for everyone. Especially in difficult times, American communities have a history of meeting challenges by coming together. The rise of corporate greed and irresponsibility has created the worst economic crisis in this nation since the great depression. It’s time that we empower American families and working people to hold corporations accountable. Through unions, workers come together to balance their voices with the power of companies, and to build an economy that works for all of us.”- Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director
National Consumers League: The National Consumers League is proud to join with our labor friends and other national consumer groups in supporting the Employee Free Choice Act. Consumer groups understand that the fair wages, benefits, and protections that union workers receive allow them to have a decent standard of living and be better-informed consumers. That is good for America and that is why NCL supports the Employee Free Choice Act.
Alliance for Justice: "Union members have been a key voice for all Americans on issues like affordable health care, public education, green jobs, and equal opportunity. Restoring the freedom to choose a union is a key to getting America back on track... Congress should pass the Employee Free Choice Act to help strengthen workers' ability to win justice at work and in our communities." - Nan Aron, President
Catholics United: “The Employee Free Choice Act is the cornerstone of an economy that serves working families. The right to organize is foundational to Catholic social teaching. Catholics United stands with working families and supports the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.”
National Employment Law Project: “Workers have a fundamental right to join together into unions, but any semblance of a free and fair process for exercising that right is destroyed by ruthless employer opposition to organizing and a legal framework favoring employers every step of the way. By insisting that workers alone get to decide whether to form a union and the process for making that choice, the Employee Free Choice Act will renew workplace democracy, improve jobs, strengthen the economy and rebuild America’s middle class. This simple and just measure will at long last genuinely restore “the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively.” - Christine L. Owens, Executive Director
Jobs with Justice: “The Employee Free Choice Act is an issue not only for workers but also for their communities. When workers are fired for organizing on the job the effects ripple through their families, their churches, and their neighborhoods. When workers can choose a union through a fair process it creates a stable and prosperous community. That’s why Jobs with Justice supports the Employee Free Choice Act as a necessary part of a broad economic recovery that benefits working men and women.”
Economic Policy Institute: "The evidence suggests that more than 50 million Americans who don’t have union representation today would choose it if they were given an easy, safe way to do so," he said. "This legislation is an essential part of rebuilding the middle class in America and ensuring broadly shared prosperity."- Ross Eisenbrey, Vice-President
Campaign for America's Future: "We built a middle class because workers were able to win a decent share of the profits and productivity that they helped to generate. Unions were central to that. That is why passage of the Employee Free Choice Act is so important now, as we make the reforms needed to build an economy that works for the many and not the few." - Robert Borosage, Co-Director
The Partnership for Working Families: Millions of Americans are in economic crisis, facing the loss of their jobs, their health care, and their homes. The Employee Free Choice Act is a critical step toward rebuilding the middle class and will restore balance to our economy and our country.
Labor Council for Latin American Advancement: "Latino workers will strongly benefit from the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. It will assist them in their efforts to organize at the workplace which in turn will ensure better wages; health benefits and the opportunity for a secure retirement. The introduction and ultimate passage of this legislation will help move workers into the middle class and thus help reinvigorate the economy." Dr. Gabriela Lemus, Executive Director
Workplace Fairness: “The Employee Free Choice Act is the best stimulus package we have. Workers with good jobs, benefits and job security are able to confidently spend their earnings and help lift our economy out of this recession.” - Paula Brantner, Executive Director
USAction: “One key to economic recovery is rebuilding the middle class in this country and that’s why we need the Employee Free Choice Act. Big business and CEOshave too much power, make too much money and wield too much influence. They get golden parachutes and bailouts while the workers get lower wages, higher health care costs and reduced pensions. So the Employee Free Choice Act is about leveling the playing field.” - William McNary, President
Pride at Work: "It is still legal to fire someone for being Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender in 30 states. In states without non-discrimination legislation, labor unions are the LGBT community's front line of defense against workplace discrimination. This is why so many national LGBT organizations have signed on in support of the Employee Free Choice - because an LGBT workers best protection is a union contract." - Sandra Telep, Program Director
Interfaith Worker Justice: “All faith traditions teach that workers should be treated with respect and dignity and paid fairly. Unions serve vital roles in ensuring workers' just treatment and pay, which is why Interfaith Worker Justice supports the Employee Free Choice Act. In this time of economic crisis, workers need a voice in the future of their companies that comes through collective bargaining.” - Kim Bobo, Executive Director
Bishop Gabino Zavala: “The right of workers to freely associate and form unions without fear of intimidation or retaliation is consistent with the democratic principles that sustain our society and ensure the quality of life for its citizens. This right is also consistent with the precepts and teaching of the Roman Catholic tradition.”
