After 45 years of driving a cab in New York City, Beresford Simmons says the emergence of the National Taxi Workers Alliance in the past few years is helping his family and those of other drivers reach the middle class. Simmons’ story is one of three illustrating that unions make the middle class strong, giving workers a voice in our economy, portrayed in a trio of new videos by the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

 

Read more >>>

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka released the following statement in response to the Senate Judiciary Committee's immigration bill: Today brings to mind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s wise and hopeful words, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” More than 11 million aspiring Americans took a big step toward becoming citizens today with the bipartisan Senate Judiciary Committee vote. That reflects an enormous step toward healing an injustice, the deportation crisis that has wrecked families, communities and workplaces for far too long. Read more >>>

Wilma Liebman who served 14 years on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)—including chairwoman from 2009–2011—says, “Appointments to the NLRB have been a political battleground for decades.” But, in a column in Politico, she says the current attack on the NLRB is the most vicious since the board was created in the 1930s. Read more >>>

Leading up to the AFL-CIO convention in September 2013, the AFL-CIO is hosting a crucial conversation about the future of working people and of unions—in union halls and online at www.aflcio2013.org.

Rana Plaza, the Bangladesh factory that collapsed three weeks ago, killed more than 1,100 workers, many of them young women. This tragedy adds to the more than 1500 Bangladeshi workers killed in preventable fires and building collapses since 2005. Documents found at the factory show that the workers produced for big names in global retail revealing the link between poor workers in Bangladesh and major retail brands.Obviously, the government must improve local laws and their enforcement to stop these tragedies, but brands must also take responsibility for their supply chains. They must be held accountable to the tragedy that happened in their supply chain. Read more >>>

The vast majority of America's workers have largely been shut out of the nation’s economic growth over the past three decades, reports the 12th edition of The State of Working America from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Released today and available online, the report finds that the typical American family has added hundreds of extra hours of work each year, while also earning better education credentials, yet is still struggling to keep up. Read more >>>

The North Central Indiana AFL-CIO Council and United Way in South Bend are giving community members the opportunity to Adopt a Family and heat a home. Dawn Chapla, AFL-CIO Community Services liaison, wrote the grant that will match donated dollars for heating, provide free budget counseling and provide a case coordinator to develop and work on a plan of action.

The Postal Service is critical to our economy—delivering mail, medicine and packages on time and at an affordable price, without a dime of taxpayer money.

But no company can grow or even maintain its business by cutting its service. Reducing the scope and quality of service by eliminating Saturday delivery service or closing post offices and facilities will not restore the Postal Service to health. It would likely drive mailers away and therefore worsen the Postal Service’s financial problems

Read more >>>

The United States Postal Service (USPS) is under attack in Washington. A 2006 postal reform law requires the USPS to pre-fund 75 years' worth of future retiree health benefits within just 10 years. No other federal agency or private enterprise is forced to pre-fund similar benefits like this, especially on such an aggressive schedule.

This unnecessary mandate costs the USPS $5.5 billion per year and is the sole reason for its losses over the past four years. Now, some in Congress want to take this opportunity to gut the USPS, eliminating hundreds of thousands of jobs, ending Saturday delivery and closing hundreds of post offices in communities across the nation.

Help save 120,000 American jobs and an essential part of our economy by stamping out this foolishness!

This coming Tuesday working men and women in every single Congressional district across America will hold rallies in support of House Resolution 1351, a bill that addresses the financial crisis facing the Postal Service and saves jobs.

Join us on Tuesday, September 27, 2011 from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. at an event near you and help us deliver a message to Congress: Save the Postal Service!

Read more >>>

Tomorrow, Wednesday September 7th, the Indiana General Assembly's Interim Committee on Employment will meet to consider legislation to ban all project labor agreements in the state – another attack on working people.

The committee, which is led and controlled by the Republican majority, will convene at 9:00 a.m. in the chambers of the Indiana House of Representatives on the 3rd floor of the Indiana Statehouse. Read more >>>

As we approach another Labor Day, millions of Americans remain unemployed and underemployed. Yet, instead of working to create jobs and put people back to work a bipartisan majority of lawmakers in Congress and the White House are pushing legislation to send even more of our jobs overseas.

On April 10, 2011, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler called to thank the leadership of the Indiana State AFL-CIO and Indiana’s union men and women for their work in recent months. Shuler told the leaders assembled “against all odds, you were able to fend off serious threats to working people.” And she encouraged them to keep fighting – to keep building structure to ensure this attack does not happen anywhere again in this nation. Represented in the meeting were affiliates such at IBT, OPEIU, UNITE HERE, Ironworkers, NALC, Steelworkers, UAW, IFT, ISTA, SEIU, AFSCME, as well as others!

Click here to read the full text of Secretary-Treasurer Shuler's remarks!