Free Republic

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka made the following statement on today’s announcement that the Trump administration will terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program: President Donald Trump’s move to terminate DACA and strip work authorization away from 800,000 productive members of our society is cruel and wrong. Ending DACA will increase the pool of vulnerable workers in our country and embolden employers to retaliate against working men and women who dare to organize on the job or speak out against abusive working conditions. This indefensible act will make our workplaces less fair and less safe and will undermine our freedom...

In the middle of August, Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO union hierarchy, exercised expert -- and malicious -- timing to embarrass the President Donald Trump. But Trumka never would have had the opportunity without White House advisors’ assistance. Back in January, Trumka and his deputy chief of staff, Thea Lee, had happily accepted invitations from the Trump Administration to serve on the newly-established Presidential Manufacturing Council and Policy Forum. Apparently, at least some Trump advisors thought it was a good idea to solicit the advice of a man who had, just a few months before, publicly denounced the...

As temperatures plunged from 94 degrees into the 60s on a recent August evening, Lodi grower Brad Goehring dispatched his crew of Mexican workers into a field to pick Pinot Gris. The grapes were finally sweet enough, and the 2017 wine harvest had begun. Despite President Donald Trump’s pledge to step up deportations of undocumented immigrants, there’s little evidence of field workers being rounded up in California this year. “We haven’t heard of a single ICE raid in California fields,” said Goehring. An estimated 70 percent of California’s roughly 600,000 farm workers are undocumented, according to United Farm Workers Vice...

The president of the AFL-CIO stepped down from a council advising the White House on Tuesday, hours after President Trump reiterated that both sides were to blame for deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va., where white supremacist groups rallied over the weekend. "President Trump’s remarks today repudiate his forced remarks yesterday about the KKK and neo-Nazis," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statement. He announced that both he and AFL-CIO leader Thea Lee would step down from Trump's Manufacturing Advisory Board. "We must resign on behalf of America’s working people, who reject all notions of legitimacy of these bigoted groups."...

United Auto Workers (UAW) president Dennis Williams called the bribery allegations brought against the widow of a former union executive "appalling," adding that they may have led Nissan workers to reject unionization, but denied that they reflect the larger organization.In July, the Department of Justice indicted Monica Morgan, the wife of the late UAW vice president General Holiefield, and former Fiat Chrysler vice president Alphons Iacobelli for funneling $1.2 million from a worker training center to pay off Morgan's mortgage, buy luxury cars, and pay for personal travel. The indictment came just one week before the UAW held a historic...

On Friday, the United Auto Workers failed in yet another attempt to organize an auto plant in the South. This time it was a Nissan plant in Canton, Mississippi. Unlike in the 2014, when workers at a Chattanooga, Tennessee Volkswagen plant narrowly rejected the union, Friday's result was a 62 percent to 38 percent shellacking. Coverage of the UAW's defeat at the Associated Press overnight was reasonably measured, with one exception: a barely mentioned and completely unexplained Fiat Chrysler-UAW corruption scandal in Metro Detroit which influenced the voting. Reporter Jeff Amy's dispatch shortly after midnight Saturday morning (also saved here...

In a test of labor’s ability to expand its reach in the South, workers at a Nissan plant in Mississippi have overwhelmingly rejected a bid to unionize. Out of roughly 3,500 employees at the Canton-based plant who voted Thursday and Friday, more than 60 percent opposed the union. It was an emphatic coda to a yearslong organizing effort underwritten by the United Automobile Workers, which has been repeatedly frustrated in its efforts to organize major auto plants in the region.

ANALYSIS/OPINION: As a 21-year autoworker in Michigan, and a forced dues-paying member of the United Auto Workers for 19 of those years, I have watched union officials waste millions of dollars attempting to organize manufacturing facilities in the South. It has done so as workers in those factories have clearly rejected their efforts, time and again. *** This time, the target is the 6,400-plus workers at Nissan’s facility in Canton, Mississippi, who will have a secret-ballot election August 3-4. Those workers should proceed with caution and pay heed to the long-term consequences of their decision. *** Organizers will make many...

General Motors has put six of its cars under review, including its once breakthrough Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid, and is evaluating whether to cancel them in the coming years, according to a report from Reuters. The news comes as sales of cars continue to plummet in the U.S. and as consumers increasingly turn to SUVs and pickups. Besides the Chevrolet Volt hybrid, other vehicles believed to be under consideration for elimination iinclude the Buick LaCrosse, Cadillac CT6, Cadillac XTS, Chevrolet Impala and Chevrolet Sonic, according to Reuters. GM spokesman Jim Cain declined to comment on the report. UAW President Dennis...