Rabbi Robert Marx: “The Employee Free Choice Act offers an important opportunity to offer more than words to support the just goals of millions of working people.”
Rev. Dr. Frank Raines: “By empowering workers, the Employee Free Choice Act will enable more people to earn better wages and improve working conditions that will allow them to lift up their families.”
Imam Mahdi Bray and Hussam Ayloush: "An Islamic Perspective on the Employee Free Choice Act" available at Interfaith Worker Justice
Rev. Dr. William Jarvis Johnson: “Discourse about work and the plight of workers is sacred discourse that belongs in the pulpit and in churches all across this country.”
Rev. Aaron McEmrys: “The word "union" best describes what happens when groups of individuals come together in a spirit of mutual support, respect and love. In this sense, the concept of union is one of the most beautiful and spiritual words in my vocabulary.”
For more faith spokespersons, visit Interfaith Worker Justice.
Catholic Labor Network Organizing Committee Employee Free Choice Act Endorsement Statement:
Well over a century ago, with the rise of industrial capitalism, Pope Leo XIII issued his encyclical Rerum Novarum. Reflecting on how the modern economy too often offered the rich and powerful an opportunity to exploit working people, he took consolation in the multiplication of “workingmen’s unions” that helped ameliorate the condition of labor. “There are not a few associations of this nature,” the Holy Father observed, “but it were greatly to be desired that they should become more numerous and more efficient.”
But we live today in a nation where associations of this nature are becoming steadily fewer, in large measure because of widespread unlawful action by employers to obstruct the right of workers to organize in unions. Conservative estimates indicate that tens of thousands of workers are fired every year for exercising their lawful right to organize. Seeking a union under today’s National Labor Relations Act system is an arduous and dangerous process for employees if their employers object, yet penalties for violating the Act are so trivial as to create economic incentives for illegal union-busting activities.
Catholic social teaching on the right of workers to organize has been admirably consistent over the century since Leo XIII wrote, with John Paul II observing even more emphatically in his 1981 encyclical “Laborem Exercens” that labor unions are “indeed a mouthpiece for the struggle for social justice” and in fact “an indispensible element of social life.”
We in the Catholic Labor Network agree that trade unions represent “an indispensable element of social life” and that “it were greatly to be desired that they should become more numerous,” but that the current condition of labor law in the United States militates against this. The Employee Free Choice Act would help address this problem. For this reason, we in the Catholic Labor Network conclude that the Employee Free Choice Act represents a sound public policy method to effect the purposes of Catholic Social Teaching.
Click here to see this article at its original site: American Rights at Work
This page contains copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We believe this constitutes a "fair use" for "for nonprofit educational purposes" in accordance with U.S. Copyright Law Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.
Links to the original sites are provided as a service to our readers and for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated, become inactive, or require registration or subscription to be viewed on their originating sites, these links may not always provide the content as it is shown here.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
BREAKING NEWS: AFL-CIO Endorses Obama
With 10.5 million members from every walk of life, the AFL-CIO has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president.
Barack Obama’s record demonstrates he is a champion for working families and his proposals will improve life for generations of working people and our children. Barack Obama says, “Politics didn’t lead me to working folks; working folks led me to politics.” He was raised by a working mother and grandparents, worked as a community organizer in a Chicago neighborhood devastated by the closing of steel mills, fought for working families in the Illinois State Senate and earned a 98 percent AFL-CIO voting record as a U.S. senator. Barack Obama is not someone who just talks the talk—he walks the walk with working families, on picket lines, in organizing campaigns and in bargaining for a better life.
Learn more about his record, proposals and background at MeetObama08.With his emphasis on what America once again can be, and his commitment to lead for all rather than the few, Obama has reinstilled hope for a better future and inspired millions of new voters.
If ever working families needed change we can believe in, it is now. Working families are struggling in an economy that works for the few, not the many. We’re squeezed by stagnant wages, soaring costs for health care, gas and food and the sellout of America’s middle class.
