Free Republic

“Working families everywhere applaud the courage of the fast food workers who are striking today and engaging in acts of civil disobedience in over 150 cities. And we applaud the unity and the collective spirit displayed by members of AFL-CIO state federations and labor councils who have joined today’s protests in solidarity.This nation was built on the fundamental beliefs that work should be a gateway to the middle class, and that no job should ever trap someone in poverty. That’s why the ‘Fight for Fifteen’ movement is surging and the protests are getting ever louder. It’s time for corporations to...

The nation’s largest labor federation took aim Tuesday at the conservative Koch brothers in ads designed to highlight the billionaire industrialists’ political clout and to gin up liberal voters. […] “For years, the Koch brothers have epitomized how corporations and the super-rich have tried to systematically destroy our democracy,” president of the 12 million-member AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said. “Today, they’re finally meeting their match.” …

With its cover story [1] on Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, The New Republic has hit an all-time low. Written by TNR Senior Editor Alec Macgillis, it reads as a commissioned hit job meant to lessen Walker’s chances of entering the GOP presidential race.Let’s start with the cover: superimposed over a photo of the governor standing by his desk is the title: “Scott Walker is So Hot Right Now: Too bad he owes his success to a toxic strain of Racial Politics.” Inside the issue, the title becomes: “The Unelectable Whiteness of Scott Walker: A Journey Through the Poisonous,...

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka issued the following statement in response to the ongoing deportation crisis in the U.S.:We face a grave moral crisis on immigration reform.  Our long-held belief is that every possible step that could be taken should be taken with great urgency.  We reiterate our urgent plea that all political leaders, in both branches, act without delay to end the deportation crisis.That means that the executive branch must provide all those who would qualify for citizenship under the bipartisan Senate Bill affirmative status with work authorization, as laid out in our policy statement. And that means that Republican leaders...

With the Allied victory in Europe and Japan complete and the greatest war the world had ever seen coming to a close, AFGE continued to secure major victories of its own.By taking our message to the streets, airwaves, and halls of Congress, AFGE achieved groundbreaking advances for federal workers as it embarked on a decades-long march toward a membership 300,000 strong. Starting in 1946, AFGE won uniformity in salary increases and extended benefits to an additional half-million federal workers. In doing so we secured a 14 percent wage increase for federal workers.Into the 1950’s AFGE continued to break new ground...

The Democracy Alliance, a top-secret collective of ultra-rich left-wing political donors, has a new member — Randi Weingarten, who heads the labor union that represented Douglas County teachers until two years ago when the district went union-free. ... Weingarten is president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), an arm of the AFL-CIO whose affiliates include the Douglas County Federation. ... Ben DeGrow, Independence Institute senior education policy analyst, said Weingarten’s joining the Democracy Alliance shows that the union is using dues collected from teachers to pursue an extreme political agenda. ... Unlike other school districts, Douglas County no longer...

Despite significant advancements in workplace health and safety over the past four decades, 150 people will be killed on the job or die from job-related illnesses and diseases today, reports the 2014 edition of the AFL-CIO’s annual Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect, released this morning.And that daily death toll, which has remained steady for the past several years, plus the 11.4 million work-related injuries and illnesses a year show:The nation must renew the commitment to protect workers from injury, disease and death and make this a high priority. We must demand that employers meet their responsibilities to protect...

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka visited hunger strikers last week outside the White House who are protesting deportations that rip families apart from each other. We asked our mobile supporters to send messages of solidarity and encouragement to the hunger strikers. Here are some highlights from what you said: Keep up the fight. Hasta la Victoria. Carry on one day longer for justice. We all do better when we all do better—Paul Wellstone. Stay strong! New York teacher and child of immigrant supports you! No more breaking up families. America supports family values. You are fighting a good fight, I stand behind...

<p>"Rep. Paul Ryan and the Wall Street Journal are for throwing in the towel. Legalize them all and start them on the path to citizenship.</p> <p>A full and final capitulation. Let’s get it over with.</p> <p>To understand why and how the Republican Party lost Middle America, and faces demographic death, we need to go back to Bush I.</p>

More than 1,000 people are deported every day. It is predicted that in April, the Obama administration will have deported 2 million people during its tenure. Amid congressional inaction, President Barack Obama and his administration need to hear from working families that we can't wait any longer for action. The president can take concrete, bold and necessary actions today to stop senseless deportations that tear families apart from each other. Today, groups are holding events across the country to say: 2Million2Many! Not One More Deportation!Find a #2Million2Many April 5 event near you. If you take pictures and share on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, don't...