The United States Postal Service violated federal law by letting employees do union-funded work for Hillary Clinton's campaign and other Democratic candidates while on leave from the agency, according to an Office of Special Counsel report obtained by Fox News. The OSC determined the USPS "engaged in systemic violations" of the Hatch Act, a federal law that limits certain political activities of federal employees. While employees are allowed to do some political work on leave, the report said the Postal Service showed a "bias" favoring the union's 2016 campaign operation. The investigation was launched months ago after Senate Committee on...

“This is not a drill,” NEA President Lily Eskelsen García told the 2017 NEA Representative Assembly. “We stand in a dangerous place. We stand between a profiteer and his profits. We have a president who resides at the dangerous intersection of arrogance and ignorance and travels with a moral compass that always points to his own self-interest.” In her keynote address on Sunday, Eskelsen García laid out in stark terms the dangers posed by the agenda of President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, but reminded the 7,500 delegates gathered in the Boston Convention Center that “we can win. We...

The president of the country's largest labor union, Lily Eskelsen Garcia of the National Education Association, told delegates at her organization's annual gathering that they would not work with the Trump administration because the president and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos could not be trusted to do what is in the best interests of children. Eskelsen Garcia just addressed the 96th NEA Representative Assembly meeting in Boston, accusing President Donald Trump of residing "at the dangerous intersection of arrogance and ignorance" and labeled DeVos as "the queen of for-profit privatization of public education." She said in part: "Let me say this...

Security guards on Chicago’s iconic Navy Pier agreed to a set of restrictions as they continue to protest plans by a new security contractor to replace them with cheaper labor. Teamsters Local 727, which represents 43 security, fire and safety officers that work on Navy Pier, filed an unfair labor practice charge against Navy Pier’s management company May 11 and went on strike May 18. The union said that Navy Pier, Inc. (NPI) intimidated the union in its efforts to protect the jobs of its members. Allied Universal, which took over from a previous contractor in mid-May, refused to recognize...

Wherever you live in this country you will be impacted by these devastating cuts.These are billions and billions of dollars.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka today made the following remarks at a rally to save health care: Good afternoon, brothers and sisters. I’m Rich Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO. I am proud to be here on behalf of the American labor movement. We oppose the Republican health care bill. It’s bad for workers. It’s bad for unions. It’s bad for America. It doubles down on taxing our health plans. It threatens Medicare and Medicaid. And it further tilts our economy toward the wealthiest few. In fact, this isn’t a health care plan at all. It’s a massive transfer of wealth from...

Of all the attacks on our civil society, the attacks on evidence-based science pose perhaps the greatest existential threat. Decisions being made about climate science and environmental protection at this critical time will shape the future of our planet. Advances in research are produced by the twin pillars of dedicated scientists and an activated citizenry who demand that the best science be applied to today’s most pressing problems. Because scientists produce the facts that expose the lies currently being purveyed, the tip of the spear is pointed at the heart of science-based policy and research. But the imminent threat also...

AFGE laments the Senate’s alteration of rules to push through Judge Neil Gorsuch WASHINGTON – In response to the U.S. Senate enacting the so-called “nuclear option” on the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court, American Federation of Government Employees National President J. David Cox Sr. issued the following statement:“It is disappointing to see Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell change the rules of the Senate to allow for a simple majority vote on Supreme Court nominees now and in the future. He has rolled back long-standing Senate rules and traditions to lower the bar for Judge Gorsuch’s...

After spending big on Clinton, Obama, SEIU now facing steep budget cuts Labor giant Service Employees International Union spent $60 million on politics and lobbying as well as $19 million on the Fight for 15 movement in 2016, and now finds itself laying off headquarters staff. The union's federal filing to the Department of Labor reveal that it experienced marginal growth in 2016, adding about 15,000 members from 2015. However, that increase did not correlate with financial growth as revenue fell by $17 million, fueling a $10 million budget deficit. The union, which represents healthcare and public sector workers, spent...

As with much in the first weeks of the incoming Donald Trump administration, there was a last-second move to delay regulations years in the making. In this case, the Department of Labor fiduciary rule... As it stands, retirement savers lose $17 billion a year just in fees paid to advisors and funds. The vast majority of investors then fail to match the stock market indexes because of those same fees. The fiduciary rule doesn't dictate lower-cost advice. Nor does it remove expensive actively managed funds from the marketplace. Rather, it requires anyone who sells retirement advice for a living to...

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics union membership hit an all-time low in 2016 of just 10.7 percent. That decline has consequences for unions like the AFL-CIO, which Bloomberg reports is dismissing dozens of staff members: The AFL-CIO is dismissing dozens of staff members as part of a restructuring amid continuing declines in union membership and fresh political threats to labor rights. “We will have to end support for some programs that don’t go to our core priorities,” said AFL-CIO spokesman Josh Goldstein, who declined to discuss the number of staff affected. “This is about reimagining and realigning our...