With 80 percent of the public saying our country is headed in the wrong direction, it’s time to turn around America. And the first step is electing Barack Obama.
Find out more and take action at MeetObama08.
This is a make-or-break election. We cannot afford to allow the destructive politics and policies of the Bush administration to continue. We need an economy that works for working families—with health care, good jobs, fair rules for global trade, a robust middle class and the opportunity for every worker to join a union and bargain for a better life.
Barack Obama will lead the change we need.
In solidarity,
John J. Sweeney
Barack Obama’s record demonstrates he is a champion for working families and his proposals will improve life for generations of working people and our children. Barack Obama says, “Politics didn’t lead me to working folks; working folks led me to politics.” He was raised by a working mother and grandparents, worked as a community organizer in a Chicago neighborhood devastated by the closing of steel mills, fought for working families in the Illinois State Senate and earned a 98 percent AFL-CIO voting record as a U.S. senator. Barack Obama is not someone who just talks the talk—he walks the walk with working families, on picket lines, in organizing campaigns and in bargaining for a better life.
Learn more about his record, proposals and background at MeetObama08.With his emphasis on what America once again can be, and his commitment to lead for all rather than the few, Obama has reinstilled hope for a better future and inspired millions of new voters.
If ever working families needed change we can believe in, it is now. Working families are struggling in an economy that works for the few, not the many. We’re squeezed by stagnant wages, soaring costs for health care, gas and food and the sellout of America’s middle class.
With 80 percent of the public saying our country is headed in the wrong direction, it’s time to turn around America. And the first step is electing Barack Obama.
Find out more and take action at MeetObama08.
This is a make-or-break election. We cannot afford to allow the destructive politics and policies of the Bush administration to continue. We need an economy that works for working families—with health care, good jobs, fair rules for global trade, a robust middle class and the opportunity for every worker to join a union and bargain for a better life.
Barack Obama will lead the change we need.
In solidarity,
John J. Sweeney
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
The September Steamroll, Stop the Assault on Workers
Bush Labor Board Issues Slew of Anti-Worker Decisions
In a shocking move that will set workers' rights back decades, the Bush Labor Board steamrolled America’s workers in September, issuing a sweeping set of decisions that stack the deck in favor of big business over working men and women. The decisions:
Make it harder for workers to form unions but easier to get rid of existing unions;
Make it easier for employers to escape liability for breaking the law and weaken already ineffective remedies;
Make it easier for employers to discriminate against union supporters and to replace strikers;
Make it easier for employers to escape bargaining obligations.
The September decisions illustrate the overwhelmingly anti-worker and anti-union bias of the current Board majority, which has abandoned its statutory mission to protect workers’ right to form unions and promote collective bargaining. In a series of result-oriented decisions, the Bush Board has stripped workers of their rights and protected employers - - and with breathtaking bias.
At a time when our working people are struggling as never before, these decisions further limit workers’ access to our nation’s strongest middle class supporting program – union membership. The recent decisions:
Make it harder to form a union through majority sign up.
Because the system for forming unions in this country is broken, workers have increasingly formed unions using majority sign up — a majority of workers sign cards or a petition asking their employer to voluntarily recognize their union. New decisions from the Bush Board stripped such voluntary recognition of long-standing legal protections.
Now, if a majority of workers choose a union this way, the employer must notify the workforce of their right to have an election to overturn the union – even if bargaining has already begun. The Bush Board ruled that a handful of workers can stop the majority’s union from ever forming. A sharp dissent accused the majority of “cutting voluntary recognition off at the knees.” No such notification is required to inform workers of their right to HAVE a union.
Hypocritically, on the same day it issued this decision, the Bush Board found that its own election process is too burdensome when an employer’s WITHDRAWAL of recognition of the workers’ union is involved, and decided the workers’ signatures on a petition were sufficient.
Make it harder for workers who are illegally fired to recover back pay:
Labor Board remedies against employers who break the law are notoriously weak and ineffective—especially in the case of back pay awards to workers who have been illegally fired. Instead of using the authority it has to enforce the law more effectively, the Bush Board made it cheaper for employers to break the law by reversing 45 years of precedent and making it even harder for workers who are illegally fired to recover back pay. In one case, workers who were illegally discriminated against 17 years ago have still not received any back pay! In another, workers who were fired for supporting a union, and then picketed the company, were denied back pay when finally re-instated due to concerns of “reward(ing) idleness.” These rulings turn prior NLRB remedial policies on their head and require that Agency resources be diverted away from restoring workers’ rights and, instead, dedicated to helping law-breaking employers whittle down already pathetic back pay amounts.
