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BOSTON (CN) — Former Vice President Joe Biden won the endorsement of the AFL-CIO, the country’s largest coalition of labor unions, on Tuesday, in a development that could help him in union-heavy swing states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Biden is “the embodiment of goodness and decency,” said Richard Trumka, president of the 12.5 million-member organization, in a video. The endorsement was not unexpected....

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A group launched a 2020 ballot initiative Tuesday to expand Michigan’s civil rights law to include anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people, a step that would put the issue to voters if the Republican-led Legislature does not pass the measure. Fair and Equal Michigan, a committee backed by business, political and philanthropic leaders, submitted petition language to the Board of State Canvassers. Once it is approved, the group will have until late May to collect the roughly 340,000 valid voter signatures needed to place the initiated bill before lawmakers. If legislators do not adopt the legislation — similar bills have long...

Can Donald Trump score a major win on trade and international relations even as House Democrats prepare to impeach him on his handling of the latter? The president of the nation’s largest labor coalition says yes. The White House has crafted a deal on the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement which satisfies both unions and Democrats, and now should pass quickly in the House: A key party to the talks, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, said Monday morning that there was a deal and he planned to meet with his executive committee Monday afternoon to discuss it.“We have pushed them hard and have...

What follows is a close look at the leftist lawfare campaign of uncivil agitation as it unfolded in Denver last week. Denver, like other cities that have Occupy manifestations, is faced by a core of protesters from anarchist groups, labor unions, and communist organizations, often obscuring their affiliations, mixed in with a mishmash of confused students, concerned citizen activists, children, and all sorts of evil clowns.

resident Donald Trump Monday launched a Labor Day Twitter attack against AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka after the powerful labor leader Sunday said the nation's unions won't have "any choice" but to block the "unenforceable" United States-Mexico-Canada trading deal. "Just watched AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on @FoxNews and thought to myself how different he is on TV than he is when he is with me at the White House," the president tweeted. "Likes what we are doing until the cameras go on. We got robbed on Trade and everything else while his Dems just sat back and watched." "NAFTA is the...

Big Labor warned Democratic presidential contenders Wednesday against taking union support for granted, adding that Dems would need to be more honest about the party’s record on workers’ rights, reports said. The president of the AFL-CIO labor union, which represents 12.5 million union workers, addressed a closed-door meeting with representatives from each campaign in attendance before the second round of debates Wednesday in Detroit. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka argued that “both parties” needed to take responsibility for U.S. labor laws that benefit corporations to the detriment of the middle class.

If reason ruled in politics, the Democratic party would urge its presidential candidates to eliminate the vitriolic posturing from their campaign, and would then begin to concentrate on the only question that matters: Who can beat Reagan? That is different from asking whether Walter Mondale would make a better chief executive than Gary Hart, or whether Hart’s “new ideas” are preferable to Mondale’s old-line liberal values. What troubles me is that, given the rising nastiness, this campaign begins more and more to resemble the terrible script written in 1972, when another new face, George McGovern, was buried by Richard Nixon’s...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) may have the support of progressive politicians for their Green New Deal but they’ve lost the nation’s largest organized-labor group, the AFL-CIO. “We welcome the call for labor rights and dialogue with labor, but the Green New Deal resolution is far too short on specific solutions that speak to the jobs of our members and the critical sections of our economy,” the AFL-CIO’s energy committee wrote in a letter to Markey and Ocasio-Cortez. “We will not accept proposals that could cause immediate harm to millions of our members and their families....

As federal employees braced for their first missed paychecks starting Friday, tension over the government shutdown reached a fever pitch, with House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer equating forcing people to work without pay to slavery. Speaking Thursday to a rally of unionized federal employees and their supporters outside the AFL-CIO’s headquarters, the Maryland Democrat spoke of the “440,000 people that are being asked to work with no pay,” adding, “You know, back in the 1860s,they talked about working with no pay.”

Canada’s government is joining President Trump in criticizing a Montana judge’s ruling that blocked construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. “We are committed to supporting our energy sector and the hard-working Canadians it employs. Our government has always supported the Keystone XL project, and we are disappointed by this decision,” Vanessa Adams, spokeswoman for Canadian Natural Resources Minister Amarjeet Sohi, said in a statement. “It is important for good, middle-class jobs in Canada and for a successful energy export market. The project has received all necessary approvals in Canada,” she said. Adams said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government “is taking...