A powerful labor union backed a Democratic candidate in a special election last year but never disclosed the amount of money it spent on the effort. The AFL-CIO backed Elizabeth Coppola, a Democrat, in the Assembly District 21 special election last November. Running phone banks out of their office and offering the services of a political coordinator, the union campaigned for Coppola’s election. But not once did the AFL-CIO disclose its political spending backing Coppola. Nor did the Coppola campaign report any AFL-CIO spending as an in-kind campaign contribution. State campaign finance regulations require labor unions and other groups to...

A group of five U.S. senators have joined the growing chorus of influential voices, telling the Kellogg Co. to end its nearly five-month lockout of more than 220 workers at its Memphis, Tenn., cereal production facility.The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Local 252G members who make Frosted Flakes®, Froot Loops® and other breakfast favorites were locked out as part of the drive by the company to replace steady, middle-class, full-time jobs with casual part-time employees who would make significantly lower wages and substandard benefits.In a letter to Kellogg’s CEO John Bryant, Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Robert Casey Jr....

When the UAW failed miserably in Chattanooga and was not able to unionize the Volkswagen plant, even with a staked deck, it started a chain reaction and the next domino has fallen. The news that the AFL-CIO has decided to keep its money and not even try to save three Southern Democrat Senators comes as no real shock. The powerful union reviewed the polls and the political climate in North Carolina, Louisiana and Arkansas and decided backing the Democrats in these states would be throwing good money after bad. The decision left Democrat Senators Mark Pryor in Arkansas, Mary Landrieu...

HOUSTON, TX – The nation’s leading labor union will plan to spend $300 million in 2014 trying to unseat Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and four other Republican Governors. More: AFL-CIO to Target Walker, Other Governors People’s World reported that the AFL-CIO announced on Thursday morning during a press conference in Houston that they would spend money trying to unseat Governor Walker. Other Governors that the labor organization is targeting are John Kasich (R-Ohio), Tom Corbett (R-Pennsylvania), Rick Snyder (R-Michigan), and Rick Scott (R-Florida). The American Federation of Teachers backed the AFL-CIO’s plan. President Randi Weingarten said: “In many ways it...

After unprecedented interference from politicians and out-of-state extremists like Grover Norquist and the Koch brothers, workers at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga, Tenn., plant voted 712–626 against representation by the UAW that would have led to the establishment of a works council, the first such model of labor-management relations in the United States.AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says the workers stood up to “enormous odds to try to form their own union and to create an historic new model of workplace governance.” He adds:Unconscionably, what should have been a local workplace decision by workers and management was turned into an experiment in new forms...

The nation’s leading environmental groups are digging their heels in the sand by rejecting President Obama’s “all-of-the above” domestic energy strategy—which calls for pursuing renewable energy sources like wind and solar, but simultaneously expanding oil and gas production. But it appears the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, won’t be taking environmentalists’ side in this fight, despite moves toward labor-environmentalist cooperation in recent years. On a recent conference call with reporters, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka endorsed two initiatives reviled by green groups: the Keystone XL pipeline and new natural gas export terminals. “There’s no environmental reason that [the pipeline] can’t...

Congress has itself to blame for its low ratings among the American people. Policymaking is all about choices; it is the calculus of weighing costs and benefits and the distribution of those costs and benefits. In theory, there are lots of policies that can make everyone better off, but they can only be accomplished by redistributing the gains of the policy.

The National Labor College, an education venture for working adults supported by the AFL-CIO, will close next year because of financial difficulties school officials attribute in part to the construction of a conference center several years ago on the Silver Spring campus. The college, with 599 online students this fall, announced Wednesday that its board of trustees voted this week to accept a closure plan. Word of the impending shutdown had been circulating since at least mid-November. “We’re all very, very sad,” said Paula E. Peinovich, the college’s president. The college will offer courses through the spring semester and have...

Backers of the movement for higher pay point to studies saying that the average age of fast-food workers is 29 and that more than one-fourth are parents raising children. Simon Rojas, who earns $8.07 an hour working at a McDonald’s in South Central Los Angeles, said he would join Thursday’s one-day strike. “It’s very difficult to live off $8.07 an hour,” said Mr. Rojas, 23, noting that he is often assigned just 20 or 25 hours of work a week. “I have to live with my parents. I would like to be able to afford a car and an apartment.”...

The Obama administration has found a way to give unions relief from an Obamacare tax nearly three weeks after Republicans rejected a Democratic push to include the labor carve-out in the latest budget deal.The Department of Health and Human Services quietly released a final rule last week that includes an intention to exempt some union insurance plans from a substantial new tax known as the reinsurance fee.As part of Obamacare, the tax was supposed to be levied against all insurance plans to share the risk for insurers taking on the sickest patients next year.But unions, which were among the strongest...