Tula Connell

The AFL-CIO has proposed a five-point plan to immediately address the nation’s jobs crisis, and Trumka took our message to the White House last week at President Obama’s Jobs Summit.

But we need to keep the heat on. It’s up to the grassroots to outshout Wall Street.

We need an economic game plan that creates jobs which support families. Because, as one person noted in the questions, “We can’t just flip burgers for one another.”

      Stop by any corner grocery store and ask the people standing in line:  What do you worry about most—jobs or the nation’s budget deficit? If they don’t choke up laughing, chances are real high they’ll give the same response as did the public in two recent polls: Priority #1: Jobs. Priority #2: [...]

      After he was elected AFL-CIO president in September, Richard Trumka traveled around the country on a listening tour. Here’s one story he heard, which he described this week as the AFL-CIO, along with several key allies, launched a jobs initiative to help get our nation back to work. Last summer at an [...]

      Imagine voting on a ballot initiative and knowing that everyone who didn’t show up at the polls still got to vote—because their votes would be counted as “No.” That’s the process for airline and railway workers when they vote on whether to join a union. The election results are tallied not by [...]

    Corporate serf masters: same tactics, no matter what the century.         The governors of Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama are pushing the U.S. Defense Department to award in 2010 a $35 billion to $40 billion tanker contract to European-owned EADS/Airbus rather than U.S.-based Boeing Corp. In doing so, Republican Govs. Haley [...]

Economist Jeff Madrick, director of policy research at The New School’s Bernard Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis, is among several key speakers at next week’s Building the New Economy conference here in Washington, D.C. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard also are among keynote speakers. Here, Madrick shares with us why government involvement in the economy is essential to ensure a robust, successful nation.

Proving yet again that not only do taxpayer-bailed-out CEOs have no shame, word has it that they plan to flaunt their taxpayer-fueled wealth in our faces, the ABA is sponsoring its Roaring ’20s party in conjunction with its Oct. 27–29 meeting.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will lead thousands of mad-as-hell Americans in a rally outside the ABA meeting on Oct. 27, demanding financial reform and re-regulation that will allow us to rebuild our communities, our lives and our economy.

Stopping by the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC last night, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka discussed why the AFL-CIO supports health care reform legislation that makes sure Big Insurance doesn’t monopolize the health care field—and why the bill passed this week by the Senate Finance Committee, which does not include a public option, must be improved as it goes through Congress.

Right now as your last guest [Wendell Potter, former Cigna executive] said, American insurance companies have a stranglehold on the health care industry. In 90 percent of the markets, they’re called highly concentrated, or there’s one or two companies that control them. As a result, profits have gone up 1,000 percent and premiums have gone up 300 percent. The only way to hold them accountable is to create competition and the only way you can create competition is with a robust public option.

Alison Stewart, who filled in for Maddow, asked Trumka:

Let’s talk about the public option. Is it a make or break issue?

His answer:

Absolutely.

Watch it.

Yesterday, grassroots union leaders came to Washington, D.C., to deliver nearly 50,000 letters from people asking—pleading—their senators to listen to their stories and pass health care reform that’s affordable, includes a public option, doesn’t force working families to pay more than we are already, holds insurance corporations accountable and requires employers to pay their fair share.

Hotel housekeepers around the country have had enough. Yesterday, more than 350 housekeepers and their supporters launched a seven-city nationwide “Hope for Housekeepers” tour.

They kicked it off in Long Beach, Calif., carrying a seven-foot by 60-foot “Hope Quilt” on a mile-long pilgrimage from the Hilton Long Beach to the Hyatt Regency Long Beach to symbolize their struggle for decent working conditions.

“Hope for Housekeepers” is a national movement of women, founded by Hyatt housekeepers across the country, to stop the abuse of women in the hotel industry and bring a message of hope to Hyatt housekeepers and women working as housekeepers across the globe. The tour will travel to San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Antonio, Boston, Indianapolis and Chicago.

As Jane has pointed out, Penny Pritzker, of the massively wealthy Pritzker family who chairs four major corporations, including Hyatt, is a vocal opponent of workers’ freedom to form unions, strongly opposing the Employee Free Choice Act.

Earlier this year, Pritzker joined with other billionaires to fight the Employee Free Choice Act. She told President Obama she is opposed to majority verification (card-check), which would give workers another choice—a labor board election is the other option—when deciding whether to join a union.