Full title: Judicial Watch Victory: Federal District Court Reaffirms Constitutionality of Ohio Voting Law, Denies ‘End Run’ Attempt Around Earlier Supreme Court Ruling Judicial Watch Amicus Curiae Brief Referenced in Court’s Decision ‘This Court recognizes that the extreme relief sought by Plaintiffs on their only remaining claim could potentially be viewed as an end run around the Supreme Court’s decision …’ (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that U.S. District Court Judge George C. Smith for the Southern District of Ohio agreed with Judicial Watch in rejecting an attempt by the AFL-CIO’s Philip Randolph Institute to reinstate 1.5 million...

On Nov. 6, Americans will vote in one of the most important elections in our lifetime. Companies and their employees have a significant stake in the outcome. But too many people still say they don’t vote because they are too busy or their schedule won’t allow it.We’ve seen this before. In November 2016, about 40% of eligible voters did not cast a ballot. Some made a conscious decision not to go to the polls on Election Day. But many of these voters simply didn’t have a choice. Around half of states do not require employers to give employees paid leave...

President Trump on Monday slammed AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka over comments he made over the weekend, saying it’s easy to see why unions are doing so terribly.“Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO, represented his union poorly on television this weekend,” the president tweeted. “Some of the things he said were so against the working men and women of our country, and the success of the U.S. itself, that it is easy to see why unions are doing so poorly. A Dem!” Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO, represented his union poorly on television this weekend. Some of the...

President Donald Trump started his Labor Day with an attack on a top union leader, lashing out after criticism from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. Trump tweeted Monday that Trumka “represented his union poorly on television this weekend.” He added: “it is easy to see why unions are doing so poorly. A Dem!” […] Asked about the low unemployment rate and economic growth, Trumka said “those are good, but wages have been down since the first of the year. Gas prices have been up since the first of the year. So, overall, workers aren’t doing as well.” On Monday, Trump touted...

On this weekend’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka said President Donald Trump has “hurt workers.” On Trump’s performance for workers, Trumka said, “Unfortunately, to date, the things that he has done to hurt workers outpace what he’s done to help workers. He hasn’t come up with an infrastructure program that could put a lot of us back to work. He overturned a regulation that would deny over 5 million overtime that they would’ve had. He overturned some health and safety regulations that will hurt us on the job.” He continued, “Wages have been down since the...

One of the nation’s top labor leaders on Wednesday called on the Obama administration to immediately release the text of a far-reaching trade deal that spans the Pacific Rim to Latin America. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka wrote a letter to President Obama arguing that stakeholders, lawmakers and the American public need to see the final text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to start what is expected to be a long process of evaluating the deal brokered by the United States and 11 other nations. House and Senate Democrats have made similar appeals since the pact was brokered a week ago...

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is getting an earful – on Twitter – from teachers union boss Randi Weingarten for reportedly keeping the door open to a possible Trump endorsement in 2020. Newsmax reported Wednesday that Trumka would not rule out a union endorsement for the president. “Every [candidate] will be looked at,” Trumka said. He added, “we will consider every candidate who’s running.” Trumka simply may have been stating union policy, not wanting to get ahead of an endorsement process that is nowhere close to starting, for an election more than two years out. At the same time, he noted...

Despite strong condemnations of the Trump administration for what he calls the “growing wage inequality” among Americans, AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka on Wednesday refused to rule out his union endorsing President Donald Trump for re-election in 2020. “Well, he will be looked at [for the labor endorsement],” Trumka told Newsmax, “Everyone [of the presidential candidates] will be looked at.” Pressed as to how serious he was about the AFL-CIO considering not endorsing the Democratic nominee for president for the first time since 1972, Trumka insisted “we will consider every candidate who’s running in 2020.” Recalling the last presidential race, the...

AFL‑CIO President Richard Trumka (UMWA) spoke at the Missouri AFL‑CIO’s 29th Biennial Convention yesterday, rallying a packed audience of local union leaders and working Missourians in the fight against Prop. A. He recalled the charge that President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered to Americans in the midst of the Great Depression: “True patriotism urges us to build an even more substantial America where the good things of life may be shared by more of us.” Working people in Missouri are speaking out and mobilizing their neighbors against a corporate-backed attack on our fundamental economic rights. As union leaders gather in St....