Labor & Employment Law

Trumka, Progressive Panelists Will Explore Worker Anger and the Elections

By Mike Hall

The anger that American voters feel, especially working-class voters, is well documented. But the unknown is how they will express that anger on Election Day.

This Friday in New York City, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Working America Executive Director Karen Nussbaum will take part in a panel discussion on ?Which Way for the Working Class? Elections 2010 and Beyond.?

They will be joined by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert; Eric Alterman, journalist and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress; and moderator Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of the Nation.

Sponsored by Working America and the AFL-CIO, the discussion will center on the issues and viewpoints of working men and women at the tipping point and what can be done to shift the balance in the November elections and beyond.

Unemployment continues to hover at 10 percent, tens of millions of workers are underemployed. The housing market is stagnant and foreclosures continue. The big banks, health insurance companies and corporate America reel in profits and pay out bonuses.

That?s enough to make anybody blow their stack.

Will the Glenn Becks and Sarah Palins of the world exploit that justifiable anger at an economy that isn?t working for all into a November election win? Or, will working-class voters see that a right-wing and Republican victory is an open door to the economic policies of the past that drove the economy into the ditch?

The event will take place from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the Great Hall at Cooper Union. It is free and open to the public, but please RSVP to RSVP@workingamerica.org.

At an earlier ?Tipping Point? seminar in June, Trumka said:

It?s up to us to continue to educate, it?s up to us to continue to give people hope?to channel that anger to a positive direction?.We?ve been successful in the past when we give people economic facts, union members stuck together while the other side tried to use divisive social issues to tear us apart.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on September 20, 2010 (boomark / email).