Make it easier for employers to discriminate against union organizers:
The National Labor Relations Act was enacted to protect the right of workers to organize a union at their workplace. Decisions issued by the Bush Board in September make it easier for employers to prevent workers from organizing by making it legal for employers to discriminate against union supporters in the hiring process and legal to refuse to hire a worker who comes to the job intending to try to form a union.
Deny justice through delay:
Many of the 61 decisions issued in September involve workers who were illegally fired or discriminated against years ago — as long as 1989 — but who are still waiting for a remedy from the NLRB. Over a third have been pending for more than 5 years. A total of 33 decisions — more than half those issued — had been pending at least four years.
Continue Bush Board’s attack on worker rights:
The September decisions continue and magnify trends that started when a Bush-appointed majority took control of the NLRB in 2001. These decisions illustrate how badly broken the nation’s labor law system has become, and further spotlight the need for the Employee Free Choice Act.
Join union members to stop the anti-worker NLRB’s assault on workers.
Thursday, November 15, 2007, 10:00 –11:00 AM
Tampa NLRB, 201 E. Kennedy Blvd. (Trust Plaza), Tampa1
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Biggest Labor Day Celebration Yet!
Join us for the biggest Labor Day Celebration yet!
Monday, September 3, 2007, Florida State Fairgrounds, 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM
(Entrance off MLK--$5.00 parking for cars/$10.00 for RV’s)
FREE Admission
We are pleased to announce that Rich Trumka, Secretary-Treasurer, AFL-CIO, will be our keynote speaker. Our program will begin promptly at 11:30 AM in the Special Events Center at the Fairgrounds.
Don’t forget the many fun events planned!
- Trophies will be awarded for first, second and third place for “Best of Show” in both the classic car and motorcycle categories.
- Test your skill in the Water Balloon Contest, beginning at 12:30 PM, with the winners walking away with $$!
- Spin the "Property Tax Wheel of Misfortune" beginning at 1:00 PM.
- Get your raffle tickets for a chance at a pair of Bucs tickets or one of our other great prizes!
- Visit the Kids Fun Fair carnival rides, unlimited and free with wristband (pre-purchase required).
- The Bloodmobile will be there--let's beat our record of 30 pints from last year!
- Stroll through the many union and informational exhibits.
- Enjoy a family-oriented day with your union brothers and sisters, VIP's and live entertainment!
BBQ dinner tickets (this year's menu is BBQ ribs, chicken breasts and hotdogs served with cole slaw, corn on the cob, garlic bread stix and sweet & unsweet tea) at the special union member pricing WILL NOT be available at the event—all dinner tickets sold by the Council at the event will cost $15.00 each.
It’s not too late to pick up union member priced tickets (which comes with a wrist band good for unlimited carnival rides)—just contact your local union!
Subject: Remembering Reuther on Labor Day
As we celebrate Labor Day by marching in community parades,
attending local union picnics and other activities, may we all
enjoy the time with family, friends and co-workers.
This Labor Day weekend has a special meaning for UAW families.
On Sept. 1, we will be remembering Walter Reuther on the 100th
anniversary of his birth.
Walter P. Reuther served as UAW president from 1946 to his
untimely death in 1970. During his administration, the UAW
negotiated collective bargaining agreements that raised the
living standards for the entire working class. But, it was never
just about another nickel in the paycheck or another dollar in
pension credits. To Reuther, the UAW was not only a trade union;
it was a social movement.
From the Civil Rights movement to fighting for national health
care, Walter Reuther made sure the UAW was front and center.
It was the Reuther years that ensured democracy in our union
through the Public Review Board; demanded honesty and integrity
through our Ethical Practices Code; and instituted measures to
encourage younger leadership.
On this Labor Day, the UAW honors the life of Walter Reuther as
we carry forward his legacy for future generations.
Happy Labor Day!
In solidarity,
Ron
-----------------------------
Times reports: The merits of unions is a major theme at a Tampa event celebrating the U.S. worker.
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